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Originally Posted by Acajack
I have been a CFL fan all my life but I've also always longed for Canadian football to be a more distinct "code" like Irish and Australian football are.
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This!
I think Canadians like to believe Canadian football is a lot more Canadian than it really is. In fact, the Burnside rules were a deliberate attempt to make it an Americanised game. Maybe it made sense at the time but it shouldn't be a surprise so many CFLers are American.
What
is really Canadian is the tradition. The Grey Cup is one of the great national traditions, the culture surrounding the league is very Canadian. But on the field? Canadian football has been a deliberate offshoot of American football since the early 1900s and continues to be influenced heavily by it. Just look at how the CFL changed the balls in 2018 to be more similar to NFL.
I'm sure those of us (I'm the worst) who constantly fret about the CFL-NFL similarities are tedious. This is a particularly self-concious manifestation of the English Canada national self-doubt in regards to American culture, but I think it is beneficial to call a spade a spade and acknowledge the deliberate American origins of Canadian football as it is today, rather than indulge the fantasy that our code is really that distinct anymore.
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So I suspect that the new CFL might have to build much of its fan base from square one, from the ground up.
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At this point, in the big three markets, CFL has to regain relevance basically from the ground up if the league is to attract the next generation of fans. No team is
imminently dying, and the Argonauts have about the most stable ownership situation anywhere, but you'd be kidding yourself if you think more than a handful of young people consider CFL relevant in Toronto, Montreal, or BC. Much of this is on the individual matchday experience for each team, but today's sport fan doesn't really want to sit through four hours with most of that as play stoppage. Now is the time to reassert some individuality and distinctiveness as the Canadian game, double down on the 'weird' aspect of Canadian football (more rouges, more kicking, more trick plays!), and stop looking to the States to change our uniforms, balls, rules, etc.