Rekindled Argos Love Affair

[Argo]

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star...irst-love.html

[Argofan_1000]

Room for everyone. I guess we got the answer on whether we should win the Cup now or later. Now, timely signings of FA and smart plan at QB after Ricky. Will only help in ticket sales. I noticed 50% off opening day tickets on top of your season seats. Works for me

[jerrym]

Great to see the growing interest in the Argos.

[Argo57]

Here’s hoping this championship marks the turnaround that we have all been hoping for.

[Stevoman]

"They are a lovable bunch, easy to like, so family, so down to earth, so tight-knit, so fun, as wholesome as violent people playing a violent game could be.Over the years we see them at community events, mentoring kids, sharing positive messages. They are more community-oriented than professional sports personalities we’ve come to know — probably because all but a few play for so little money."

This is the section of the article that I agree with most and wish more people would come to realize. Rather than just concentrating on which game is better or which league has better players, I've always considered that the CFL seems to generally just have better people and as a result, I want to cheer for them more. It could be that they've been humbled by not making the NFL or by getting cut and are therefore on a second chance, but overall, the players seem more down to earth and appreciative.

[R.J]

What I'd like to know is why did this individual along with countless others give up on the team in the first place ?

[ArgoGabe22]

What I'd like to know is why did this individual along with countless others give up on the team in the first place ?

I’ve been wondering the same thing. Certainly Pinball provided some spark. And I’m not trying to be negative towards those who lost interest but generally interested in reasons why they lost interest. You can still support the Argos if you put in some effort to seek out news/results if you really wanted to.

[Will]

What I'd like to know is why did this individual along with countless others give up on the team in the first place ?

It sounds like James lost interest in the early 1990's. It was 1993-1994 when attendance really started to plummet. The team's 20-52 performance from 1992 to 1995 may have played a factor.

[Ron]

What I'd like to know is why did this individual along with countless others give up on the team in the first place ?

I think he answered you by saying his kids followed other stuff. So he followed them.

Many people give up on all the sports in this city but the Argos feel it more since they have a smaller pool of fans.. The Jays had small attendance for a long time until recently but they could always sell out the home opener. (followed by 10K the next night) Another factor is once people don't go to games they get used to not going. (and the time and effort required to go)

IMO the Argos are going to bounce between 15K and 24K depending on how they are doing and the buzz they create.

[Tau Ceti]

It sounds like James lost interest in the early 1990's. It was 1993-1994 when attendance really started to plummet. The team's 20-52 performance from 1992 to 1995 may have played a factor.

The early '90s are key. If the emergence of the Jays in '77 started the Argos decline I think the two World Series wins confirmed it. This, the Gilmour Leafs, and the appearance of the Raptors in '95 are the seminal events for late Gen-X and early Millennials in creating sports viewing affiliations in Toronto.

By the mid-1990s the Argos were firmly of B league status. They were the team my grandfather listened to in his den.

[Rich]

The early '90s are key. If the emergence of the Jays in '77 started the Argos decline I think the two World Series wins confirmed it. This, the Gilmour Leafs, and the appearance of the Raptors in '95 are the seminal events for late Gen-X and early Millennials in creating sports viewing affiliations in Toronto.

By the mid-1990s the Argos were firmly of B league status. They were the team my grandfather listened to in his den.

This is all true, and it's also important to remember that the prevailing wisdom by 1996 was that the CFL was at death's door. The aborted US expansion was an unmitigated disaster, and stories abounded about near-bankruptcies and missed payrolls. Furthermore the "American Bowls" at the SkyDome were in full swing and everyone was led to believe that a Toronto NFL team was imminent. To top it all off, the League and the Argonaut organization spent very little on marketing to counter these perceptions at the time. All of this helped create a deeply-rooted negativity towards the Argos and the CFL that I believe we are only now beginning to crawl out of.

[argos1873]

This is all true, and it's also important to remember that the prevailing wisdom by 1996 was that the CFL was at death's door.

Heck, much of this wisdom was being flung around by the mid-80s. The folding of the Alouettes/Concordes/Alouettes. Stability issues in Saskatchewan and Calgary. The end of the at the time massive O'Keefe TV deal. Declining attendance in Toronto and much of the league. The death knell was being heard for nearly a decade by 96, they were just about to bury the body by that time.

[rdavies]

The aborted US expansion was an unmitigated disaster

There is a school of thought that this experiment helped save the league (through the expansion fees), the rest of course was a disaster.

[argos1873]

There is a school of thought that this experiment helped save the league (through the expansion fees), the rest of course was a disaster.

