How about an earlier start AND a longer season.
Season starts May 1 and ends early November with the Grey Cup and Vanier on the same weekend.
Instead of an 18-game schedule, we’ll have a 22-game schedule. 
As long as both championships end on the final weekend of November then sure.
If the season starts on May 1st when will the draft take place.
Can’t have it before the NFL draft.
The reality is that either they will aim for the normal start date or have a modified schedule.
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There’s no telling if September 2021 will look any different from right now. The CFL already sided with caution when it cancelled the 2020 season. If you start earlier, it gives you the option of postponing games into September as opposed to delaying into cold November.
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I just don’t want the May start to be permanent.
Strange that we haven’t heard from the commissioner at all about future plans.
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I don’t agree at all that we can’t have the season start before the NFL draft, but as the lame NFL draft is in late April, that’s a moot point because we are divided on whether to start it early in May or not.
Yes it’s only for next season as I proposed originally given these times.
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There is no reason to defer to the NFL or to university sports for scheduling next season. There are no such rules.
Get it going and try to get it done and build in extra weeks as a buffer for when, not if, things go wrong.
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As long as it’s only for one season then fine I will give it the old college try.
Who knows I may end up liking it.
But I also like the tradition of a late November Grey Cup. Can’t be more Canadian than that.
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They’re in a tough spot - no guarantee for business as usual with any fans allowed in the stands in May. Which puts them in the same situation they were in this summer. The main thing they need to do is get together with the PA and discuss finances and contingencies for different scenarios and come to some agreements well ahead of time. They will need to plan for the worst case. It could go something like this:
The owners bite the bullet and decide whether they could afford to do some type of bubble concept next summer for 6-8 games. They are going to take a big financial hit but I can’t see government ponying up much money to help out. Have a mini playoff or just have the top one or two teams get entry to future playoffs in a second half of the season. This is similar to how the Canadian soccer league operated in year one.
If a vaccine is readily available or health restrictions are lifted a second half of the season could be played with fans in the fall ( fully or partially filled stadiums). Have the top teams advance from this second half (if it’s the same top teams have provisions for a couple of wildcards). Two week playoff - semi finals and grey cup only.
If things still haven’t opened up by next fall then cut your losses and plan for 2022. At least you would have got your product out in the summer and sparked people’s interest again. Or the owners wait it out and plan for a shortened fall schedule and hope they may be able to get some gate revenue by that time.
Build some flexibility into your plans so that these scenarios can be modified in the event that the Covid situation somehow improves remarkably.
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I don’t see how four bye weeks would work, mathematically. With nine teams playing 18 games, three bye weeks works out evenly for every team. Adding a fourth week screws up the math, as far as I can tell.
It’s not too bad. Currently, the season structure contains 18 four-game weeks and 3 three-game weeks (18x4 + 3x3 = 81 games). I’m suggesting to have 15 four-game weeks and 7 three-game weeks (14x4 + 3x7 = 81 games). With all or most of the three-game weeks scheduled for the end of the season, if a game earlier in the season needs to be re-scheduled, it can more easily slot in near the end.
The only uneven part of that would be the number of byes each team gets (14x1 + 3x7 = 35 total byes). Eight teams would have FOUR byes (ugh) and one team would have three. As much as I don’t like that many byes, I think the flexibility would be needed.
I’m also in favour of making the earlier start a 2021 thing only. I’d rather the league stick with the June to November schedule on a year-by-year basis.
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OK thanks. That makes sense. I don’t love the idea of one team getting short-changed on the byes, but it’s far, far better than one team getting short-changed by playing two games in the same week. The 22-week idea would mean an extra week of TV coverage, which is a good thing. And having fewer four-game weeks also allows games to be a bit more of an event, potentially, and minimizes the need for doubleheaders that drive eastern viewers to bed before second game ends (or in some cases begins). I’d personally like to see no doubleheaders on weeknights. Afternoon-evening doubles are fine on Saturdays, and I can even tolerate the odd late start on Saturdays. But generally speaking I’d like games to start no later than 830 ET.
For all of those reasons, this 22-week idea might be worth considering even after (if) Covid goes away.
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It can and must be done because in these times, vaccines or not, there will be positive tests anyway.
With the almost daily new results now, likely to remain weekly at the very least, delays are inevitable and greater flexibility and more time are required and are not optional.
And it won’t always be convenient either.
This is not theory. It’s been happening and has delayed or canceled sports worldwide since March.
While I generally like what Gornaldatron proposed re a 22-week schedule with more byes, this would not necessarily solve any problem created by positive tests or other factors that cause a team to miss a game. The problem with a nine-team league is that there will always be an odd number of teams (either one, or three) on a bye. So if a team has to miss a game, it can only make it up during a later bye week if (a) it’s a three-team bye week, and (b) the team it has to make up against is also on a bye. If, for instance, Toronto has to quarantine and therefore misses an early-season game against Hamilton, what are the chances both teams will be on a bye at the same time later in the season? Very low, I’d suggest. And the later things get in the season, the greater difficulty rescheduling games.
If the league is able to play games next season, it absolutely needs to prepare for the possibility of schedule disruptions. But simply adding one more week to the schedule will not provide enough wiggle room to reschedule any missed games.
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It would also mean no triple headers in the Fall. One game on Friday, two games on Saturday for the last seven weeks of the season (except for Labour Day weekend). And I’m with you 100% on starting no later than 8:30pm ET. The league has to do a better job of catering to the weaker eastern market.
And if the NFL can re-schedule with next to no flexibility, I think it would work out okay with the three-team byes (although the NFL is starting to fail with it). Worse case, they just add another week at the end of the year.
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The NFL just rescheduled EIGHT games because of issues with one game. “Starting to fail” doesn’t begin to capture what havoc COVID is playing with the schedule.
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Well, continue to study carefully the NFL for now too.
For week 6, no games have been postponed yet.
It's troubling enough that each day we check for or hear of news.
There's another thread about it, but as challenging as it may be, a bubble to start the season looks somewhat like a better option.
The CFL has the advantage of far fewer teams for sake of mere consideration of a bubble.
For the NFL with that many teams with all the players and staff, a bubble is simply not a realistic option at all.
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Off the field, maybe the BOG should plan for the possibility of limited or no attendance in some markets. Perhaps partial or full revenue sharing for ticket sales should be discussed.
If, say, the Riders are allowed to play in front of 33k and the Ontario teams are only allowed 25% capacity, this becomes a huge financial burden for the owners.
Perhaps the possibility of some teams playing home games in the building of their opponent to increase ticket revenue might be discussed.
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Use movie theaters to bring in additional attendance numbers. The movie cinemas are getting killed by the provincial limits. Both the CFL and movie theaters could benefit by working together to combat it’s loss of revenue. Maybe when the CFL starts mass gathering numbers could be increased
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movie theatres? You mean during the pandemic?
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