Now that city hall is talking about tearing down the stadium, and potential owners are gone, what is the future of the CFL in Ottawa?
Show me where city hall has talked about tearing down the stadium.
You might want to read it a little closer. Nowhere does it say that city council is considering it. In fact, he gives every indication that he doesn't know WHAT they're planning to do.
It's one writer's suggestion as to what he would do if it was up to him. Nothing more. And even HE admits that he doesn't know the answer to an awful lot of questions that would enter into it (bottom of page two).
As far as the potential owners being gone, I assume you're referring to palmer. Since then, there have been mentions that Cohon was recruiting among former acquaintances. Have you heard anything about THAT falling through? 'Cause I haven't. I don't know either way, but I'm not going to jump to conclusions either. If you have, direct me to that, please.
I honestly can't believe what has happened with the whole Ottawa thing over the last 5-10 years really. But then, who in their right minds would have thought Los Angeles wouldn't have an NFL team, that is weirder in some respects.
HONESTLY I HOPE AND THINK AND KNOW THEY ARE COMING BACK
It's over. They had their 'second chance' and failed miserably.
Maybe in 10+ years, but not before then.
No don't think Ottawa failed miserably - they were let down badly by their owners, league and some of the other teams.
The fans were always there - the Renegades had higher attendance in their existence than the Argos and the Ticats. Don't forget the great Toronto crowds of 10,000 or the die-hard 12,000 average in Hamilton.
The Renegade owners were shelling out big bucks to prop up Toronto and Hamilton but in the end it was Ottawa that was let go. The league and the other teams were happy to share TV revenue with 8 teams rather than 9.
This is a great sport town, just need some good owners and the city on-side to give the team a decent rent for the stadium.
I was discussing the Printers signing with someone and it went a long way to showig the difference between good management and bad management.
Hamilton has had crowds dip to low levels several times int he past. With their current record, it's reasonable to assume they would have again.
So what do they do? They sign Casey Printers. Great move. Even if the team continues to lose, fans will come out for him, and because of the effort shown by management.
What would Ottawa have done? We talked about trading Kerry Joseph for Jesse Palmer's rights, got clowns like Ryan Leaf and Tim Couch on the neg list...Earlier John Lisoswki told Tillman that he'd rather see the team lose every game than lose money.
Young spends money with an aim of increasing interest and therefore revenue. Ottawa spent little and as a result offered a poor and unappealing product. And still they had over 20,000 for a couple of games. I know not many agree with me, and I don't want to reopen that whole debate so we can all repeat the same thing over and over again, but I find that more of a positive than a negative.
What is more, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that Hamilton's general manager won't forget who his starting quarterback is, in the middle of a live radio talkshow.
Lol...Man, that was bad. I hate that Team1200 dwelled on it for so long, but his blank spot on Joseph's name was the cherry on the sundae of a completely embarassing interview. I almost never get to listen to the radio at that time, and I forget why I was able to that day, but I couldn't believe what I was hearing. He was making Grandpa Simpson sound like Morgan Freeman.
I've since heard that everyone knew he wasn't made for radio, but that he was asked to do it in the hope that he'd make an ass of himself so it could be recommended (to Bernie G.) that he be fired. I don't know that for a fact, of course (I wasn't there), just rumour. Even if it isn't true, that anyone thought sending Forrest Gregg for a radio interview was a good idea is unbelievable in and of itself.
No self-respecting league will venture back into a market that has failed twice (for whatever reason), I doubt even the moronic NHL would do this.
With the position of the league on expansion these days, football is most likely to return to Ottawa because the stadium facility exists. Unless you airlifted FC stadium right out of the ground and flew it to some other city, football will inevitably return to Ottawa sooner than it'll get to other markets.
Would you put a considerable amount of money on that?
It'd be tough getting banks to front money for a team given the fact the same team, in the same stadium, in the same market...has failed...twice.
If they do go back to Ottawa...it will be a mistake, not because it won't succeed (I have no idea if it would the 3rd time or not) but because of how bad it will look.
Imagine if they went back to Ottawa for a 3rd time and the franchise again started failing? How moronic would the league look?
I know Halifax is toying with the idea of building a stadium...and London seems like the type of city that can either a) find somebody to build one or b) build it themselves. There is also Quebec City that is apparently also toying with the idea of throwing up a field.
With 3 potential venues possibly on the horizon...I can't imagine the CFL would be rushing back to Ottawa.
It's precisely that attitude that pisses me off. The CFL f----d up twice with Ottawa but the fans keep getting blamed. It's funny how the CFL kept coming up with owners for the Cats and Argos when they were going tits up. Why didn't they come up with owners for Ottawa instead of the hated Gliebermen ?When it comes to Ottawa, the CFL has never given a damn. The CFL is a bush league.
There is only one way I would think that Ottawa would get a team back-- any new owners would have to sell at least 20-22K in season tickets. As much as some fans want to blame others, its time for some of them to put up or shut up-- support whoever the new owner is, give him a chance to make football work in Ottawa again.
How exactly is this the CFL's fault? Blame management...ownership...whatever, I'm not sure how you can blame the league. So I'd like to know.
Any team that drafts a guy that died 5 months prior to the draft day....well...that's blatant mismanagement, what exactly do you feel went wrong though? Like, what do you feel directly contributed to the team folding up shop? And why won't it happen again?
The only reason the league gets brought into into the blame game is that they were constantly reassuring us that everything would be fine, not to worry, etc. and it all went to pot. There was never really any indication that they took the problems seriously, and that on two occasions: When the original group was ironing out how ownership would be split, then when Lonie Glieberman abandonned the team for three months to go skiing with his snow bunny. They only seemed to react when things reached crisis levels and by then it was too late.
I personally don’t blame them for giving the Gliebermans a try. It’s better than the alternative. I was pissed at the time that they put themselves in a position that the Gliebermans were the only option.
It should be pointed out that by no means are Wright and the BoG being considered the only guilty party. That list is nice and long with, in my opinion, Lonie Glieberman right at the top. He had a great opportunity there to right a wrong. All he had to do was be an adult and a businessman, but he couldn’t manage either one.
I also wish attention would turn from finding people to blame to trying to help getting a team here. I don’t think there’s an awful lot that fans can do now, frankly, but I know we can’t make things much worse.
CRFadmin, I completely agree. Getting mad at Glieberman for being a complete train-wreck of an owner is like getting mad at your cat for coughing up a furball. It ain't pretty, but he can't help it 'cuz it's in his nature.
I also believe the CFL should have been more on top of things, especially given that a) the history of the Gliebermans as owners was less than stellar, and b) the fact that they kept reassuring us that the League was committed to the Ottawa market. (Sound familiar?)
As for blaming the fans, sure, we could have bought more tickets in spite of the perennial losing seasons. (Not that 18k per game is as bad as some, cough cough, Sambo, make it out to be) but if we did sell 30k tickets per game, well, then we'd be no better than Leafs fans during the Ballard years. And I ain't no stinkin' Leaf fan.
You ain't no stinkin' Leaf fan...good on ya! But you don't have a team anymore, as far as I know..the Leafs remained in Toronto after the Ballard years.
What were ticket prices? Were they average with the rest of the league? More? Less?