Some reasons why it is difficult to pair the two together
Some have a wish for Grey Cup, Vanier Cup, Canadian Bowl on one weekend
Dan Barnes The Toronto Sun December 11, 2020
They’re not going to drop the ball this time.
Officials with the gridiron game’s major stakeholders met for a total of 15 hours in October — they called it the Canadian Football Summit — and generated five action items, topped by a recommendation to align the Grey Cup, Vanier Cup, and Canadian Bowl into a national championship weekend.
If the stakeholders’ utopian mash-up of professional, university and junior football championships never comes together, it won’t be for lack of follow-through.
“There have been other summits before that generated all kinds of recommendations, then everybody goes their separate ways and nothing gets done,” said Football Canada president Jim Mullin, the driving force behind the summit. “So the key part is we created a place for these national members to be (Football Canada) associate members and to sit on a council and continue to discuss and develop these issues.”
That council, which now includes the Canadian Football League, Canadian Junior Football League, U Sports and Canadian Football Officials Association, will convene at least three times a year, before each of Football Canada’s general meetings.
“So we can have follow-up action on all of these issues,” said Mullin.
That level of continuing communication is key, but it doesn’t guarantee success on their top-line item of a national championship weekend. The natural conclusions of junior, university and CFL seasons do not align. While there is apparently an appetite for the CJFL to delay the Canadian Bowl by a fortnight to be staged during Grey Cup week,
there is more complexity to the U Sports calendar. It’s likely that training camps would open a week earlier, meaning student athletes would forego a week of summer job wages, and the season’s opening games would have to be played without students on campus.
“There are some schedule challenges,” said Mullin. “It’s pretty hard to take 27 teams and four conferences and thousands of athletes and move their season a week back or even two weeks back in some cases.”
So there are hurdles. There is also a willingness to get it done.
“There certainly is an appetite to add both of these championships to Grey Cup week, and we will continue to work towards that goal as we enter 2021,” said Greg Dick, head of football operations for the CFL, and a Football Canada board member.
In the meantime, there are also alternatives.
“The Vanier Cup could work with the Canadian Bowl to create a football festival at the end of the year on a weekend, and do so with a robust broadcast platform built around it,” said Mullin.
“I think the CFL has a potential role to play in this, even if those schedules aren’t aligned. I think there is a great possibility for a Grey Cup city to hold something like this football festival a year prior. It would be a great test and a run-through, kind of a mini footprint for a festival. And it would be a revenue generator for the CFL team and for the amateur groups, and it is something that would definitely be broadcast friendly. On those levels, that can work as well.
“So in regard to doing something that brings the football country together, there are a couple of paths to this. And this is where we need that council in place so we have further discussion and development. We want to see the best conclusion to the championships that we have and amplify them as much as possible.”
There is also some momentum behind packaging as many as nine amateur events and building a broadcast consortium around them. They would include the Canada Cup, a Four Nations tournament, the Vanier Cup, the Canadian Bowl, perhaps the East-West Bowl, and potentially an annual game — the World Junior Bowl — between Canadian and Mexican under-25 players each December in Mexico. The latter event is currently being developed.
“What it allows us to do is take the (event) inventory and sell that inventory as an offering in the marketplace for those who want to support amateur football,” said Mullin, who sees TV exposure for the game as the gateway to more participation at the grassroots level for players, officials and coaches.
“We have to get on those platforms, get the message out about what we do for programming. We’ve got to have that broadcast presence, with a supporting streaming presence.”
The stakeholders will continue to hold monthly Canadian football summit meetings in 2021, and will focus in January on how to strengthen football at the high school level.
Prev
I wonder if this is a ploy to get a free arena. Maybe they figure the City is too far into the process and will build anyway.
Linear Mode
