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  1. #1
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    Ambrosie: The Right Choice

    After Jeffrey Orridge's term as commissioner, many were worried whether the CFL would get it right when they chose a new commissioner. The answer as the end of Randy Ambrosie's first season as commissioner nears, is a resounding yes.
    His knowledge of the game' strengths and weaknesses, coming from having played in the league and been a secretary and board member of the CFLPA, followed by business experience as head of sales marketing, and then as president of firms, meant he had the skills needed for this demanding job. His passion for the game, together with his sense of humour and communication skills have helped him connect with fans in a way that Orridge never did.
    Ambrosie's decision to limit team's to one challenge, not only reduced tedious delays in the game, it made the use of the challenge much more strategic, increasing the tension level when it was dropped.
    By announcing the same day that Art Briles, disgraced and fired from his previous coaching because of a sexual abuse scandal, would not be allowed to join the Tiger Cats, Ambrosie saved the team and the league from severe embarrassment. He also saved the team from another highly questionable decision by ruling that Johnny Manziel, who had been involved in numerous controversies including domestic violence and suicide attempts, would not be allowed to sign a contract this year and have to meet certain conditions in order to be eligible to play next year.
    When Canadian QB Brandon Bridge brought up the issue of Canadian QBs not counting as one the seven National starters, he got an audience with Ambrosie, who said "We should look at it".
    Ambrosie has helped the league gain much needed attention through his eloquence in delivering the league's "Diversity is Strength" campaign aimed at building up interest in and attendance at CFL games, including even getting interviewed for the first time in its history on CNN by moving up the launch of this campaign from the fall to immediately after the white supremacist riot in Charlottesville, Virginia. With the recent Canadian census stats showing that Canada is already 22% foreign born and that that percentage is almost certainly going to grow over the coming decades, diversification of the CFL fan base is a key challenge for the league.

    The league still has lots of problems but Ambrosie's positive, think big approach, including expansion, even if that is likely a long way off because of a lack of stadiums, creates a positive atmosphere for the league.

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    They hit the bullseye with this guy, sadly he was in the mix when Orridge got picked or we could have got him earlier. He talks about expansion and a couple of weeks later comes a serious proposal. He's a man of action that's for sure. He's gotta work on his trophy presentations though : )

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    Quote Originally Posted by rdavies View Post
    They hit the bullseye with this guy, sadly he was in the mix when Orridge got picked or we could have got him earlier. He talks about expansion and a couple of weeks later comes a serious proposal. He's a man of action that's for sure. He's gotta work on his trophy presentations though : )
    Randy has oodles of credibility with players, owners and sponsors.
    “it's not the strongest who survive nor the most intelligent but the ones most adaptable to change.’ Charles Darwin

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    Quote Originally Posted by rdavies View Post
    They hit the bullseye with this guy, sadly he was in the mix when Orridge got picked or we could have got him earlier. He talks about expansion and a couple of weeks later comes a serious proposal. He's a man of action that's for sure. He's gotta work on his trophy presentations though : )
    Yeah, that's the most messed up thing about what's happened the last couple of years - could have had Ambrosie earlier, and they went with Orridge ?

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    A beer with Randy Ambrosie: CFL commish talks concussions, Halifax, Johnny Manziel, BTO and more
    http://ottawasun.com/sports/football...l-bto-and-more

    I like the notion of the football season and the business season. League revenues absolutely need to grow, and individual teams needs to figure out their own markets as well IMO.

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    So far so good for Randy.
    However if he gets this expansion done in Halifax, plus (re)negotiates a new TV deal upwards of $75M annually and hopefully this is not precluded in the current version based on a 10th team, then also gets the playoffs and GC on the main CTV, I will anoint him as the best ever.

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    Commish Ambrosie not afraid to think big
    Dave Naylor TSN.ca November 23 2017

    When Randy Ambrosie steps onto the podium Friday morning of Grey Cup week for the annual state of the league address, it’s going to be obvious that this Canadian Football League commissioner is a little different than those who have preceded him.

    Which isn’t so much meant to besmirch any of the CFL commissioners who’ve held office over the past quarter of a century as it is to suggest that the league’s board of governors may have finally found a leader who they are willing to give their unqualified trust.

