Sports in Canadian culture

[EpicPonyTime]

I'm mostly just amazed that SFU's insistence on participating in the American leagues is seemingly because of a dead guy's preference of gridiron.

[elly63]

Originally Posted by EpicPonyTime

I'm mostly just amazed that SFU's insistence on participating in the American leagues is seemingly because of a dead guy's preference of gridiron.

And that was in 1965 when relatively no one gave a shit about American football. That might be hard to believe for some younger folk but that's the way it was. Sure some people who might have been close to the border might have had an interest but remember back then the Canadian dollar was at par or worth more and CFL and NFL salaries were comparable. Wannabeeism didn't factor into it (CFL vs NFL) nor did an abundance of NFL publicity.

[esquire]

Gordon Shrum died nearly 40 years ago but BC is eternally bound by his football preferences

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by elly63

And that was in 1965 when relatively no one gave a shit about American football. That might be hard to believe for some younger folk but that's the way it was. Sure some people who might have been close to the border might have had an interest but remember back then the Canadian dollar was at par or worth more and CFL and NFL salaries were comparable. Wannabeeism didn't factor into it (CFL vs NFL) nor did an abundance of NFL publicity.

A lot of people forget or are simply unaware of how somewhat marginal it was to follow the NFL in Canada until the mid to late 1970s.

[elly63]

Originally Posted by Acajack

A lot of people forget or are simply unaware of how somewhat marginal it was to follow the NFL in Canada until the mid to late 1970s.

I think it went far beyond the 70s, a good indicator would be when the Stupor Bowl started approaching the GC in numbers.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by elly63

I think it went far beyond the 70s, a good indicator would be when the Stupor Bowl started approaching the GC in numbers.

From what I can gather, the Steelers dynasty in the 70s was around about when many Canadian football fans started paying attention the NFL in earnest. At first it did not supplant the CFL though and I'd agree that for most the CFL was still their main football focus well into the 1980s.

I see the Argonauts' Grey Cup win in 1983 as a kind of high point in cross-Canada CFL interest, after which it began a slow but steady decline.

I remember that the Argos' victory (after a super long drought) was a huge deal in Toronto, and even in southern Ontario, in addition to a major news story across Canada.

But the seeds of CFL disinterest were already germinating in southern Ontario and a few other parts of the country. The NFL was really beefing up its TV coverage, the NHL has just expanded to a bunch of Canadian cities and the Blue Jays were flapping their wings and becoming a bigger deal in Toronto.

The latter part of the 1980s was really tough on the CFL and the generational cliff it fell off was really abrupt.

[Acajack]

A turning point in my mind was evidenced by my neighbour Bruce in Eastern Ontario in the 1980s.

He was a transplanted Toronto guy and a huge Argos fan.

He'd walk his dog with an Argos tuque and I used to tease him that the Argos sucked.

Bruce was on cloud 9 and gloated tremendously when the Argos finally won the Grey Cup.

Then barely two years later I noticed he started walking his dog with a Redskins tuque.

I tried teasing him about the Argos and he replied that he didn't care about the Argos and the CFL anymore and that he was "into American ball, now".

I think he told me he picked the Redskins randomly after scoping out the NFL. Though now that I think of it former Argos QB Joe Theismann was the Redskins QB at the time. Not sure if that factored into it.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Acajack

A turning point in my mind was evidenced by my neighbour Bruce in Eastern Ontario in the 1980s.

He was a transplanted Toronto guy and a huge Argos fan.

He'd walk his dog with an Argos tuque and I used to tease him that the Argos sucked.

Bruce was on cloud 9 and gloated tremendously when the Argos finally won the Grey Cup.

Then barely two years later I noticed he started walking his dog with a Redskins tuque.

I tried teasing him about the Argos and he replied that he didn't care about the Argos and the CFL anymore and that he was "into American ball, now".

I think he told me he picked the Redskins randomly after scoping out the NFL. Though now that I think of it former Argos QB Joe Theismann was the Redskins QB at the time. Not sure if that factored into it.

