Running another pitch play
CFL boss Ambrosie doesn’t see football as that tough a sell
Randy Ambrosie can’t throw a football at the moment, because he’s the commissioner of the Canadian Football League. Wait, back up.
When he was a young offensive lineman Ambrosie could bench 420 pounds, max. When he became commissioner he wanted to stay active, partly because his parents got sedentary when they retired, and partly because, as he puts it, “I never want to stand next to a player who thinks I’m the ‘after’ part of the before and after picture. I want them to feel like I’m a guy who belongs in the sport, so look the role.”
So he started lifting again, in addition to riding exercise bikes and walking, and the left-handed commish was diagnosed by Hamilton’s team doctor with an old partially torn rotator cuff in his left shoulder that was hiding in plain sight. The 55-year-old Ambrosie is doing narrow bench press these days, hands together. He can heft 220, but wants to do more. He always wants to do more. Ambrosie has been a hit as the CFL’s 14th commissioner. The owners are thrilled, the players respect him, fans flock. He’s the big, genial, deceptively canny guy who you can’t help but like. He looks the part, and wants to do big things.
“I got asked by the governors at the last meeting for a five-year plan,” Ambrosie says.
“And I’m gonna start with a five-year vision, and then the plan, and then work our way through the details. I know this: I think we can double size of this league in the next five years. In terms of revenue. “I think we can.” He ticks off filling the seats, appealing to new and more diverse Canadians, the international marketplace in terms of both players and TV rights. He mentions a recent meeting in Moncton, N.B., with Premier Brian Gallant, the province’s finance minister, Cathy Rogers, and others, as part of a regional effort to bring a 10th franchise to Halifax.
And when he talks about his eventual, hoped-for legacy — about having done right by his owners, the players, the teams, the fans, everybody — he casually notes that he would like to have done right by the “nine and 10 and maybe one day 12 or however many teams.”
“I think the thing that I really appreciate, and I talk to (my wife) Barb about this all the time, is I feel this amazing onus of responsibility to do the right thing,” says Ambrosie. But how can you be a good commissioner to everyone, and be a football commissioner who does all the right things? Ambrosie is exactly what the CFL needs: someone who tries to build bridges, who has the credibility and appeal and leverage to transcend what is not a strong position, in order to get things done. “A typical CEO has a lot more command and control. This is a big influence role,” says Ambrosie. He has to command respect, because he cannot always demand it.
But how can you satisfy owners who don’t make a ton of money from the enterprise, and players who play 18 games and often make regular-person money? How can you grow it that big? And don’t say Johnny Manziel.
Getting the controversial quarterback up here with what are presented as expert-driven and stringent conditions — Manziel told USA Today they included mandatory doctor visits, monthly tests to make sure he’s taking Lithium for a bipolar disorder, and appointments with a therapist — is a way to get more eyeballs looking at the league, and Ambrosie doesn’t publicly worry about whether it will go wrong. He has imposed caps on non-player spending by teams, and doesn’t publicly worry about whether it will result in losing coaches and GMs.
He talks about the good stuff, the Diversity Is Strength campaign, spreading the gospel of the league, keeping the fans feeling “like they are part of the DNA of our league.” Ambrosie works his tail off, and he listens like his mom listened, and it’s been a strength.
But to be a CFL commissioner with such goals you have to be a cheerleader for football itself. Ambrosie loves it, clearly. But it’s tricky.
“Show me a sport in the world without level of inclusion and the disparity of abilities and body types, this is more important to people today, when kids are struggling with their identity,” says Ambrosie, getting revved up. “We need more football. We need way more football, rather than less. And I told him that’s part of the story of why we need a team in every corner of this country, because the game is good for kids.
“I wasn’t a typical profile. When I was growing up I played hockey, and I was an OK hockey player, but I certainly wasn’t the typical profile. I stop at a football field, and the coach says, ‘Well, you’re gonna be an offensive lineman and a defen- sive lineman, you’re going to play both ways.’ And it changed my life like, literally changed my life. I think football does that. So that’s a part of our story as well. Football should be three, four, five times bigger in this country — three, four, five times the number of kids playing. Why, because it’s good for kids. It’s the most inclusive sport.”
But football isn’t good for kids. The Annals Of Neurology, one of the most respected neurology journals in America, published a study in April that concluded that on average, kids who played tackle football before the age of 12 developed cognitive issues over 13 years earlier than kids who didn’t. And for every year younger you started football, the cognitive issues came 2.4 years earlier. Kids who get brain injuries before 12 recover more slowly than older kids. Like Hockey Canada and USA Hockey raising the age for bodychecking, there is a push from the Concussion Legacy Institute in Boston to raise the age of tackle football to 14. Ambrosie, for the record, was 15 when he started.
Ambrosie doesn’t have an answer for that, yet. He lauds changes in how football is taught — Heads Up Football, a program the NFL pushes through USA Football — but while he has already instituted a ban on padded practices in season and is cognizant of player safety issues, he doesn’t have answer for the dangers of the game itself yet. Does he have an age in mind when kids should play tackle football?
“No, and frankly we need a national discussion, and we need to talk to our friends at Football Canada, and we need to talk to the provincial bodies, and these are things that I haven’t gotten to yet that are important,” says Ambrosie. “I think it something we need to spend more time talking about, I really do.”
He needs an answer on that, a good and defensible one, if he wants to preach football. Maybe Randy Ambrosie, the good listener, the player who started late, the hinge upon which all the parts of the CFL can perhaps swing in perfect harmony, can do that, and will. After all, a commissioner’s job is, at least in part, to make people feel better about watching football. Everybody loves Randy Ambrosie. He has big ambitions, and much to do. We’ll see what he chooses to lift, and what he can.