    As anyone who has followed the CFL over that time can attest, that has been an issue for this league. Which is why the CFL has seen eight commissioners come and go over the same span that Gary Bettman has been atop the National Hockey League.

    Coming straight out of a successful career in the financial industry, the 54-year-old Winnipeg native doesn’t need the job, neither for the money nor the resume. Which is only the first thing that makes him unique, but hardly the last.

    Being CFL commissioner has long been considered one of the toughest jobs in professional sports.

    Commissioner of the league that isn’t always sure what it wants to be, commissioner of the league where occasional rogue owners have been the norm, where public and private ownership, home grown players and imports, football guys and business interest have traditionally come to the table clutching their self-interests as if it were part of a life-and-death struggle.

    Of course, it’s tough to make stakeholders see the big picture when you don’t have their full confidence, an obstacle almost every commissioner of the past quarter century has faced to some degree.

    Ambrosie, however, arrived at this positon this summer with two things his predecessors did not have: a business resume that stands up to that of those who employ him and an understanding of the game and business of professional football from his days as a player.

    For better or worse, previous CFL commissioners have mostly operated with various degrees of cautiousness, which made it often seem as though they didn’t quite have the courage of their convictions.

    That seemed to stem largely from the fact they arrived at their jobs as outsiders to both the CFL as a sport and a business, people who had little or no engagement with the Canadian Football League before being handed the league’s top job.

    And that’s also where Ambrosie is different.

    He remembers the bad old days of the CFL, entering the league as the second overall draft pick by the Calgary Stampeders and them immediately being approached to buy season tickets to help “save our Stamps.”

    He played a game in Montreal’s Olympic Stadium when security guards outnumbered fans. And in his last season, he played at Hornet Field in Sacramento, Calif., on the leading edge of the league’s abysmal attempt at U.S. expansion.

    Ambrosie isn’t afraid to think big, to imagine a league that stretches from Vancouver to Halifax, has a strong presence in Southern Ontario (where he has lived since 1997) and engages the wave of new Canadians who right now rarely turn up in CFL stadiums.

    He wants to build a business model that can be its foundation across the league, recognizing regional differences but based on principles that work in each and every market.

    He wants to concentrate less on how to divide the pie and more on how to grow it, whether that means finding ways to reach the younger generation or targeting new Canadians.

    Can one person make that much of a difference?

    Consider, if you will, his first four months on the job as CFL commissioner.

    Ambrosie engineered a mid-season rule change that limited teams to one challenge per game in response to games that were unreasonably dragging on, worked with the players association to eliminate padded practices and condensed schedules that had teams sometimes playing three games in as little as 17 days. He sped up the league’s “Diversity is Strength” campaign to make a statement in response to what happened in Martinsville, Va., forced the Hamilton Tiger-Cats to withdraw a job offer to former Baylor University head coach Art Briles and found a way to pump the brakes on Johnny Manziel so that the former NFL bad boy would have to prove he deserved a chance in the CFL.

    Oh, and he’s helped usher in what appears to be an honest-to-goodness credible effort at putting in place what he call the missing piece of the puzzle with a franchise in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

    Not bad for a guy who didn’t take office until the season began, when it would have been convenient to say he was going to use the season to step back and learn before making any real decisions.

    And what do his bosses think of someone who’s acted so boldly, so quickly.

    Apparently they love him. Which is why, as he gets set to begin what he calls the “business season,” there is palpable excitement across the league about the kinds of things he’s prepared to do.

    It’s been a long time since a commissioner walked out of his office for the very last time, leaving behind a league that was substantially different than the one he inherited.

    The 16th commissioner of the CFL, just months on the job, has already given the impression he intends to do just that. ​

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    I'll probably take some heat for this, but in the future I think it's best not to post the whole column/article. It takes hits away from the website.

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    While in general I agree with Dave Naylor, i think his negativity about previous commissioners does not apply to Marc Cohon, who did a good job IMO, just not as good as Ambrosie.

