My recollection is vague, although I seem to remember that a few years back Vince McMahon (WWE) was offered the chance to purchase the Argos, yet was only interested in the acquisition of the entire league instead and made an offer that was turned down.
Is this accurate?
If so, what was the reason(s) for the CFL BoG's spurning his offer for the league?
If I recall correctly HE wanted to buy the league or a big stake in it, but was turned down. He then started the XFL. It was too bad, because the XFL itself was a pretty good league with a lot of great ideas...he blew it trying to create drama like the WWE. Having fake fights with cheerleaders in the locker rooms and what not only made the league lose its legitimacy.
A couple of the things that I thought were interesting...battle for the ball instead of coin toss, and the Salary Cap where there was a base pay and the TEAM decided who got extra money and how much...basically if your team saw you as a game changer you were rewarded.
Q: You tried to buy the entire Canadian Football League in 1999 (the CFL initially approached him about buying the Toronto Argos), right?
A: It's true. I was going to start with the CFL and I was going to have it migrate south. (while some CFL governors were interested, others shot down the idea ... the XFL was born soon after).
Because he is into entertainment, not sports…and as I stated above, he tried melding the 2 with the XFL…so they made the right choice. Also, as indicated in my second post the CFL would no longer be in Canada.
oh, I thought he was going to keep the Canadian teams and just add U.S. teams to the mix for a North American type league.
A shame we couldn’t utilize his marketing savvy though…
the guy is a D*** his ego is bigger than his company and he truly thinks his **** don't stink!
I would want NOTHING to do with the moron and I'm so glad he did not have any part of the CFL as he would have ruined it.
i for one am glad his XFL failed after 1 season, must have been tough to swallow.
He may be totally untrustworthy, arrogent beyond measure but nobody can deny he knows how to put on a show and market a product. While he could have made the CFL bigger, he would have totally changed it to something we would not recognize.
Changing the coin toss to a Hell in The Cell match with the two team's captains has potential however!
This is funny, I had an interest and read up on this last night!
The above posts are very accurate, the game was not far off from the CFL. Here is the wiki article for reference: XFL - Wikipedia
Notable CURRENT CFLers who played in the XFL include:
Jermaine Copeland
Noel Prefontaine
Paul McCallum (his Jersey was 'CFL Reject')
and
Marcus Crandell (coach)
Let me know if know more!
Awesome topic.
Nude cheerleading may have made me a believer.. 
I get the feeling that the governors that were interested were in fact just being polite… 
Or salivating at the sizable check McMahaon wrote…
The official response was the league didn’t have change for a $100.
The fact is nobody could “buy” the league regardless of price, because the CFL is made up of a group of 9 individually-operated businesses. Each team would have to be negotiated with and bought individually. 3 CFL teams are community-owned and could not be easily “sold” without approval from the community.
The CFL offered McMahon the opportunity to buy the Argos, but after due-diligence he probably realized Toronto was the worst football market in North America.
Master at entertainment, not a real sport. I like the WWE, but I know it is not “real.” I love football because I know it is real. Making a meld of the 2 was a colossal failure. I think he would have succeeded if he had just let it be football.
I seem to recall it was a pretty small offer. under 10M
You can buy anything if you chuck enough money at it. If you own all the teams, I think you can pretty much do anything you want with them. And yes, community owned teams can become a private entity:
[url=http://www.cfl.ca/article/community_ownership_a_port_in_cfl_s_storms]http://www.cfl.ca/article/community_own ... l_s_storms[/url]Didn’t the Gliebermanns try that in Ottawa?
yeah, but they didnt have the bodies for it.
Lots of people could buy the league speaking strictly from a money viewpoint, big deal.
Initially I thought the CFL should look into the "offer", but boy was I glad they didn't.
The XFL was a train wreck, with absolutely no chance at success.
It was all gimmick.
If he did take over the league, soon he'd start a women's football league where they play in bikini's .... oh wait we do.
It would have been a joke. He has no ties to "Canadian" football and would have done whatever he felt necessary to make a buck. Most of the teams would have been moved to the USA. Remember the USFL. XFL and now UFL.
But this one topped it!
Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders in Ottawa would be regarded as offensive and Gliebermanlike.
Well, that's Ottawa I suppose.