CFL throws open the gates

Iin Regina t may be the only time in the history of sport when the ‘B Sample’ doesn’t match the ‘A Sample.’ For the past two or three years, the paranoid control freaks who populate the football ops offices around the Canadian Football League have managed to turn the formerly fan and media user-friendly nine team circuit into one of the most userunfriendly in all of pro sports.

But look at what we have here with Mark’s CFL Week. What we’re likely to experience with this week’s pilot project is the most fan and media user-friendly event ever. The ‘B Sample’ is going to be unbelievable!

As president of the Football Reporters of Canada, your correspondent was more than familiar with the ‘A Sample’ last season.

The NFL media policy requires that dressing rooms open for 45 minutes a day, four days a week, in order for media to gather material to deliver on multiple platforms to the fans. The CFL was down to zero. Nada. None. Zilch. During my term as president of the FRC, we managed to get the rooms open for one day a week in eight of the nine cities in the league. Edmonton, for decades the media-access capital of the CFL and former flagship franchise of the league in all areas involving image and class, remained at none.

What we have here this week will be complete culture shock.

This week, the CFL is flying in 50 top players for two days of unprecedented media access. There will be news conferences with all the coaches and all the general managers later in the week. Forty-three members of the media will be in position starting Tuesday morning to collect content for the coming season.

It will be interesting to see how the media reacts to this. All I can tell you is that Postmedia will be here in force and TSN considers this a very important week for their season of coverage.

“CFL Week will be extremely beneficial to us,” said TSN vicepresident and executive producer Paul Graham, a man who went through a lot of his own battles on the access front last year, including the live mic controversy.

“I think this is a terrific initiative by the CFL. The league has done a tremendous job of getting all the parties together, basically under one roof, with some innovative ideas. It can only be beneficial to all of us if we are having CFL conversations months from the start of the season.

And Regina place to do this.

“TSN gets a couple of days, with full access to the star players, to capture action poses, headshots and promotional material. It gives us a great head start to the production and design of the CFL on TSN for 2017. We will also have daily reports on SportsCentre in addition to a strong social media presence. The hope is this becomes an annual event.”

Bev Wake, Postmedia’s senior executive sports producer, agrees. “This gives us an opportunity to sit down with the stars of the game, away from the field of play, and talk to them in ways we normally can’t,” she said. “This will allow us to tell better stories not only in advance of the season, but once it begins. And that’s good for fans.”

The CFL website has ambitious plans and Saskatchewan media will be all over the event. In a way, the CFL has found a new way to do some of the things it used to do.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there used to be an event the CFL called ‘The Skywriters Tour.’ During training camp, sportswriters from throughout the Western Conference used to fly from training camp to training camp, interviewing coaches, general managers and star players is the perfect from the teams. The Skywriters Tour effectively educated everybody about the events of the off-season and created a buzz around the league for the coming season.

Way back when, the league also used to have an all-star game — and taped skills competition to run during telecasts during the season — where the best players had a chance to hang out and socialize together. There also used to be the Coach of the Year event, held in Edmonton annually, with the league meetings involved used to kick off a new season.

The idea this year is to create the same effect by flying anybody who is anybody in the league to one giant festival of Canadian football to create a heaping helping of hype to launch the season.

There’s way more involved than two days of interviewing 50 football players and another day of grilling the coaches and general managers.

On Wednesday, the Canadian Football Hall of Fame induction Class of 2017 will be introduced at the new Mosaic Stadium, where the announcement will become a far greater occasion than ever before.

Also added is a free five-day Fan Fest — a family-friendly, interactive production with autograph sessions, player Q&A events, selfie photo-ops and a ‘Skills Zone’ with drills and activities. There’s also a neighbouring Fan Cave, along the lines of the “Spirit of Edmonton” or “Riderville” concept so popular during Grey Cups, which will feature footballthemed entertainment, such as CFL head of officials Glen Johnson’s “You Make The Call” event, CFL statistician Steve Daniels’ Ultimate CFL Trivia Contest tweet-ups and plenty of beer.

On Thursday, there will be a panel event featuring three generations of CFL quarterbacks — Warren Moon, Anthony Calvillo and Mike Reilly — who will join TSN’s Rod Smith for a discussion titled “Achieving Excellence, Overcoming Barriers,” sponsored by Athabasca University.

The CFL Combine, involving the league’s top prospects, completes Mark’s CFL Week on the weekend.

There’s no admission charge for events, other than the VIP Hall of Fame event ($250) and the combine sessions, which have already sold out.

“This is all definitely part of commissioner Jeffrey Orridge’s strategy to extend our reach to the fans,” said Christina Litz, the new vice-president of content and marketing, the point person for the project.

The changes were made, she said, in large part due to feedback from fans.

“They’re coming from not just all over Saskatchewan but from all over Canada. We wanted to make sure it was going to be a really fun experience for them.

At the same time, we’ve had a lot of support from our CFL corporate partners. Once Mark’s expressed interest to make this bigger and a number of other partners signed on to be a part of it, it helped us fund what we’re doing.”

It doesn’t take a math major to figure out that the budget for the event will be well over $1 million, when you consider airfare and hotel rooms for 50 CFL stars, prospects, CFL staff and everybody else involved.

“It’s a substantial investment from our ownership group and it goes to investing in what we’re doing,” Litz said.

Fantastic. But if the same people won’t stand up to the football ops people during the season to accomplish the same goal when it doesn’t cost a dime? Mindboggling.