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    Quote Originally Posted by R.J View Post
    I'll probably take some heat for this, but in the future I think it's best not to post the whole column/article. It takes hits away from the website.
    That's fair.
    It's us vs the rest of the country

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by jerrym View Post
    While in general I agree with Dave Naylor, i think his negativity about previous commissioners does not apply to Marc Cohon, who did a good job IMO, just not as good as Ambrosie.
    Ambrosie is off to a great start, but I think it's too early to say he has done a better job than Cohon did.
    Year of the Rocket: John Candy, Wayne Gretzky, a Crooked Tycoon, and the Craziest Season in Football History (https://sutherlandhousebooks.com/pro...of-the-rocket/)

    Bouncing Back: From National Joke to Grey Cup Champs (https://bit.ly/3fvip5x)

    YOTR YouTube https://bit.ly/37jtG4f
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  12. #12
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    105GC Live: Fan State of the League
    CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie takes questions from fans in his first ever State of the League address.

    Well worth watching, I think he covered more informative subjects here than the media address (posted in another thread). They mentioned 100k downloads of the kids game CFL Football Frenzy which is a pretty good number for being out only two months.


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    CFL is becoming a 'business driven' league under Ambrosie

    CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie held his State of the League address on Friday, and covered a variety of topics from moving up the start of the season to the handling of concussions. Dave Naylor and Farhan Lalji examine the key points, and explain the impact Ambrosie could have on the future of the league.

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    Ambrosie on the right track, but he’s no CFL Superman yet
    Mark Spector sportsnet.ca November 24, 2017

    OTTAWA — To my ear, Canadian Football League commissioner Randy Ambrosie says a lot of the right things. Like when he flat-out admits he doesn’t have an answer to your question, rather than try to fool you with a bunch of words that add up to nothing.

    It requires honesty and confidence to say, “I don’t know,” three words that recent CFL poobahs were too insecure to utter. And in Ambrosie, the CFL has an every-day commissioner who can speak to the every-day Canadian who still loves three-down football.

    But that can work both ways, like in his answer to the question of whether there is a link between concussions in football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE): “The answer is we don’t know.”

    Really? Don’t we know?

    He plunked down a thick folder full of paper, medical opinions we will assume, that he says are conflicted.

    “There are football players who have had CTE,” he said. “I’m not standing in front of you blind to one side of the argument versus the other. I didn’t promise to only study the issue for the things I wanted to read and ignoring everything else.”

    Look, there were two things at play here, at a Grey Cup Commissioner’s press conference that was fairly dominated by player health issues. A man whose bosses are facing crippling litigation over CTE can not stand up and build the opponent’s case publicly. Not if wants to keep the job.

    It’s an impossible position to be in, and Ambrosie’s lengthy promise to follow the expert medical opinions was as fulsome and honest as he could be. And really, does the head of the CFL’s opinion on CTE matter anyhow? Isn’t this is the coal plant owner talking climate change?

    He has already rid the CFL of full-contact practices, a tangible statement of his concern for players’ health. Why do we even ask him about concussions, when nothing short of switching to flag football over tackling could really impact the relationship between football and brain trauma?

    Doctors’ opinions matter on this. Men who run or play a sport where head contact is unavoidable will never be objective on this topic, so does it really matter what they say?

    “I wasn’t an expert (when he was an offensive lineman in the CFL), and I’m not an expert now,” he said. “As it relates to the human brain, it’s good to be humble. ‘Cause there is so much more we don’t know than what we do.”

    I haven’t been to a Grey Cup as a journalist since 2011, and the first thing I notice is that — outside of CTE — many of the issues have not changed. Expansion to Atlantic Canada; the mixed up state of the B.C. Lions front office; medical bills for retired players; engaging a younger generation whose football tastes lean southward to the National Football League.

    All of those issues were laid at the feet of recent poobahs like Jeffrey Orridge, Mark Cohon and Tom Wright, who most often responded with streams of corporate bafflegab that, boiled down, amounted to nothing more than a salad full of words unrelated to the actual question.

    For the most part, Ambrosie offers up Italian sandwiches as answers. Something to chew on, in a version of English that the average Canadian Football League fan can grasp.

    He has played in Western Finals at minus-23 degrees Celsius, and still beams at the memory of the J5V he and his brothers kicked around as kids growing up in Winnipeg.

    “I’m walking through stadiums, meeting people,” he said Friday, “and every day I think, ‘I’ve never been more proud to be Canadian than at this point in my life.”

