For casual Bomber fans, Getting over Charles Roberts sudden exit and getting used to Fred Reid might of only occured this last season. Now he's gone and the next guy is in.
For a causual fan, you might only know 5-10 players on your team anyways and Fred Reid was one of them.
Since the SMS has come into effect, the turnstyle of players going through the league has gotten faster. Now football has always been a brutal sport, but recently it is getting to the point where even a hardcore fan can't name 10 players on his team. Case in point, Arron Hunt was a frickin allstar but was asked to take a paycut of over 30K, so he ended up with the Als. The reason he was asked to take a paycut, well for one he is over 30, secondly was because of the salary cap.
People wine and moan about the NFL taking half a dozen players every season, yet we have seen pretty much an entire CFL all star team of players dumped this last off season because they would not either take paycuts, or in most cases,were just dumped out on their ear.
What can be done to stop this?
It is the same way in almost all pro sports now, but in the CFL, players are actually asked to become a part of the community and since they only practice 20 hours a week, are almost expected to volenteer their time. The CFL has always prided it's self on being a working man's league, and about reaching out to it's fans. How can fans be touched by players if they have no idea who the hell they are?
My suggestion would be to first lower the salary cap and then reward teams for keeping players around longer by allowing teams to go over the salary cap. It would work like this...Fred Reid has bneen with the Bombers for 7 seasons... So the Bombers would get 5K bonus for every year he is with the club. In essence the Bombers could offer Reid 70K/year and the league would throw in another 30(6X5=30) Thus Fred stays with the Bombers and the Bombers can still keep Chris Garret even though he now makes $100K as well. Everybody would win.... Chris Garrett would win because he would be the new starting runningback... Fred Reid would win because he still has a job, and would be able to take it easy this season while his knee healed 100%, The bombers would win, because they would have an amazing backfield... Most of all, the fans would win, because they would have players on their team to identify with... Like how pissed off are you right now, if you are a Bomber fan that shelled out $200 12 months ago for a Fred Reid jersey?
Welcome to the era of artificial competition in pro sports. Same in every league and every sports. Even Nascar is fixed so that everyone is competitive. Allows less talented and fortunate to compete. This is not a CFL thing its a pro sports thing.
Players, even all-star players, switching teams is nothing new. Go back and look at the QB shuffling in the 1990s. Hall of Fame players went from team to team. There is nothing that can be done to stop teams from trying to acquire better players or for players wanting to change locations. I don't think this off-season has been any different than previous off-seasons. It's just the way the CFL -- and most sports leagues -- operate. Out with the old, in with the new (and cheaper).
Heavy Promotion. Take out ads EVERYWHERE.
CHOOSE a face of the the league as well.
agreed.
The league needs to do more to market and promote the names and personalities which define the CFL.
Fan recognition and awareness is highly conducive to selling the game, especially to the casual fan.
The NFL does this with precision.
In fact, well marketed renowned all-stars who switch teams periodically, might have beneficial effects if such players are publicly visible.
These are all great ideas. I think that they should show those excellent CFL commercials
" the CFL game is never over… " in movie theaters chains or something like that 2 months before each season starts.
Make the TEAMS and game the most important thing. We can’t control a team trading players.
The only problem is that advertising is very expensive. The NFL is amazing at it and it also has trucks loads of money for it.
The NFL also get FREE adverts [coverage] from the Canadian media and from businesses. Sorry , but the media does have an effect on ticket sales. Image is very , very important to advertisers and for T.V. contracts.
Many Canadian businesses still don’t get that the CFL’s regular season games T.V. ratings are far above the NFL’s.
WHY? Because advertisers READ newspapers and they listen to what their clients tell them [i.e. Rogers]
Sadly the CFL , doesn’t have truck loads of money and has some poor support from Canadian businesses’ and the media in certain CFL markets.
However , it does have TSN which is owned by Bell. They do a great job. :thup:
Bell also owns CTV / City T.V. which also shows NFL games.