It's interesting how enthusiastically Toronto and Southern Ontario got on board with NFL football. In the 80s and 90s I think Global made a good chunk of its TV fortune with Sunday NFL games that were heavily promoted in Toronto. And while obviously it got coverage on the sports shows and sports pages in the rest of Canada, it seems to me that the NFL was front-page news to a far greater extent in Toronto. The newspapers would write about the Bills as though they were the home team. I remember the Winnipeg Free Press tried the same approach with the Minnesota Vikings back in the 90s when they'd send a reporter down to watch the games every week, but they eventually gave up after a while.

The McNall era was really the last time that the CFL was front and centre, top of mind stuff in Toronto, and even that was short lived. By 1994 the crowds had evaporated. Even when the Argos drew relatively well in the Cynamon and Sokolowski years, they were far less prominent and more of a niche product by that point.

[Denscity]

Originally Posted by Acajack

A turning point in my mind was evidenced by my neighbour Bruce in Eastern Ontario in the 1980s.

He was a transplanted Toronto guy and a huge Argos fan.

He'd walk his dog with an Argos tuque and I used to tease him that the Argos sucked.

Bruce was on cloud 9 and gloated tremendously when the Argos finally won the Grey Cup.

Then barely two years later I noticed he started walking his dog with a Redskins tuque.

I tried teasing him about the Argos and he replied that he didn't care about the Argos and the CFL anymore and that he was "into American ball, now".

I think he told me he picked the Redskins randomly after scoping out the NFL. Though now that I think of it former Argos QB Joe Theismann was the Redskins QB at the time. Not sure if that factored into it.

Is everyone in Ontario named Bruce or Don haha? There's even a guy in Castlegar from Ontario who's name is also Bruce. I call him Bruce Peninsula.

[Acajack]

..............

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Denscity

Is everyone in Ontario named Bruce or Don haha? There's even a guy in Castlegar from Ontario who's name is also Bruce. I call him Bruce Peninsula.

Well both Bruce and Donald are common Scottish names, right?

(My neighbour had a very Scottish last name, now that I think of it.)

[Hawrylyshyn]

Originally Posted by esquire

It's interesting how enthusiastically Toronto and Southern Ontario got on board with NFL football. In the 80s and 90s I think Global made a good chunk of its TV fortune with Sunday NFL games that were heavily promoted in Toronto. And while obviously it got coverage on the sports shows and sports pages in the rest of Canada, it seems to me that the NFL was front-page news to a far greater extent in Toronto. The newspapers would write about the Bills as though they were the home team. I remember the Winnipeg Free Press tried the same approach with the Minnesota Vikings back in the 90s when they'd send a reporter down to watch the games every week, but they eventually gave up after a while.

The McNall era was really the last time that the CFL was front and centre, top of mind stuff in Toronto, and even that was short lived. By 1994 the crowds had evaporated. Even when the Argos drew relatively well in the Cynamon and Sokolowski years, they were far less prominent and more of a niche product by that point.

According to my father, NFL really picked up in our area when the CFL had TV blackouts -- couldn't watch the Ticats play without having tickets to the game, but the Bills were on TV? Pretty clear what people would watch and start following.

[Airboy]

Originally Posted by Acajack

A lot of people forget or are simply unaware of how somewhat marginal it was to follow the NFL in Canada until the mid to late 1970s.

When most of the big stadiums were at capacity. 70-thru the late 80s the we all got cable.

Saw a lot of my friends turn from the CFL when Warren Moon went down.

[thurmas]

I would say cfl decline started in the early to mid 80s with the rise of the expos and blue jays coupled with the Alouettes folding. Cfl blackout policy made things worse. Also star players like Warren moon dieter brock and Mervyn Fernandez and Terry greer leaving for nfl hurt and gave the impression cfl was minor league and could not afford star players like it could in the 60s and 70s.

[Acajack]

The CFL really shot itself in the foot with TV blackouts in the 1980s but I guess for a gate-driven league it seemed like a perfectly rational approach at the time.

[Luisito]

Originally Posted by thurmas

I would say cfl decline started in the early to mid 80s with the rise of the expos and blue jays coupled with the Alouettes folding......

