Now that Ottawa is successfully back in the CFL, the next question is where does it go from here?
Mark Cohon’s tenure as Commissioner has mostly been successful. Ottawa is back in the league; there are new stadiums in Winnipeg and Hamilton; refurbished and expanded ones in Vancouver and Montreal; new ones on the way in Regina and Toronto; and greater television revenue from TSN.
He has even managed to get regular season games played in the Maritimes, via Touchdown Atlantic in Moncton, New Brunswick.
There are two outstanding issues remaining on his plate: How to make the CFL more popular in southern Ontario – particularly Toronto – as opposed to the NFL; and how to expand the league to ten or more teams.
Solving the first question would actually help CFL expansion because just up the road from Hamilton are two cities ranked tenth and eleventh in population in Canada, Kitchener and London, at nearly ½ million each. Both have outstanding Canadian college football programs at Laurier and Western, and CFL teams there would be great rivals for Toronto and Hamilton.
Out west, the CFL longs for the day when Saskatoon and Victoria get big enough to have two teams in Saskatchewan and British Columbia. And in the Maritimes, Halifax and Moncton are trying to prove that despite their size, they can support their own CFL team.
But the best and most realistic choice is Quebec City, and there has never been a better time for expansion there than now.
Quebec is prospering as never before, and there are two signs that this is the coming city in Canada.
The first sign is the steady expansion of its population. It is pulling away from both Winnipeg and Hamilton in size, and now sits a solid seventh in Canada with nearly 800,000 residents.
The second sign is Quebec’s quest to get back into the NHL. It’s able to erect a modern $400 million arena, something would not have even been considered possible when Quebec had an NHL team, 20 years ago.
But while hockey is considered a French Canadian sport, can the same be said of football? The answer is… possibly.
Like Kitchener and London, Quebec has an outstanding Canadian college football program at Laval. They have even staged the Canadian college championship game, the Vanier Cup, successfully in Quebec.
The question is whether this new prosperity, the new interest in professional sports, the great support for football at the college level be transferred to the CFL.
Quebec would be an outstanding addition to the CFL. It has a natural rivalry with Montreal and possibly with Ottawa and Toronto too.
The main problems are the same for CFL football as they are for NHL hockey: ownership and a sports facility.
But it has to start at the grassroots level, with fans.
As soon as the Quebec Nordiques left town, there were immediate outcries to get the team back and over the past 20 years, that initial sound has intensified.
One key step was that huge numbers of Nordiques fans banded together to sign a petition for action to be taken. 80,000 signatures were eventually collected. That showed that there was a market for hockey in Quebec and that Nordiques fans were prepared to put their money where their mouths were both for a returned franchise and a new arena. Politicians and investors took notice.
The fans need to show the same support for CFL franchise and a proper stadium. Once politicians and investors know that there is a prosperous market for a service or commodity, steps will be taken to supply that need.
So the first concrete step for a CFL team in Quebec is for the CFL fans in the city to band together and explore what support can be aroused.
With enough signatures on a local petition, fans will show politicians and investors that there is a market and support for a CFL team in Quebec, and then positive action will eventually be taken.
Then one day when someone says there is a great game between Montreal and Quebec today, the reply might be, “Hockey or football?”
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