What will it take for Toronto to love the Argos?

[Scooter McCray]

The media are going to cover whatever they think is worthy of coverage. What reason would they have to provide more coverage of an institution that has been slowly but regularly dwindling in attendance, if not popularity, for the past 35 years? You can argue the dwindling interest is because of reduced media coverage, and we could have an endless chicken-and-egg discussion. But bottom line is that wishing for more coverage, and/or believing it would help, will not make it happen. And as I said above, the media are dying themselves. The Globe and Mail and National Post have essentially stopped covering sports, the Star has drastically reduced its coverage, CFRB no longer covers it, etc. More media coverage would be nice but until there is a good reason for the media to cover the Argos -- such as evidence of increasing interest among consumers of those media -- it won't happen.

Correct. We will never know. For whatever reasons (NFL conspiracy) the media turned their backs on the Argos and CFL in Toronto. Years ago they made a conscious choice to not cover and in some cases denigrate the league to bring about more quickly the NFL dream.

[paulwoods13]

Years ago they made a conscious choice to not cover and in some cases denigrate the league to bring about more quickly the NFL dream.

That may be true in some cases (cough Paul Godfrey cough) but is unprovable and improbable in others. The fact that attendance began dropping in 1980, dropped more precipitously after the 1983 Grey Cup win, and at the same time the Blue Jays were rising to contention had a hell of a lot more to do with the reduction in coverage, IMO. Why would the media provide wall-to-wall coverage of something their readers/viewers were drifting away from and showing they didn't care about as much (except for the diehards)?

[Scooter McCray]

That may be true in some cases (cough Paul Godfrey cough) but is unprovable and improbable in others. The fact that attendance began dropping in 1980, dropped more precipitously after the 1983 Grey Cup win, and at the same time the Blue Jays were rising to contention had a hell of a lot more to do with the reduction in coverage, IMO. Why would the media provide wall-to-wall coverage of something their readers/viewers were drifting away from and showing they didn't care about as much (except for the diehards)?

Why did there need to be a reduction in coverage? In American cities they manage to cover 4 major team sports. I think people like Godfrey decided that Toronto should only have American leagues and was too good for the CFL and others like him agreed and decided to stop covering the Argos. That policy decision has eroded the fan base over the last 2 generations of fans so that we can only draw 14000 from 35000 in 30 years. IMO the Toronto media take a slightly greater than equal share of the blame in the decline of our fan base. And it was not by accident which makes it hard to swallow. The job in front of MLSE is huge. I just hope with MLSE credibility that coverage can exist again.