Circle Your Calendars: CFL releases full 2023 schedule

TORONTO — The Canadian Football League has released its full schedule for 2023.

“From the first regular season game next June to the 110th Grey Cup in November, it promises to be a season of big plays and big fun right across the country,” said Randy Ambrosie, the Commissioner of the CFL.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.cfl.ca/2022/12/13/circle-your-calendars-cfl-releases-full-2023-schedule/

Quick glance says week 1 maybe Elks get a win @ home with Riders in town. REDBLACKS get Stamps @ home in week 2, so don't know about that one. But with Elks in 2nd game @ home, could have both these home challenged teams getting the monkeys off their back.

Am I missing something but looks like Argos only see Bombers once & that's late in the schedule.

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Not a bad schedule. Glad to see Argos/Tiger Cats playing 4 times, and not all bunched together like they were this year. Sad to see Argos/Bombers only meeting once. Labour Day will be great as always, but puzzled about no Thanksgiving Monday game. Will there be another game in the Maritimes? Looking forward to another exciting year.

Thanksgiving game is on October 9. Ottawa at Montreal 1 ET

Yeah hard to figure the Argos and Bombers meeting only once again this year. And whatever happened to the GC rematch taking place in I believe Week 2? Second year in a row that hasn’t happened.

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[quote="Tedtanium1976, post:5, topic:83045"]

Thanksgiving game is on October 9. Ottawa at Montreal 1 ET

[/quote]Thanks, missed that. Cheers.
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Schedule really takes a dive after week 13. Way too many double headers to finish the season and god forbid, we still get the dreaded triple header. And yeah, the Argos and the Bombers play only once. Come on, it's a 9 team league. At the very, very minimum each team should play an opponent at least twice during the season.

Fully agree. I’d like to see a rematch in the first week or 2.

Ottawa only plays BC and Winnipeg once yet they play Montreal 4 times? BC does not come to Ottawa this season. I agree with the previous comment, every team should play a least one home game and one away game against each of the other teams.

@Abendschan
Week #1

BC over Calgary
Winnipeg over Hamilton
Montreal over Ottawa
Saskatchewan over Edmonton

Let me know when you are taking week 2 :blue_heart::canada::football:

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Cfl needs to do some soul searching here. First, trumpet the improvements all you want, but this is marginally better than terrible. This is a 9 team league, scheduling isn't that hard. Each team should play twice, home and away, but that doesn't happen. Also, be as excited as you want about a series of Saturday night games, but don't wonder why there isn't a new generation of fans when you basically make it impossible for young families to go to a game.

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during June through August CFL should be taking advantage of as many afternoon weekend games as possible!

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Your picks are jotted down, mine are…

Calgary vs BC - Calgary
Winnipeg vs Hamilton - Winnipeg
Montreal vs Ottawa - Montreal
Edmonton vs Saskatchewan - Riders

Must wait six months to pick week #2

Cheers, Abbey

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yea i don’t get that

They are trying to save a few hundred bucks on travel keeping games in close proximity. Is this league in that dire of a financial state that we may not know about?

People running the league are based in Toronto. It’s easier for Toronto to beat Winnipeg after they played many games as opposed to none or one. It’s not a coincidence.

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Fans in the west don’t show up in great numbers for eastern teams. BC’s worst crowd last year was vs Toronto. 2nd worst crowd was against Hamilton. Teams also used to spend close to a million dollars per year on travel. CFL is always looking for the cheap fix. Even if they were making gobs of money they would do this. People are more used to it now because of the return to play after the pandemic.

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Some goofy things in the schedule.

  • 3 Western teams, BC, Edm & SK all have a bye in the final week.

  • 15 times teams have to play on short weeks ie. 4 or 5 days after previous game. Argos have none. Wpg & BC have one. Ottawa three & the others 2 short weeks each.

  • Edmonton has deja vu of 2019 when they had to close out the season with 3 games in 7 days. They have a stretch starting week 3 where they play 3 games in 11 days. Shouldn’t happen anymore. Worse they play Tor @ home Sunday, one day on travel day to Ottawa & then another fly day to get ready for Riders @ home.

Schedule isn’t horrible but having to play on short weeks leaves little time for preparation & big advantage for an opponent who may be well rested, which seems to be the case quite often.

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That’s a ton of breakdown. :+1:

With having an odd number of teams in the league over a 21 week season, there’s going to be 3 weeks where only 3 games are played and 3 teams have bye weeks during those 3 weeks. If you look at the last season, those weeks were Weeks 5, 15 & 16. This season they are in Weeks 4, 20 & 21.

I actually prefer having those lesser game weeks at the end of the schedule when they may not matter as much, since more often than not, the playoffs are decided already by the final 2 weeks for most teams. It gives teams extra rest heading into the playoffs and depending on which teams have the ESF & WSF playoff bye week, it might result in 2 or more weeks of rest at the end of the year for the best teams in the regular season. Which it remains to be seen if that’s a good thing or not with the rest vs rust debate always in question.

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