Scott Stinson: Argos-mania sweeps Toronto, and the nation, once again

Just kidding.

By: Scott Stinson

Two years ago the underdog Toronto Argonauts met the powerhouse Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the Grey Cup. It was a typically exciting CFL championship game, and the Argos took the lead late in the fourth quarter and then blocked a field-goal attempt as time expired to clinch the game.

As I say: exciting! The city fell in love with the Argos again, and a long-awaited renaissance of the venerable old team in the league’s biggest market was born.

Record scratch.

OK, fine, you know that last part didn’t happen. What actually took place was that the Argonauts didn’t get any kind of a Grey Cup bounce in a market that has been, for decades now, basically dormant. The starting quarterback for that 2022 team, McLeod Bethel-Thompson, left the Argos for a spot on the New Orleans Breakers of the USFL, saying he didn’t want the move to be considered “in any way a dismissal of the CFL” while dismissing the CFL. The Argonauts continued to post league-worst attendance numbers last year even as they had a spectacular season behind new starting quarterback Chad Kelly.

Toronto’s indifference to the Argonauts then took an uncomfortable new turn this year, when Kelly was suspended for half the season for violations of the CFL’s gender-based violence policy, after an investigation into sexual-harassment allegations from a former Argos strength coach. A story that would have dominated news coverage for weeks if it had involved a star player on the Maple Leafs, Raptors or Blue Jays was a one-day affair. There were no calls for further punishments and no howls of outrage when Kelly eventually rejoined the team and got his job back. Shrugs all around.

And now the Argonauts are back in the Grey Cup, facing the mighty Bombers again and trying to win their second championship in three seasons and, it must be said, hardly anyone around here cares. Very few shits are given.

None of the four Toronto-based newspapers have sent anyone to cover the build up to the Grey Cup, and while travel budgets are not what they once were, the local interest in the game is reflected by the fact that those same papers have been running a single CP story at the back of their sports pages. (The Toronto Star, by way of comparison, had eight pieces related to Taylor Swift’s concerts in the city on its site on Thursday morning.)

Argos attendance was miserable again, with reported figures averaging just over 16,000 per game. Even for the home playoff game against Ottawa, the reported attendance number was just over 18,000 at BMO Field, yet more evidence that the move from Rogers Centre eight years ago turned out not to be the panacea that many CFL supporters hoped. Argos crowds in 2024 were routinely half of those for home games in Winnipeg, a city that has, maybe, a fifth of Toronto’s population base. BMO Field crowds for Toronto FC, the local soccer concern, meanwhile averaged more than 25,000 — for a team that, to put it charitably, sucked.

None of this is particularly new or surprising, but what is notable about yet another appearance of Team Apathy in the CFL’s showcase game is that it comes as CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie finishes up his stint in the top job. The absolute most important task for Ambrosie when he took over in 2017 — and I covered his opening press conference at, weirdly, the Twitter office — was figuring out how to spark CFL interest in the moribund Toronto market. Seven years later, it remains the top priority of whoever takes over the gig.

Ambrosie, a former CFL player who is an enthusiastic supporter of the league and its charms, took the unusual tack of dealing with his biggest challenge by not really dealing with it. Perhaps aware that it would be tough to sprout green shoots in what had become a CFL desert, he tried to grow support elsewhere. The commissioner touted a global expansion in which teams were forced to draft players from places like Mexico, Australia and Germany, in hopes that the presence of foreigners on CFL rosters would eventually bring broadcast and streaming deals in those foreign nations. CFL 2.0, as Ambrosie branded the initiative, never bore any fruit, unless you count some Australian punters in CFL colours as a revolutionary change.

Ambrosie also spent years trying to add a 10th CFL franchise in Halifax, and went so far as to grant the team to an ownership group — it even had a name, Atlantic Schooners, and t-shirts — before there was a stadium, or concepts of a plan for a stadium. The CFL held an annual Touchdown Atlantic game out east to try to build support for an expansion team, but the problem of who would pay for a new stadium was never solved and eventually Ambrosie stopped trying to force it. Touchdown Atlantic became Touchdown Pacific this season, with a game played instead in Victoria.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the league to lay bare its finances, sort of, with Ambrosie asking Parliament for tens of millions of dollars to save the 2020 season, and telling a committee that the league’s owners collectively lost between $10- to $20-million annually. (Most of the teams are privately owned and do not disclose their finances.) Ottawa declined a bailout, the 2020 season was cancelled, and after that awkward experience the CFL entered into exploratory talks with the XFL, the twice-bankrupt football league that had been bought by a group including actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Ambrosie went to great pains at the time to insist that these were just blue-sky chat sessions, not the beginning of a plan to merge the leagues or otherwise do something drastic to the CFL’s unique rules and character, and in the end he was right. The discussions amounted to nothing, there was an amicable separation, and the XFL went on to merge with the USFL and become the UFL. Good luck to those crazy kids.

That last part hints at why Ambrosie might now be out, with the CFL’s board of governors voting last month not to renew his contract. The commissioner undoubtedly had some wins, finding stable new ownership in Vancouver and Montreal, but if a majority of owners didn’t want to bring him back it suggests the collective losses have continued. He said at his farewell press conference this week that franchise values have remained “flat,” a grim statement at a time when pro-sports equity stakes in everything from women’s soccer to pickleball have been soaring. With Ambrosie’s grand visions having failed to materialize, will his replacement be tasked with going back to basics? Or will the remit be to do something even more significant? A change to U.S. rules, expansion into American cities (again), maybe even a formal partnership with the NFL in some kind of developmental role.

The NFL, it is worth noting, has been expanding aggressively in recent years, holding games in England, Germany, and even Brazil.

There would be an irony, at least, if Ambrosie’s big global ambitions were realized, in some way, after he left.

Scott Stinson is a journalist in suburban Toronto. He covered five Grey Cups and many more Randy Ambrosie press conferences.

---

The Line is entirely reader and advertiser funded — no federal subsidy for us! If you value our work, have already subscribed, and still worry about what will happen when the conventional media finishes collapsing, please make a donation today.

---

The Line is Canada’s last, best hope for irreverent commentary. We reject bullshit. We love lively writing. Please consider supporting us by subscribing. Follow us on Twitter @the_lineca. Fight with us on Facebook. Pitch us something:  lineeditor@protonmail.com