And now sadly the popularity of basebell has been declining. The Bluejays still have a large following but overal it seems like baseball has lost popularity across Canada. The loss of the Expos probably contributed to this decline among other things.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Luisito

And now sadly the popularity of basebell has been declining. The Bluejays still have a large following but overal it seems like baseball has lost popularity across Canada. The loss of the Expos probably contributed to this deceline among other things.

It has been said that the shifting popularity of sports has reflected changes in culture...

Baseball, which was immensely popular in the pre-WWII days, reflected agrarian society

Football, which soared in popularity in the postwar years, reflected military-industrial thinking

Basketball, which rose to greater prominence over the last 40 years, reflected the rise of black culture and urban culture generally

Soccer, which is also undergoing a growth phase in North America, also reflects the influence of global tastes and a more cosmopolitan orientation

So when you look at it through that lens, it's interesting that baseball is still hanging on in terms of popularity when it probably, culturally, has more in common with something like curling than with basketball.

[elly63]

Originally Posted by Acajack

From what I can gather, the Steelers dynasty in the 70s was around about when many Canadian football fans started paying attention the NFL in earnest. At first it did not supplant the CFL though and I'd agree that for most the CFL was still their main football focus well into the 1980s.

I see the Argonauts' Grey Cup win in 1983 as a kind of high point in cross-Canada CFL interest, after which it began a slow but steady decline.

I remember that the Argos' victory (after a super long drought) was a huge deal in Toronto, and even in southern Ontario, in addition to a major news story across Canada.

But the seeds of CFL disinterest were already germinating in southern Ontario and a few other parts of the country. The NFL was really beefing up its TV coverage, the NHL has just expanded to a bunch of Canadian cities and the Blue Jays were flapping their wings and becoming a bigger deal in Toronto.

The latter part of the 1980s was really tough on the CFL and the generational cliff it fell off was really abrupt.

I'll buy that, it's a good answer. For a long time one thing people did was to blame the blackouts for losing a generation. It was far more complex than that, I recall an article or reading something where the article proved what a canard that excuse was.

I think if Edmonton can turn it around you'll see an uptick in the league. I really felt a momentum change with Stern and Doman on the scene. The league sometimes just needs a little TLC (like when TSN first took over) to show people care. In two years the league has gone from rumours of folding to probably the most stable ownership in a very long time. I feel pretty good about the league going into this year, would love to see Tre Ford win the job and do well in Edmonton.

[esquire]

^ All the owners now are very rich guys or well-supported community organizations. The days of the hucksters and flim flam men running one step ahead of their creditors owning teams is gone.

The worst you can really say about CFL ownership now is to maybe question MLSE's level of commitment, but even then, they have owned and paid the bills for the Argonauts for nearly a decade now, so they aren't exactly fly by nighters.

As for blackouts, yes, it's hard to imagine that didn't have an impact on the league. In hindsight, the CFL for years actively rejected what amounted to basically three hour long free TV commercials for their product. But it was the thing to do in those days. The NFL had a blackout rule too... until the 1970s, even sold out games remained blacked out in their home market.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by elly63

I'll buy that, it's a good answer. For a long time one thing people did was to blame the blackouts for losing a generation. It was far more complex than that, I recall an article or reading something where the article proved what a canard that excuse was.

I think if Edmonton can turn it around you'll see an uptick in the league. I really felt a momentum change with Stern and Doman on the scene. The league sometimes just needs a little TLC (like when TSN first took over) to show people care. In two years the league has gone from rumours of folding to probably the most stable ownership in a very long time. I feel pretty good about the league going into this year, would love to see Tre Ford win the job and do well in Edmonton.

Thinking of my dad who is a long-time gridiron football fan in his late 70s.

He has memories of Bernie Faloney, Sam The Rifle Etcheverry, Hal Patterson, Russ Jackson and lots of other CFLers from the 50s and 60s, but not really of the great NFLers of the day. He probably could only name a tiny handful of NFLers from that era like Johnny Unitas and Jim Brown. And at that it's only because they are often referenced in more modern NFL lore.

The mid-70s is when he starts to have more first-person NFL memories, like Terry Bradshaw, Mean Joe Greene, OJ Simpson and several others. Even so they are less prominent than CFL memories - he can rattle off tons of CFL players from that era. Especially from the Montreal Alouettes but also from other CFL clubs.