Ambrosie thinks big
TORONTO — Randy Ambrosie’s eyes light up and you can hear the passion in every word as he talks about his vision for the future of the Canadian Football League.
He has been on the job as CFL commissioner for a little over four months and has been widely praised for making an immediate impact with his decisiveness, his willingness to make changes to rules and player safety policy, and his league’s campaign to promote diversity.
Without even the benefit of a full season at the helm, Ambrosie has injected some life into the CFL and has embraced a simple concept as he looks toward the years ahead: Think big.
“We literally need to set our sights on a big, gigantic, enormous Canadian Football League,” Ambrosie said during a wide-ranging interview with Postmedia on Wednesday. “That can solve so many problems.
“What I’ve seen in these last four months is I’m working with a group of governors who are deeply committed to the future, working with a group of team presidents who are overwhelmingly cool guys who want this game to grow and be stronger. I want to engage them all in a conversation about not how do we take this game to the next level, but five levels from here, where this is the most important league in this country, the most important game in this country, because it’s our game.”
There will be no mere staying afloat for Ambrosie as long as he’s steering this ship. It will be full steam ahead.
His vision of growing the game includes expansion, a subject that has been talked about for decades in the CFL with little progress.
Ambrosie’s take: “We’ve been talking about it for too long, so it’s time to do it.”
“Everybody wants to see a 10th team,” he said. “Everybody wants to see us have a partner out east and Halifax is the community everybody talks about.
As I’ve said to the governors, it has to be done smart,” he continued. “It has to be a creative business model, where it’s financially positive to all. “I think we can do it.” Those words apply to just about every subject Ambrosie touched upon during his sitdown with Postmedia, from the seemingly dire attendance situation in Toronto, to potential rule and player ratio changes, to possible alterations to the playoff structure, to the endless terrifying news about concussions in professional football.
At the very least, Ambrosie says he’s willing to listen, discuss and examine any and all ideas put forth by teams, managers, coaches, players, fans and the medical community.
“In so many ways, just walking through the stadiums, being around the players, talking to the fans, interacting with the media, walking through airports and having people stop me to talk about football, I’ve come to the realization how much Canadians really love the Canadian Football League,” he said. “I say to every CFL fan out there, stop me in an airport or a mall or on the street, or at the Grey Cup, and talk to me about it. I’d love to hear their thoughts.”
Ambrosie has been faced with numerous challenges in his short time on the job and has generally handled them with aplomb.
From changing the number of challenge flags coaches can use during a game in the middle of the season, to nipping the potentially messy Art Briles situation in Hamilton in the bud, to ruling on controversial quarterback Johnny Manziel’s status as a CFL prospect, Ambrosie has said and done a lot of the right things.
Clearly, however, his real mark will be made in the off-season and the years to come as he looks to a grow a game that is lagging in the three biggest Canadian markets — most notably Toronto, but also Montreal and Vancouver — and always battling an inferiority complex among fans.
“I think sometimes we’re hard on ourselves as a league, and sometimes we deserve to be hard on ourselves, but sometimes we forget how fundamentally important we are to Canada,” he said. “We’re totally woven into the DNA of this country, and that has been an amazing part of this journey these past four months, coming to understand how important that is.”
Is that really true when it comes to Toronto? The Argos have garnered only 13,711 fans per game at BMO Field, almost 11,000 below the league average, and have shown no signs of improvement in that area despite being a better team on the field this season.
“I do find that here, as well,” the former CFL offensive lineman said. “It’s not as big as it needs to be, let’s be honest. I’m not suggesting that we’ve got it figured out here.
“I was in Calgary in 1985 for Save the Stamps. It wasn’t too long after that there was a telethon to save the Roughriders in Regina. If you go to Saskatchewan right now and look at that $325 million cathedral (the new Mosaic Stadium), you realize that football can be rebuilt.”
Ambrosie believes the pieces are in place for a Toronto resurgence, with strong ownership in George Cope from Bell Canada and Larry Tanenbaum, experienced football people in general manager Jim Popp and head coach Mark Trestman running the team, and a “cool place for football” to be played at BMO Field.
