Thursday, July 23, 2009

The CFL - Is It Un-Canadian To Not Care Much About This?

The CFL is far from my favorite sports league. I know that it is not the NFL and never will be nor can it be viewed in the same way. I have been a season ticket holder in the past when the Renegades were still in Ottawa but even that didn’t make me a huge fan of the game. I enjoyed going to the games and the atmosphere more then the game itself.

I don’t agree and in some cases understand a bunch of the rules, some of the scoring, tactics and the way they operate the clock. It makes it very difficult to actually enjoy the game as being football. I know that the caliber of play won’t be as high but sometimes it looks like a CIS game would be played at a higher level. Just saying that sometime the execution of plays is severely lacking. I find the sport to be more interesting for 1 week a year and that is Grey Cup time in November. 1 game That’s about it.

In this league it seems like there is more turnover then any other league making it very hard to be a casual fan. So many players change teams or leave the league or come back to the league that it is hard to associate them with a team. Outside a few top line players there just aren’t any household names making it hard to root for them. That was made even more difficult this past week when they went retro. All the teams broke out the old style jerseys that was really more confusing then anything else. The Toronto Argo’s were the only team that had players names on the back. When you hardly know the players to begin with that is a big disservice to the viewers. When you do it so early in the season as well, even an avid fan won’t know a lot of the numbers and would be hard pressed to know who is who. Another sticking point to this is the fact that a lot of the uniforms were such a far cry from what they are now you would have no idea what 2 teams were playing. There were some logo’s that most people have never seen before. You wouldn’t know if it was Montreal or Calgary playing.

Sure they may go Retro to sell some more jerseys and merchandise but really, when was the last time you were walking down the street and saw someone wearing a CFL jersey? Unless you are in Edmonton or Saskatchewan chances are you won’t. A retro jersey is not going to motivate too many people to go "Cool, I gotta have me that sharp Alouettes throwback!!"

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