I'm not the most hard core fan, but here goes without aide of Team Rosters / Google.
Sask.
1 Darian Durant
2 Brandon West (Think thats his name)
3 Weston Dressler
4 Rob Bagg
5 Chris Getzlaf
6 (TJ?)Hill-- Not sure if anything has happend to him this offseason
7 Brandon Labatte
8 Dominic Picard
9 Chris Best
10 Brent Hawkins
11 Shamori Williams
12 Tae George - Not sure if anything has happens to him this offseason or if I spelt his first name correctly
13 (Donovan?) Alexander
14 Tristan Jackson
15 James PAtrick
My point is, although Yes I agree with you that with the SMS players are being budgeted for based on what GM's etc. feel they are worth. Its like going to a market and spending 100$ on something. IF you feel thats a reasonable price, you will pay it. IF you do not feel its reasonable you will not. And either find it cheaper elsewhere, or buy something else that sorta does what that item does. (maybe not as good, but hey you just saved 50% )
Also yes it is difficult to try and keep track of 'whos on my team this year' for the average fan. But thats the nature of the bidness. Thats how new jerseys are sold and teams make money of merch.
I read the CFL has much more player stability than the NHL, which has players bouncing from one team to another every year...and fans can generally follow the NHL moves. The difference is the NHL and NFL get saturation coverage in our media, while CFL transactions are not publicized as much...so it is harder for non-diehard fans to keep up with CFL player movements.
How can this be improved? I believe our media could do a much better job of keeping fans informed about CFL happenings. Often head coach or assistant coach hires are barely noted in most Canadian newspapers and websites, while NFL assistant coach hirings (or NFL players' misadventures) are often at top of the "football" headlines in Canada. Not sure why this is as CFL games get higher TV ratings than NFL games (except recent SB vs GC) and millions of fans attend CFL games live. You'd think this huge fan-base would want to keep informed about CFL news?
The league could also improve it's publicizing of player transactions...by providing bios and video clips of the players for the media to use, for instance...and perhaps spacing out "events" in the off-season to generate weekly publicity for the CFL.
what can be done.
watch every game every year, including preseason when possible
follow closely all player movement
pay attention to every signing by your team
google new players to the league, find out what they look like and what their football history is, stats, etc
go to team practices and camps, meet the players.
I would say expansion but I have the feeling the area has been done to death. I would also add get more CFL players in CBC shows (Rick Mercer), More CFL player ads. Think outside the box.
The NHL is actually poorly run. I can also say more NHL teams in Canada will hurt the CFL, just IMO.
honestly does it really matter if you don't watch it how are you expected to know who plays its 1 game for 3hrs for roughly 25 weeks if you can't fit that in to even the busiest schedules than i'd have to say tough luck to you if you can't name 10 players on a 52 man roster.
I'm not even saying you gotta watch all the games you should be able to have some sort of grasp on the roster by week 3-5 of the season by just picking up a local newspaper, watching a single game and/or watching the highlights. If your a true fan and cared about the team even the slightest thats what'd you do.
If you were to go out in the street and asked a person who claims to be a Jets fan to name 10 players what do you think you would get? Does it make a difference? Fans just want to see their team play & win.
Emphatially untrue… fans want to identify with their teams… they buy the merchandise that backs this claim. It gets real annoying to buy a jersey of your favourite player on your favourite team to only have that palyer bolt 2 seasons later, it’s a common problem in all sports!
What Can Be Done To Make Rosters Recognizable??
I say, "Larger Type!"
It's a catch 22. Normally you want your product to market itself, not the players. The only league where the players are undeniably the stars of the show is the NBA and that's why that league has a lot of issues. In football, aside from select quarterbacks, the rest of the roster is inconsequential and can be replaced at will from a performance and marketing point of view.
This is unlikely to change. Football is a sport where the sums of all parts is greater as a unit than otherwise, so you can't rely on just a few players to market your business.