More importantly, Ambrosie sees a real opportunity for growth in community relations with the Argos moving their offices and practice facility to the site of a high school that recently closed.
“It could be a professional team that establishes a home that could be the epicentre of a revitalization of a community,” Ambrosie said. “It could be a story that has never happened in sports history.
“I like that vision for a team that goes into a tougher neighbourhood and becomes a citizen of that community and how that might connect us to this city in a very special way. The human race is a relatively simple animal. When we feel a connection to something, we’re more likely to connect ourselves to it.”
Ambrosie sang the praises of CFL players for their willingness to get involved in the community and said he is committed to doing whatever he can to help protect them on the field.
The league and the CFL Players Association already approved an inseason rule change which prohibits teams from practising in pads during the regular season in order to avoid unnecessary contact. And the commissioner says he will not shy away from further talk or action regarding the grave issue of concussions in football.
“I’ve been reading it all, good and bad,” the 53-year-old from Winnipeg said. “More importantly, I’ve dedicated myself, as I said I would on the first day on the job, to spending time with some of the leading experts in the field of brain trauma.
“I’m going to continue to work hard at this. We’ve got to try to be progressive. We’ve got to do everything we can. We’ve been trying to be as vigilant as possible on the field around head contact and we’re going to continue to do that.
“I’m committed to, along with the teams and the presidents and the governors and the coaches and the GMs and the players, doing everything we can to make this game as safe as we possibly can.”
One subject that keeps resurfacing this season is the competitive imbalance between the East and West Divisions. The top two teams in the East Divisions (Ottawa at 7-9-1 and Toronto at 7-9) have already clinched home playoff games and one of them will be one win away from playing in the Grey Cup in Ottawa on Nov. 26.
Meanwhile, there are four stronger West Division teams: Calgary is 13-1-1, Winnipeg 11-4, Edmonton 9-6 and Saskatchewan 8-7. Three of those teams will have to battle it out for the chance to get to the Grey Cup through the West Division, while one (the lucky one?) will finish in fourth place and crossover to play teams with poorer records in the East.
This after the Redblacks made it to the Grey Cup last season after going 8-9-1, where they upset the 15-21 Stampeders.
Ambrosie intends to discuss the idea of a change to the division and playoff structure in the off-season, though he’s not in favour of scrapping the East-West format.
“I do like this system, but I don’t want to be so rigid that I’m not prepared to entertain other thoughts,” he said. “I think we should look at it. I think we should have fun with the conversation.”
The East-West imbalance has been going on for two decades — this season marks the 10th time since 1997 that a West team will cross over to the East for the playoffs, while no East team has ever crossed to the West.
“Eventually, we’ll see a reversal of the trends,” Ambrosie said. “If you just go by the current trend, in the NBA you’d stop having the Eastern Conference play against the West. You’d just eliminate your regular season and you’d have Golden State playing Cleveland.
“We know that won’t last forever.”
AMBROSIE PROUD OF ‘DIVERSITY IS STRENGTH’ CAMPAIGN
It was easy for Ambrosie to pick out a personal highlight from his short time as CFL commissioner so far.
He introduced the Diversity is Strength campaign in late July after racial violence made headlines in Charlottesville, Va., and it looks particularly good on the CFL and Canadians in light of the controversy surrounding NFL player protests of racism and police brutality.
“Not only am I proud of it, but every single person who defines themselves as a Canadian should be proud of that,” Ambrosie said of the T-shirt and television campaign.
“That campaign, of all the things, when I’m looking back hopefully 1015 years from now at a long run in this game as commissioner, I will look at that moment as one of the things I’m the most proud of, because I think it spoke to Canadians in a special way. I think we’ve got to get those Tshirts into schools, get onto the sports teams. I think we’ve got to make this campaign not just a one-season thing, but part of the entire narrative of who we are as a league and who we are as a nation.”