I agree, and was going to post something similar in my above post. The expansion fees, the 94 Grey Cup which gave some Canadian pride, some renewed interest or just attention via the spectacle of American teams and the return of a franchise in Montreal that, by accident, turned into a viable franchise, were unintended consequences (save the expansion fees) that did help to save the league.

[rdavies]

Even in its darkest hours, John Tory stood tall for the CFL
For $1 a year, John Tory joined the CFL as chairman and later commissioner at the league’s most challenging time in history.
Jennifer Pagliaro Toronto Star Oct 18, 2014

In 1996, John Tory announced he would step down as chairman of the Canadian Football League after five years on the job.

But he would stay on for four more years, instead taking the helm as commissioner during the most tumultuous time in CFL history: a controversial expansion into the American market; half of the league’s eight Canadian teams in dire financial hardship; and a deficit of national sponsorship and broadcast time.

For years it was unclear whether anyone really cared about Canadian football or whether it could survive on its own.

In 1992, Tory first signed up to help pro bono — it was widely reported he received just $1 a year in compensation, something Tory and other officials say is true — during his time as an executive at Rogers Communications.

“I did that as volunteer because I felt like it was the right thing to do,” Tory said.

In that light, Tory became both the fall guy and the league’s de facto saving grace.

In the early ’90s, Tory — then a managing partner at Torys LLP, the firm started by his grandfather and run by his father — became the league’s lawyer.

Those who know him say Tory had a passion for football, having grown up watching it with his two uncles. Even then, as things often go with Tory’s public life, there was speculation about whether he would step in to the commissioner’s role after previous commissioner Donald Crump’s departure in 1991.

“I’d have to think long and hard on it,” Tory said then. “Being commissioner is more than a full-time job. You’d have to be prepared to devote all your time to it.”

Though he wouldn’t take the top job, Tory, then 40, was in 1992 a league chairman alongside newly appointed commissioner Larry Smith, a former Montreal Alouettes player.

At the time, the league’s board of governors — made up of an acrimoniousgroup of team owners — bought in to the idea of expanding south and bringing the success of American football home.

Tory’s role in all of this was strategic, said Smith, now a Canadian senator, in an interview. Tory was in charge of reviewing the plan for how to get American teams to buy into the idea and figure out how they were going to make a profit that would benefit the struggling Canadian teams.

“We were going in at the worst time really in the history of the CFL,” Smith said. “John had a high amount of visibility for the chair position.”

Tory was the one trotted out in front of TV cameras to speak about why, less than a year after the B.C. Lions played the Baltimore Stallions in the 1994 Grey Cup, the five American teams had begun to drop out.

Then in late 1995, the NFL announced their Cleveland Browns would move to Baltimore for the 1996 season, putting pressure on the Stallions who were buoyed by a large local fan base but could not compete with the vastly popular American league.

“I am optimistic the Baltimore Stallions group will remain a part of the CFL,” Tory told reporters in 1996.

But the Stallions would eventually relocate to Montreal and were later reconstructed as a new Alouettes team, marking an end to the expansion experiment.

In his book, End Zones and Border Wars: The Era of American expansion in the CFL, sportswriter Ed Willes called the Browns move the “killing blow.” He wrote that the remaining American owners met Smith in Toronto and said they were pulling out of the expansion idea.

“It ended and it ended abruptly — and it was tough,” Smith says now.

But like Tory and others who bought in to the plan, Smith argued the experiment hadn’t failed — that it brought much-needed cash flow, as much as $7 million, to the Canadian teams, and the new draw it had on American players and officials who basically didn’t know Canada even existed, let alone had football teams.

“I would argue that the expansion was a failed venture in the event that we didn’t make a success of Canadian football in the United States,” Tory says now. “But financially, it saved the league.”

Behind the scenes, the less publicized problem was that nearly half the franchises were heading for bankruptcy, an ongoing issue Smith said Tory was “critical” to resolving.

“We did a lot of that behind closed doors because we wanted to deliver the solutions,” Smith said.

There were issues with Toronto’s Argonauts, as a celebrity team of John Candy, Wayne Gretzky and Bruce McNall fell apart. Stable ownership for the B.C. Lions was needed and sought in Brick furniture store owner Bill Comrie. Later, David Braley and Bob Wetenhall would be recruited to save the Lions and the Alouettes.

“He had to deal and keep a lot of people happy,” Smith said about Tory’s role.

Wetenhall, an American who still owns the Alouettes today, remembers starting out in 1996 as the team was going bankrupt. He remembers Tory flying out to Montreal to help set up business meetings to get new sponsors. At the same time, Wetenhall remembers Tory flying across the country to Vancouver and Saskatchewan to help prop up the other teams.

