We’re staring at 0-’20
Will Hamilton see any of its pro teams play this year? It’s a good question with a really bad answer
Now that the Honey Badgers will move down the road for their summer fling, will we see any professional sports teams play in town this year?
Good question. With a bad answer, which is, sadly, “probably not.”
All three Hamilton summer/fall sports pro teams made their respective league finals last year but — and this is strictly gut feel — there’s a strong chance we won’t see any of them play here in 2020. Games will be broadcast on TV, or livestreamed, or downloaded from somewhere in cyberspace, so they can be held anywhere where it makes healthy sense, both medically and economically.
If there’s anything going to be played here, it would be CFL games and in front of little or no crowd. And, at this moment, that’s still a stretch.
It’s clear that the Canadian Premier League is heading toward the hub model that the National Basketball Association, National Hockey League and now the Canadian Elite Basketball League are building. A single site for multiple, or all teams, isolated in a bubble, with massive safety precautions and COVID-19 testing. And no fans, at least not on-site ones.
So, despite practising with metronomic regularity at Tim Hortons Field, Forge FC will surely not play real soccer there this year. The CPL’s three potential hub sites are Vancouver Island, Moncton and PEI. And, as reigning league champions, they’re again in CONCACAF League, which this week formally announced its postponement and who knows when, if, or, and in what form, the 2020 version will be remounted.
A shorter we’re-all-here hub would likely satisfy the CPL’s thick multi-year agreement with Spanish broadcast giant Mediapro and the league also wants to maintain momentum from its shockingly good debut season as it seeks to attract more cities, appropriate stadia and wealthy owners. But it won’t be playing in Hamilton.
This week, the CEBL formally unveiled its truncated summer series starting in mid-July, all in St. Catharines. See you in ’21 FirstOntario Centre.
Which brings us around to the Tiger-Cats, the wild cards in this discussion. Dealing with so many more negative variables than other North American leagues, including its gate-driven economy and shallower money reservoir, the CFL is also the furthest behind. It finally reached out to the players but we don’t have a clue if there’s going to be a full hub, a truncated eight-game schedule with home parks in play, or even a season at all. You repeatedly hear that there will be a single regularseason hub, and that it will be Winnipeg, but with the possibility of playoff games, and Grey Cup, at the homes of the top qualifiers. But Burlington’s David Braley, who owns the B.C. Lions, told a Vancouver reporter this week that it’s a financial imperative for teams to play four regular games at home, which the league had floated earlier. He also questioned who would pay salaries in a hub world.
So, it remains extremely confusing. If safety and the getting-inand-out logistics dictate that Tim Hortons Field can’t viably accommodate fans, and that’s always a possibility, would it matter if the Ticats are actually in town? They’d be accessible to most fans only on TV anyway. Many would argue yes, if only for the symbolism. The Tiger-Cats are the internal organs of Hamilton sport and the east end is scheduled to be the site of the 2021 Grey Cup.
The CFL has a lot of ground to cover in a short time but, on personal intuition alone, it just feels like it’ll be ’21 before we see the Ticats at home.
Which would give Hamilton an 0-for-’20 in pro team sports.
Hopefully that feeling can be safely proven wrong.