If Ottawa finds its way back to the CFL next season, or if there is another 9th team in the coming I'd like to see three divisions with three teams. Why? It would create some natural rivalries and create more battles to claim a top spot. You can also use an imbalanced sked to play your divion rivals more often (and save on airfare as well.) For the playoffs, you would take the three division winners, then the next two/three best teams as wild cards.
West:
BC
Edmonton
Calgary
Central:
Saskatchewan
Winnipeg
Hamilton
East:
Montreal
Toronto
Ottawa (or Quebec City, Halifax, Windsor)
That would kill the cfl. The CFL sched. was fine when ottawa was in the league,so there is no issue. Nobody has a problem with the current format or the one with 9 teams. So why change something, that is not broken ?
The perfect set up would be 10 teams 5 in each division. Unless MARK 7 would like 5 divisions of 2 teams each ?
The only way a three division-nine team CFL could work is if you put the 9th team elsewhere in the prairies (like in Saskatoon). Then it would be BC-Cal-Edm, and Sask-Reg-Win, and Ham-Tor-Mtl.
Yes, you guys are right...well maybe Hamilton in the East and the 9th team in the Central. I just think it gives the league more validity when you have divsion winners in the playoffs and the more divisions the more individual races you have... And make winning the division mean something. Now 6 of 8 make the playoffs, maybe that goes to 7 of 9 when the 9th team is added, then you could have 3 divsion winners getting/earning a bye, while the 4 wild cards do battle that 1st week. Or if the league really gets bold: cut the playoff teams to 5 teams, with 3 division winners getting a bye and 2 wild cards playing in week one of the playoffs.
What was Canada's population in 1954 when the 9th and last "new" Canadian city was added (Vancouver - BC Lions ) ? All other teams since then have been US teams in the ill-considered poorly planned American expansion experiment, or else replacement teams for previous teams in Montreal and Ottawa. I think the idea of 3 divisions wont work now... you would need to tailor any future expansion to areas that would need a team to make 3 even geographic divisions. And that doesnt look too very practical in the West and the "Central Division".
There ARE cities that have the population base to theoretically produce an average gate of 25 to 30,000 in Canada now... but these cities dont have stadia, or an interested ownership group with deep enough pockets, or a ground swell of grass roots support by a large group of fans that just have got to have a CFL team. Massillon, Ohio gets average crowds of about 10,000 people for its Washington HS Tigers football team, Massillon has a population of about 35,000. ( that IS 35, not 350.)