Why is the East always the crappy division?

Doing well in the regular season doesn't always translate in the playoffs. Just ask the 89 Eskimos. It's whoever gets hot this time of year.

Well, the top team in the East last season (Ottawa at 12-6) would have finished 3rd in the West and ended up losing the GC to one of those two teams ahead of them in the standings, so they weren’t exactly what I would call beasts.

Though definitely the East showed stronger last season than they did this one.

In the past, Montreal was always GREAT so that made things in the East a little more palatable. This year is AWFUL - altho, to their credit, Ottawa was FUN to watch.

Yes. I’m hoping that the same kind of organizational stability the Als have enjoyed since the 90s will be seen in the Ontario teams and lead to some stretches of stable, long-term success on-field as well.

Plus, add a fifth team to the East and there’s less chance of them all finishing sub-500 like this year.

I personally thought that the years of Montreal's "dominance" spoke more to the overall horrid performances of the other Eastern teams.
The East was a one-trick pony during that period. But Montreal was a good team.

This goes back to when the East (IRFU or Big Four) fought long and hard to keep Americans out of their football union. The west had always welcomed American players into their unions, from the invention of the Model T onward. The 1947 Argos were the last all-Canadian team to win the Grey Cup, I believe.

After the East/West merger in 1958 the rules allowing imports were standardized between the two unions. The west had already well-developed scouting connections down south, while the east were late-comers, relying on "airlifts" of recent NFL cuts to start as injury replacements...often without much training or practice in the Canadian game. But with 3 of 4 eastern teams automatically making the playoffs, there was little incentive to "re-invent the wheel" just as long as your team could keep ahead of 4th-placer. The west was more competitive (with only 3 of 5 teams making post-season) forcing teams to do better scouting, recruitment and training of new players.

That be one reason the East has struggled over the years, but now with the Crossover all bets are off and two Eastern teams can now miss the playoffs (leaving one extra GM with egg on his face). The East will need to improve their football administration to compete with the well-run Western teams.

The West feeds our country. Undoubtedly this relays to all things sports...

The East, centred around T.O. has all the professional sports you could want. The West has hockey, but it still has the umph and following, to propel/will its CFL teams victory...

Should be interesting seeing an all West Grey Cup this year. :cowboy:

This year, the east was horrible, for various reasons. But the reason it always seems that the west is better than the east may come down to numbers, as in the number of teams in each division. If two teams are underperforming in a division of four, it's very obvious. Two bad teams in a division of five? Not so much.

Since 2001, excluding the years where Winnipeg was in the east, there have been three years with more western teams with under .500 records than eastern teams, and five years where more eastern teams under .500. Too small a sample to say whether this is statistically significant. But that doesn't sound like a huge difference to me.

Further, in that time, there have been two years with three under .500 teams in the east, and two years with three under .500 teams in the west.

Interestingly, during the eastern Winnipeg years, there were five years where there were more sub-.500 teams in the east, vs. only one with more sub-.500 teams in the west. No idea why that would have been the case. Does Winnipeg just underperform more on average than other teams? No idea.

One reason the east was hurting was the issues at qb. Ray was injured twice for good stints and actually starting the season on the shelf. The rest of the year was a qb gong show in TO. Ottawa had issues with both Burris and Harris playing. Hamilton had Collaros injured. Montreal has just been a qb mess but still finished ahead of the tanking TO.
The west has been fairly stable and it means a ton in the wins and loses department.

That definitely had a lot to do with it this year. But that raises the question of why the eastern QBs were dropping like flies while the western QBs avoided injury? Was it just plain, dumb luck? Or was there something else in play? Differences in the level of play by the o-lines and/or blocking backs? Different offensive schemes against the blitz? Turf conditions? Training facilities? Coaching?

I think the West has been changing their mindset of having to have an all Canadian O-Line moving to better Imports there.. and using the run game more often and more creatively.

Both are improving the health of the QB.

Canadian players in the West are showing up more and more in the so called "skill" positions.