    Here is a spin through Ambrosie’s thoughts on a league he has run for less than a year:

    • On expansion to Halifax: It’s still a chicken and egg situation, with a stadium required before any team could be founded, but a franchise needing a promise to have any chance at getting a stadium built. Ambrosie says they’re actually pulling those two elements closer together, but that any new team has to be a revenue generator, not one that plays two seasons in Halifax before it starts draining CFL finances.

    “There has to be added value for everyone. We’re going to put forward a model (to Atlantic ownership) that has to be good for everybody,” he said. “This is the final piece of the Canadian Football League puzzle that everyone would like to see.”

    • On engaging new and younger fans: His example is, how do we get all those Toronto-based Saskatchewan Roughrider fans who attended the Eastern Final to go to Argos games on a regular basis?

    His solutions include keeping scoring up and penalties down, and sticking with one coach’s challenge per game — his finest move a commissioner thus far. Media access needs to be better, and old, stodgy football men need to realize the importance of journalists spreading the quirky, interesting and beloved stories of the CFL over protecting against someone noticing their team working on a gadget play.

    • The Johnny Manziels and Art Briles of the world can’t just walk through the CFL’s door when they’re ready to resume football. The CFL has to ask itself if it wants people with a history of violence against women to become part of the league, regardless of star power or football savvy.

    • This league has always worked as nine separate entities, with separate ideas on business ideas, ticket sales, drafting, etc. It’s time to act as one team, and establish some league-wide practices to help beef up attendance.

    OK, we’ve heard that last one before. If Ambrosie can bridge that gap by this time next year, he’ll truly be a CFL Superman.

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    CFL boss Ambrosie tackles complex end game
    Bruce Arthur 3downnation.com November 24, 2017

    Randy Ambrosie was standing on the edge. It was a two-tiered stage and the chair he declined to use was close enough that during the entirety of his first address as commissioner on the state of the Canadian Football League, Ambrosie had to watch where, exactly, he stood.

    Which is about right. Ambrosie was only hired in July, and already everybody loves him, or near enough. He has intellect and charm, and is smart enough to appear more unvarnished than he actually is. He was a CFL offensive lineman, he has a strong financial and executive background, and he’s from Winnipeg, rather than snooty ol’ Toronto. If the CFL wanted an ideal commissioner and Randy Ambrosie didn’t exist, it would have to invent him.

    Which only means he faces stakes that are higher than that of his disappointing predecessor, Jeffrey Orridge. Even before his hourlong session with reporters, it was clear the 54-year-old Ambrosie wants to be a consequential commissioner. He said he wanted to make this league’s audience “two, three times bigger.” As chairman of the board Jim Lawson puts it, “He wants to make a difference.”

    And maybe he can. Ambrosie was prepared and spoke without notes; he gave long answers that veered into filibusters, but unlike Orridge he didn’t come across as the least knowledgable person in the room. This being Ottawa, he took a selfie in front of the audience, “while we still like each other.”

    But the job comes with minefields you can’t just joke away, and Ambrosie knows that. He has inherited a league with more stability than ever. New or refurbished stadiums in Regina, Ottawa, Hamilton, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Toronto, and even Vancouver; the actual possibility of a 10th team in Halifax, which with a credible ownership group and vaguely encouraging government only requires a business plan and the money for a football stadium. This isn’t 1996, where reporters sat in Hamilton hotel bars talking about the league was probably going to fold when the game ended, at the end of the week.

    This is still football, though, and Ambrosie is still a football commissioner. And while his instincts have been good and his decisions popular — chasing away Art Briles, though 24 hours too late; tweaking replay and eliminated padded practice during the season — that means facing concussions, and player safety.

    So far, he has dodged. On concussions and a link to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, Ambrosie said, “Cause and effect is unclear. It just simply is.” He talked about data, about studying and searching, about taking player safety seriously, about pledging to do the work. He had a defence: he pulled out the report from the fifth International Consensus Conference on Concussions in Sport, held in Berlin in 2016, which concluded the science has not established an unimpeachable and conclusive link between head trauma and CTE. The league sent vice-president of football operations and player safety, Kevin McDonald, to the conference. The league has tried to establish a good-faith effort on concussions; this isn’t the NFL. But it’s football.

