CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie liked a lot of things he saw during his recent visit to Edmonton for the second game of the mid-season, home-and-home series between the Eskimos and Calgary Stampeders.
First of all, there were a CFL season-high 38,611 fans, including 3,632 with Kids Get in Free tickets (for those aged 17 and under), in attendance at The Brick Field at Commonwealth Stadium.
“Love it,” Ambrosie said about the Family Day promotion that was created for all CFL teams in conjunction with the Family Channel (DHX Television executive vice-president and general manager Joe Tedesco was also at the game).
The Family Channel already had a relationship with the Toronto Argonauts about an anti-bullying campaign before the TV executives, and the CFL came up with the idea of attracting young children to the football games with free tickets.
Ambrosie said youth attending their first football game because of the promotion might become “CFL fans for life” or carry very special memories from that night.
“So a big thanks to the Family Channel,” said Ambrosie. “These things are starting to work. We’re seeing new fans arrive. I saw a picture of a young fan in Toronto carrying a sign as big as he was and the sign said: ‘This is my first CFL game’ … There’s a very real chance that 25, 30 years from now, he’s at his sixth or seventh Grey Cup and he is reminiscing about the time he went to his first Grey Cup game and how great it has been since.
“That’s exactly what we’re looking for. We’re looking for that next generation of great Canadian Football League fans. … In the parking lot, the best thing we could have is the young fans tugging on mom and dad’s shirtsleeves saying, ‘Are we coming back next week?’ That’s what we’re aspiring to.” Ambrosie was reminiscing with former teammate/Eskimos offensive lineman and current CHED analyst Blake Dermott about the first time the Labour Day Rematch game was played in 1989.
“If I remember, it was a Friday night game, and this stadium was absolutely full,” he said. “I remember coming out of the locker room and just watching with bewilderment about this incredibly full stadium. We went 16-2 that year, so I’m pretty sure we won (Yes, the Eskimos won the game 28-27 in front of 44,327 spectators). And the excitement and enthusiasm that the fans brought to bear that night, I’ll never forget that experience.”
The Eskimos and Stamps also treated Ambrosie to another wild, but much higher-scoring game in this year’s Labour Day Rematch, with the Eskimos building a 20-point lead after three quarters and then having to prevent a Calgary receiver from catching a Hail Mary pass in the end zone on the final play of the game to hang on for a 48-42 victory.
“What we want our fans to know is we’re going to work hard to make sure that their experience coming into a stadium is world class,” Ambrosie said. “They come to a CFL game, that is an experience they’ll always treasure. Everything about it, the way they’re greeted as they walk through the door, their pre-game experience, what happens when they sit in their seats, we’re talking about the quality of the food, we’re talking with the way they interact with other fans.”
Ambrosie really enjoyed his visit to the Eskimos pre-game tailgate section on the west side of Commonwealth Stadium.
“I loved it because it’s great Canadians out celebrating, they’re having fun, they’re doing it in a really cool way,” he said. “I got handed a glass of some drink that was very tasty, so I’ve got to say, ‘That was cool.’ … I could do that for hours and hours on end and enjoy every moment of it.
“Tailgating is being done really well around the league,” he added. “We’re not having any problems. The fans are coming to it with the right attitude, and I think we can use more of it and continue to grow that trend in our league.”
Ambrosie is also excited about what Edmonton and the Eskimos will be doing during Grey Cup Week.
While he couldn’t give away any plans that haven’t been announced, he said Grey Cup organizers Duane Vienneau, Esks President and Chief Executive Officer Len Rhodes along with Board of Directors Chairman Brad Sparrow and the entire Grey Cup organizing committee have plans to go “bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger than anybody has done before in the league.”
“They’ve got fantastic ideas,” Ambrosie said. “They’re going to set up the festival on Jasper Avenue. They’ve got big plans for what that festival is going to look like. They’re going to welcome Canada here, and this city is remarkably well-positioned as it has an amazing history of hospitality. Fans are going to come from all over Canada and around the world, and they’re going to find what this city has always been known for. It’s the City of Champions, and it’s going to be a champions-level experience.”
He also said that the still-to-be-announced Grey Cup halftime show will be “exciting.”
It’s not just the Grey Cup experience that will be bigger and better than it’s ever been before if Ambrosie has his way. He also said the goal for the league is “bigger, bigger, bigger” as the CFL tries to take its game worldwide.
“This league, this game, is the best football played on the planet,” he said. “The game itself, its constructs, three downs, wide-open fun, fast football is the game that the world should be attracted to.
“There’s more than 30 countries in the world that are playing a form of gridiron football right now. There are world-class athletes playing in those countries. I want to put out the welcome mat and say to the best athletes from all around the world, ‘Come and play in the Canadian Football League, experience what it’s like to be in a Canadian Football League stadium playing for the best fans in the world, for great Canadians who come to watch our games all the time.’ ”
Ambrosie talked about the growth of soccer’s Premier League in England after 20 teams broke away from the English Football League and decided to go global.
“If you look at the growth of the Premier League since 1996, when they attracted global players, 70 per cent of the players who were playing in 1995 were English-born and raised. That number now playing in the Premier League is around 30 per cent. That 30-per-cent make 4,300-per-cent more than the 70 per cent earned in 1995. What it shows you is the explosion of growth, making the game global.”
