Quote Originally Posted by 1argoholic View Post
Playing crap football never hurt them at the CNE. But then they were the summer sport.
Not true, if you look at Game to game attendance...attendance always heavily dropped off late in the season when sports fans realized the team was not going to make the playoffs by Labour Day. The last 2 home games from 1978-1981 were all poorly attended compared to games earlier in the season because of the product on the field. Still great compared to today, but that's not saying much. I saw a CNE late season game vs Hamilton only have 25,000 as the announced crowd and that was in that period where the team averaged 35-40k.

Quote Originally Posted by paulwoods13 View Post
That's an over-simplification. Attendance peaked in 1978-79 when the stadium had been expanded and the Jays were crappy. Then it started declining, with a sharp drop in 1984 after we won first Grey Cup in 31 years. It was as if the pressure valve had finally been released. Then Jays got competitive. Argo attendance kept declining for the remainder of their time at the Ex, through a bad season (1985), mediocre (1986) and good (1987 and '88).
1976 and1977 saw Argo attendance at it's peak by sheer numbers and that was still a fanbase that was cultivated by Leo Cahill's first go around from 1967-1972. Attendance started to fall, albeit not shockingly in 1978 despite the Argos having brought Leo back in 1977. Those late season games in 1978 including the one vs BC posted on Youtube after Leo was fired was surely nowhere near close to the 46k that were at his final game vs Montreal. It's hard to say the on-field product didn't affect the attendance as that offense was pretty bad. It could be argued that the fans who jumped ship after Leo's firing didn't just jump from the Argo ship, but stopped following the CFL altogether. The financial disparity in player salaries between the NFL and CFL was starting to widen in the late 70's. Sure there were big coups by CFL teams in luring high draft picks to still come to Canada, such as Montreal enticing Tom Cousineau to come to the CFL, but that was becoming less and less a scenario.