    “There are football players who have had CTE,” said Ambrosie. “That’s a fact … I’m not standing in front of you blind to one side of the argument versus the other. I didn’t promise to only study the issue for the things I wanted to read and ignoring everything else.”

    OK, but let’s be honest: we’re all just trying to establish the number. Nobody thinks 100 per cent of football players will develop early-onset neurological disease. But nobody thinks it’s zero, either, or comparable to the examples Ambrosie offered: diving, hockey, gymnastics. The NFL estimated 30 per cent in its class-action settlement with players. The CFL can’t afford much of a settlement. So Ambrosie has to soft-shoe, and hope the league has done enough to establish it’s not a tobacco company.

    So Ambrosie said more of the same, and nobody should be surprised.

    But here is the difference, and here is the precipice upon which Ambrosie stands: what is he going to do? Over and over Friday, Ambrosie leaned hard on his own personal credibility. And that’s fair. He was a player, which should give him a chance to build bridges with the union, which was not enamoured of the previous administration. He has political capital with the owners, and David Braley and Robert Wetenhall — whose franchises in Vancouver and Montreal are, along with Toronto, primary weaknesses — aren’t the power brokers they once were.

    Ambrosie has instincts and charisma and intelligence and ambition. He has a chance to move the league.

    So how will it move? Ambrosie can talk about changing the schedule, improving relations between football operations men and fans and media, a new stadium in Calgary. Revenue-sharing may yet be on the table to help the league’s three big small markets. Convincing CFL owners to work collectively has always been a bucket of worms.

    But the big stuff, the vision stuff: that’s where Ambrosie, and his CFL, will be defined. Walk around any Grey Cup and you see a lot of grey hair and familiar faces. He has to bring new Canadians to the game, and bring young people to the game. For a league that trades on its past, on entire future of the CFL is still to be written. You can’t get two to three times bigger without replacing your own fanbase first.

    Beyond that, Randy Ambrosie wants to create a stronger football culture. He wants more fans, and more kids playing the game. That has to come with a real vision for safety, and for care. Ambrosie will always be charming and smart, but one day, if and when science cements a bridge between football and neurological damage, this league will have to show its work.

    So where will he leverage his capital, his advantages, his gifts? That’s the precipice he stands on. Time and science marches onwards, and Randy Ambrosie wants to be a great and consequential football commissioner. And he will have to decide what that means.

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    CFL commish Ambrosie anxious to improve Calgary stadium situation
    ERIC FRANCIS Calgary Herald November 24, 2017

    OTTAWA — Randy Ambrosie admits he has an emotional attachment to McMahon Stadium.

    But he insists it won’t get in the way of him trying to have it replaced.

    “I played in that stadium and happen to love it because I can go in there and look at the locker I sat in for the 1993 Grey Cup with fond memories,” said the CFL commissioner, a first-round pick of the Calgary Stampeders in 1985 who won his only Grey Cup as a member of the Edmonton Eskimos in ’93.

    “But I don’t think that’s a reason to keep the stadium.”

    There are no good reasons left to keep the 57-year-old stadium other than the fact there’s little hope whatsoever a new home for the city’s CFL club will be built anytime soon.

    Mayor Naheed Nenshi dismissed the possibility of a new football stadium/fieldhouse/arena known as CalgaryNEXT proposed by the team owner Calgary Sports and Entertainment Corporation several years ago.

    Talks of an alternative arena next to the Saddledome, which wouldn’t have included a football stadium, have since broken off as part of a shockingly dysfunctional relationship between the City of Calgary and CSEC.

    And so, at a time when the CFL is boasting $2 billion in investments in new and improved venues around the country, one of its flagship franchises will have to continue playing in the league’s most dilapidated stadium for the foreseeable future.

    “I’m very worried,” Ambrosie said when asked how concerned he was with the situation.

    “Perhaps the most successful team in the last 20 years in the CFL has one of the poorest stadiums in the CFL. I think that’s a tragedy.

    “And when you go across the country to see what has happened — the renovation at BC Place, the renovation at Brick Field at Commonwealth in Edmonton, (new stadiums in) Saskatchewan, Winnipeg and Hamilton and what they’ve done here in Ottawa. BMO Field (in Toronto) … I think it’s terrible.”

