Lost in this year’s excitement about the return of a franchise to Ottawa and the opening of a new Hamilton stadium is an ugly episode in the CFL’s recent history.
A few years ago, Commissioner Mark Cohon used threats to put the squeeze on the city of Hamilton about a new stadium. It is one of the few dark issues in the Commissioner’s otherwise successful tenure.
It started with the awarding of the 2015 Pan Am Games to Toronto. Toronto decided to share some of the Games’ events with surrounding communities, and Hamilton was chosen to host events that would require the construction of a new stadium.
It seemed like a golden opportunity for the CFL: a chance to build a brand new 35,000+ seat stadium in Hamilton to go with the new ones in Winnipeg and Ottawa, and the renovated ones in Vancouver and Montreal.
What should have been a glorious opportunity to settle Hamilton’s long-term future turned into an ugly and unnecessary conflict.
Tiger Cats owner Bob Young objected to the city’s preferred location for the new stadium, claiming that the site on the Hamilton waterfront would cause long-time fans to drop the team because of parking and transportation problems. No alternative sites proved satisfactory either.
Then Commissioner Cohon backed Young, claiming that the CFL refused to consider Hamilton as a host for a Grey Cup game because of its stadium, and threatening to pull out of Hamilton and never come back. (Would he have really carried out this threat? The CFL Hall of Fame is located in Hamilton.)
Some exploratory searches for a new city were made, most notably Oshawa, before everyone calmed down and a compromise was effected. Hamilton would tear down Ivor Wynne Stadium and build a new stadium on the same spot, to open in 2014. For 2013, the Tiger Cats would play in Guelph.
But what was bizarre was the future seating capacity of the new stadium. Ivor Wynne Stadium held 29,600; the new one is now 22,500, although it can allegedly be expanded to 40,000 for a Grey Cup Game. The chance to build a really new stadium, one that might have held over 35,000 seats and be expanded to over 50,000, was gone. Somehow Young and Cohon proclaim this a victory for the CFL.
Hamilton has complied with the CFL’s wishes; the CFL got its new reduced stadium. So during the upcoming Grey Cup Festival, the Commissioner really should announce that Hamilton will host a future Grey Cup Game.
There is no excuse any more. The abhorrent Ivor Wynne is gone and the potentially larger stadium with the allegedly horrible parking will not be built.
The last Hamilton Grey Cup game was in 1996. Even defunct Ottawa has hosted one since then. If the CFL is prepared to use threats and blackmail to get its own way, it should be prepared to pay up when its wishes are complied with.
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