He also envisions the day that each of the CFL league’s teams have brand names recognized around the world.
“Further, if you look at the reputation index, which is a study that’s done annually, Canada has the No. 1 reputation in the world. We are considered the best practices country in the world as it relates to how we operate as Canadians. We’re not perfect, but we do it pretty well, and I think the world should want to come and be part of what we’ve got.”
Ambrosie admitted that the CFL has to be mindful of any competition created by the new Alliance of American Football, which will commence play in February, but pointed out that the attitude of the CFL is to “take this league that’s been so fantastic and let’s make it bigger and stronger.”
“… We have to be more consumed by our own opportunity to grow our game. We should decide our own future. Part of it is by paying attention to what the Alliance will do, but more importantly, let’s pay attention to our own business, let’s run a good league, let’s think big, let’s be big. If we do all of those things, we can happily co-exist with whatever other football is played. We’re just going to be better at it, and we can be bigger than we’ve ever been before.”
Part of that success can only come if the CFL continues to be run with “good business practices.”
“The nice thing is I find myself surrounded at the governors’ table by big thinkers,” Ambrose said. “Here in Edmonton, there’s Brad Sparrow, who I think it just a remarkable person, and Len Rhodes, of course.”
He’s also keeping the CFL Players’ Association in the loop about his vision for CFL 2.0, so the players also know what’s possibly on the horizon.
“The other part of 2.0 is how do we help more Canadian players develop their skills?” Ambrosie continued.
“How do we make sure that we’re building a pipeline of great Canadian players? How do we help junior football? How do we help college football? How do we get more kids playing the game?”
To get answers for those questions, Ambrosie has been meeting with university and junior football coaches across the country.
“Every time you turn around, you learn something about what they’re seeing and what they’re experiencing,” he said. “It’s not dramatically changing what I believe. It’s just reinforcing it in many cases and then enhancing it around what they think.
“For all of these college athletes who are playing football in Canada today, this millennial generation is very experientially oriented and I think, ‘Gosh, what if we can get them out there playing football all around the world, continuing to enhance their skills, giving them a runway beyond their fifth year of college football, beyond their junior football careers? Maybe that extra year or two of development might actually yield that next generation of Canadian stars for the CFL?
“The way we build Canadian talent for the future of the CFL is to make sure we give our players a longer runway, more opportunities to develop and grow. That idea has come out of my discussions with a number of the college coaches.”
Ambrosie said his mother “was like the greatest listener on the planet” and tried to instill that quality in her sons.
“The ultimate benefit of being in this stadium today and going out to the tailgate beforehand and walking through airports and stopping and talking to CFL fans and meeting with all of you … is you learn things,” he said. “Stop and talk to people. When I do, I learn things.”
Changing the CFL’s celebration rule, where some players were getting penalized for using props, in mid-season just made sense for the league’s executive council.
“You know what, people want to be entertained,” Ambrosie explained. “The fans want these great players when they get in the end zone to celebrate their successes.”
Of course, he also knows that someone will cross the line at some point.
“We had to remind (the players) that if they grab TSN’s cameras and they drop it, those things are worth about $40,000. We’ve got the you-broke-it-you-bought-it-rule,” he said. “But the fans love it, and we need to do as much as we can to engage the fans in our great game.”
He said the topic of an extra challenge for coaches if their first one is accepted is under discussion, but the CFL rules committee decided last winter to spend another season with the current structure.
A lot of information sharing is occurring among the CFL teams in Canada’s biggest markets – Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver – in an attempt to help those franchises overcome their attendance challenges.
And, finally, the CFL is working with the Players’ Association and the officials in an attempt to become more pro-active and tougher with things like head-to-head hits, spearing and blindside hits. Thorough reviews are done after every game and officials are constantly being educated with updated information and patterns.
“We’ve got to look after the players,” Ambrosie said. “We have to be as aggressive as we can be.
“I have to tell you, every time we go into a discussion after one of those hearings, I struggle,” he continued.
“These young men, amazing athletes, they have families, and they have bills to pay, and I always think about the impact of taking money out of their pockets. But at the same time, there’s a player on the other side of that hit whose career could have been jeopardized.
“We’re trying to do it right, we’re trying to think our way through this, but definitely we’re going to be tougher on it because that’s what the future of our game is demanding.”
Ambrosie had a flashback to the era when he played in the CFL (1985-93) and admitted that the game was different then.
“In fact, I would argue that from 1970 through the ‘80s to the early ‘90s, those were probably the 20-most violent years in all of sports,” he said. “You think about hockey and the Broad Street Bullies (Philadelphia Flyers) in 1972, (Bobby Clarke’s) two-hander against Valeri Kharlamov in the Russia-Canada series, all of those things were emblematic of a time when sports were really played violently.
“I think our game has improved dramatically from there. Our coaches are teaching great new techniques. They’re working hard to make their players play the game more safely. The crackdown, if you want to call it that, is helping to send the right message to players.
“Here’s what I hear from the fans,” Ambrose concluded. “The fans want our best players playing. They want our best players on the field entertaining them. Look, the game is going to result in injuries, but you shouldn’t lose a player (because of someone) doing something that was silly and unnecessary.”