    NHL commissioner Gary Bettman feels much the same way about the situation as it pertains to CSEC’s inability to replace the 34-year-old Saddledome, also the oldest venue in its league.

    Seeing how dire a situation it is for the Flames and their future in Calgary, Bettman has tried hard to apply pressure to the mayor and city councilors to play ball on negotiations for crucial city infrastructure. Reminding people there would obviously be “consequences” if a new arena couldn’t be built, his thoughts leading up to the civic election weren’t well received by many in Calgary, including a mayor who has long suggested a New York City lawyer had no business weighing in on Calgary issues.

    Given the city’s leadership and financial struggles of late, private/public partnerships to build new rinks and stadiums will be tough — if not impossible — to sell in this climate.

    Although a CFL commissioner can carry about as much weight as Bettman can on a civic debate like this, Ambrosie said he’s willing to do his part to help remedy a sordid situation.

    “I think we need to find a solution to that problem, and I’ll do anything I can to work with (CSEC CEO) Ken King and the Calgary organization to press for a solution because I think our fans need a state-of -the art place to come watch world class football,” said the 54-year-old former offensive lineman.

    Fact is, without being able to piggyback on a larger arena project or land a stadium as part of a potential Olympic bid for 2026, the situation appears futile for the Stampeders.

    For a team that plays eight home games annually, it’s hard to justify the expense of a new stadium without the aid of a financial partnership with the city that sees the value in spending money on a multi-sport facility that would include a much-needed fieldhouse.

    Frustrated by stalled negotiations, King insisted in the fall CSEC is no longer interested in pursuing new venues, ensuring Ambrosie will, sadly, have many more years to visit his old McMahon locker stall.

  17. #17
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    CFL could alter schedule to accommodate NFLN deal
    Mike Florio profootballtalk.nbcsports.com November 24, 2017

    The CFL could be coming to NFL Network. And as part of that deal, the CFL may alter its schedule to move the Grey Cup from late November to the middle of October.

    “I’d like to see the Grey Cup earlier, it won’t happen for 2018, but for 2019 it’s possible,” CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie said Friday, via the Ottawa Sun. “I’d like to see it maybe the third week of October. That week, almost everywhere in Canada is a fantastic weekend. I’ve traveled — we’ve lived in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Oakville, Montreal — the third week in October is amazing. The leaves are changing colors. It’s autumn, it’s not cold.”

    Of course, that would require starting the season sooner, which could cause problems with TSN, the CFL’s primary Canadian broadcast partner, given a little something known as the Stanley Cup playoffs. TSN, which doesn’t have Stanley Cup playoff rights, wouldn’t want to put CFL games up against high-stakes hockey games. However, an adjustment to the season would give NFLN game content during the slow months, if a deal can be done between the CFL and the NFL.

    “We’ve talked about the idea of what are they doing for programming on the NFL Network, could we be a positive source of amazing content?” Ambrosie said. “I’m entirely on board with sharing our game with more people around the world . . . and I’m not just talking about the U.S. market. We should stop being so Canadian and shy about this. With three downs and a big field and it’s wide open and these are world-class athletes — we’ve got the greatest game in the world.”

    The NFL may disagree with that one, but the CFL is good enough to potentially take a spot on the NFL’s platform during the months when NFLN is a wasteland of NFL Films programming, Hard Knocks reruns, and the goofy top 100 player list.

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    Dealing with concussions and CTE will be an ongoing league problem that is outside Ambrosie's or anyone else's skill set because the CFL, unlike the NFL, does not have the resources to cauterize the wound.

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    Quote Originally Posted by rdavies View Post
    CFL could alter schedule to accommodate NFLN deal
    Mike Florio profootballtalk.nbcsports.com November 24, 2017

    The CFL could be coming to NFL Network. And as part of that deal, the CFL may alter its schedule to move the Grey Cup from late November to the middle of October.
    There are downsides to moving the CFL season forward. More of the regular games would be played in the spring and fewer in the fall, when interest and attendance tends to go up significantly. For the Argos having the Grey Cup in mid October would also mean that their regular season would pretty much overlaps with the Blue Jays, which would likely result in even less media attention for the Argos.

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    They used to say the CFL owns November

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