“When I came to Montreal, I didn’t know anybody,” Wetenhall said. “John contributed an awesome amount to the CFL. He cared. It was just one of those unusual things . . . I’ll always be appreciative to him for that.”

David Braley, who took over the B.C. Lions at the end of 1996, said he was convinced by Tory and Smith to go to Vancouver to stabilize the team — which represented 25 per cent of the television market.

“I think he worked with all the teams very well in trying to get the problems that we had resolved,” Braley said. “He did the leadership job of making sure the eight teams that were left moved forward and we solved the problems. That’s what he did, and if you look at his record, we’re still here.”

The depth of the league’s money troubles is perhaps best exemplified in the 1996 Grey Cup game, which pitted the Edmonton Eskimos against the Argos. Tory and Jeff Giles, who was chief financial officer before becoming the league’s president, found themselves suddenly without enough money to pay the players. The money coming from the organizing committee wouldn’t be paid straight away, but the players were to be handed cheques after the game.

“We didn’t have the sponsorship we were supposed to have and we couldn’t cut the cheques the next day,” said Giles. “I said to John at that time, I just don’t have the desire to stand up one more time to say we don’t have the money.”

The two worked as the match went on to secure the funds earlier from the Hamilton committee running the event.

Giles said Tory’s real success, however, was getting the board of governors, who were making calls on the league’s future, to work in harmony.

“They’re a difficult group to manage and they’re a difficult group to get consensus on,” Giles said about the owners. “We were very divided and we were a very divisive group. We didn’t have a common vision and John helped us find it.”

Refusing a salary made it easy to say Tory was doing the job for the love of the game, Giles said. Despite working full-time as an executive with Rogers starting in 1995, Giles said Tory was often available to drop everything and help with that day’s problem, make a media appearance, or talk finances.

On the finance side, Giles said Tory was very involved with securing a $3- million loan from the NFL that was “critical” to the league’s success. Around the same time, the CFL was able to secure a deal with TSN — something Tory, Giles and Braley contributed to finalizing. Friday Night Football, a program that still exists today, was introduced with the TSN deal, adding stable programming to the Canadian league.

“He never wanted to be a commissioner,” Giles said. Still, Tory stayed, playing the role of acting commissioner when Smith left.

Michael “Pinball” Clemons, running back for the Argonauts, said the league changed under Tory’s direction — something that was felt on the field.

“As a player, when he came in as commissioner, it kind of gave us a chance to stick our chest out a little bit,” Clemons said. “He was a guy who came with a great reputation.”

There was a swagger that was reintroduced, with slogans like “Our balls are bigger” (even though the pigskin itself was the same size as the NFL’s).

Tory was someone who presented well and was able to crack jokes, including with reporters, to lighten the mood while the league was crumbling, said author and columnist Ed Willes.

“He was a champion of the CFL when there weren’t a lot of champions for the league,” he said.

[rdavies]

I forgot about the NFL loan, that helped as well.

[Rich]

Yes, the expansion money was important, but the whole US experience solidified the public perception that the CFL was a mickey mouse operation.

[rdavies]

I don't agree with that, the problems started much earlier, elsewise they wouldn't have had to do the expansion. There was definitely a hostile media (read Toronto based) that fed that fire, aside from TSN who were far sighted enough to see the value of the property and were prepared to make an investment (in all aspects) and get a return.

I hate that term "mickey mouse" or "joke" and whenever I see it you can be guaranteed the person using it is ill informed and has a bias. That's the type of thing people do when they are unable to argue facts. That wasn't targeted at your post Rich but a long history of seeing those words being used.

[timlb01]

I can say the league has had lots of up and downs over my time watching / following it. I have found that when the focus gets away from football and there is a lot of talk about financial problems it makes the sport less enjoyable and I feel two things; 1) withdrawal from the sport and 2) fight harder and become a stronger advocate for the league. Turnoff time periods for me were expansion years, not because of the expansion but the way the Argos were being managed. The other time was Argo ownership changed in the early 2000's and the BS with the strippers etc. I think one of the things that Tory did well was unify the owners but also focus in on the game and not the financial problems of the league. People love stories of failures and disasters.... look at the news and what gets reported on celebrities. Here is hoping that the league continues to prosper and builds on the current momentum.

[Saugonaut]

All of this thread! I first got into the Argos in the early 90s but the Bills were our team. It could have been worse, my Dad was born in Hamilton. It took moving to Scotland for me to miss home, and the CFL was one of those intagible things that I missed. I once saw a guy in a Riders uni on Princes St in Edinburgh and man did i get homesick. Anyway, being back home, in the GTA, being able to watch amazing football has brought me back.