2019 CFL Season

[esquire]

Originally Posted by blueandgoldguy

That Bomber game made me want to hurl. Second huge blown lead of the season. Absolutely inexcusable.

In my view it should be Grey Cup or bust for O'Shea. This guy has had an unbelievably long time to figure things out but it appears there are still major faults with the team. Walters has built him a championship calibre outfit so there are no excuses that it's a lack of quality personnel or whatever. Enough is enough.

[The S'toon Goon]

And Vernon Adams jr is Infact suspended for a game.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by esquire

In my view it should be Grey Cup or bust for O'Shea. This guy has had an unbelievably long time to figure things out but it appears there are still major faults with the team. Walters has built him a championship calibre outfit so there are no excuses that it's a lack of quality personnel or whatever. Enough is enough.

CFL coaching seems to be in a rough patch right now - if O'Shea's fired, I'll gladly take him in BC.

[elly63]

Michael “Pinball” Clemons has been ‘involved’ with the Argos recently
3Down Staff - 3downnation September 24, 2019

[elly63]

Lenkov brothers could be extremely close to finalizing Alouettes ownership deal: report
3Down Staff - 3downnation September 24, 2019

Finally, the Montreal Alouettes might be sold.



Montreal Gazette reporter Herb Zurkowsky has been tied into the entire saga.

Peter Lenkov is a 55-year-old writer and producer. He studied film at Concordia University in Montreal. Jeffrey Lenkov , who is 53 years old, is a lawyer based in California. The younger brother went to McGill University.

The CFL officially purchased the Alouettes from the Wetenhall’s in late May. The league and Wetenhall family had been working for several months to identify and assess potential new owners and that process is ongoing with Randy Ambrosie leading the way.

The Lenkov brothers have been at Alouettes games on the road and in Montreal while cheering them on publicly on social media. Ambrosie was hoping to sell the Alouettes to the Lenkov brothers and it seems that wish could come true.

[Horus]

So on Monday, the Redblacks teased a major declaration of who their starting QB will be this week vs Edmonton.
Today they announced a timeshare between Dominique Davis and Jonathon Jennings.

In other words: more of the same.

For a team claiming to want to spend the rest of the season fighting for wins, this doesn't seem like the way to do it.

[thurmas]

Originally Posted by elly63

Lenkov brothers could be extremely close to finalizing Alouettes ownership deal: report
3Down Staff - 3downnation September 24, 2019

Finally, the Montreal Alouettes might be sold.



Montreal Gazette reporter Herb Zurkowsky has been tied into the entire saga.

Peter Lenkov is a 55-year-old writer and producer. He studied film at Concordia University in Montreal. Jeffrey Lenkov , who is 53 years old, is a lawyer based in California. The younger brother went to McGill University.

The CFL officially purchased the Alouettes from the Wetenhall’s in late May. The league and Wetenhall family had been working for several months to identify and assess potential new owners and that process is ongoing with Randy Ambrosie leading the way.

The Lenkov brothers have been at Alouettes games on the road and in Montreal while cheering them on publicly on social media. Ambrosie was hoping to sell the Alouettes to the Lenkov brothers and it seems that wish could come true.

I hope I am wrong but I am not very confident the Lenkov bros have the financial heft to run this team long term as its not the same as owning the Roughriders, Blue Bombers or Eskimos. I will not be surprised if the Als are up for sale again in 2-3 years time as Molson Stadium is so spartan its difficult to make a profit off of a pile of concrete, bench seats and not much else. I think long term it would suit the Als and the Impact to build a new shared downtown stadium together or put a serious renovation into Molson stadium similar to TD stadium in Ottawa. Stade Saputo and the location at the Big O is definitely hurting the Impact as Montreal sport fans love being downtown and with Montreal's beautiful downtown who can blame them.

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by thurmas

I think long term it would suit the Als and the Impact to build a new shared downtown stadium together or put a serious renovation into Molson stadium similar to TD stadium in Ottawa.

I think the Impact would be better served upgrading Saputo for their own needs rather than splitting the facility. The Als aren't going to be bringing much, if any, funding to the table to offset costs to make things appealing for Impact.

Originally Posted by thurmas

Stade Saputo and the location at the Big O is definitely hurting the Impact as Montreal sport fans love being downtown and with Montreal's beautiful downtown who can blame them.

There's nothing really wrong with the location of Saputo/Big O. They're both on Metro and still reasonably close to downtown. It would be neat to have Impact play at Molson but other than location it's a downgrade from Saputo.

[thurmas]

Originally Posted by JHikka

I think the Impact would be better served upgrading Saputo for their own needs rather than splitting the facility. The Als aren't going to be bringing much, if any, funding to the table to offset costs to make things appealing for Impact.



There's nothing really wrong with the location of Saputo/Big O. They're both on Metro and still reasonably close to downtown. It would be neat to have Impact play at Molson but other than location it's a downgrade from Saputo.

I agree but their attendance numbers continue to get worse and Saputo is a better stadium but the location seems to really be hurting them.

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by thurmas

I agree but their attendance numbers continue to get worse and Saputo is a better stadium but the location seems to really be hurting them.

Not really. The team being bad is hurting them, and there's more to everything than just attendance. I don't recall many Impact fans complaining about the location.

[elly63]

Originally Posted by JHikka

there's more to everything than just attendance.

Let's just pause and take a snapshot of that one for posterity.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by thurmas

I hope I am wrong but I am not very confident the Lenkov bros have the financial heft to run this team long term as its not the same as owning the Roughriders, Blue Bombers or Eskimos. I will not be surprised if the Als are up for sale again in 2-3 years time as Molson Stadium is so spartan its difficult to make a profit off of a pile of concrete, bench seats and not much else. I think long term it would suit the Als and the Impact to build a new shared downtown stadium together or put a serious renovation into Molson stadium similar to TD stadium in Ottawa. Stade Saputo and the location at the Big O is definitely hurting the Impact as Montreal sport fans love being downtown and with Montreal's beautiful downtown who can blame them.

The Alouettes are kinda stuck when it comes to their stadium. The Big O is too big to be a regular stadium for them, there is little chance they can share Saputo, no one is going to build a new stadium somewhere else just for them and they don't have the $ to build one themselves, and they are never going to put much of their own money into a stadium (Molson) that they don't even own.

Even the public money well for renos to Molson won't likely work anymore as they already tapped into that a few years ago (during the great Calvillo era), and they're not even using all the extra seating that government money paid for.

So it's Molson pretty much as-is, or nothing, for the Alouettes, for the foreseeable future.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Acajack

The Alouettes are kinda stuck when it comes to their stadium. The Big O is too big to be a regular stadium for them, there is little chance they can share Saputo, no one is going to build a new stadium somewhere else just for them and they don't have the $ to build one themselves, and they are never going to put much of their own money into a stadium (Molson) that they don't even own.

Even the public money well for renos to Molson won't likely work anymore as they already tapped into that a few years ago (during the great Calvillo era), and they're not even using all the extra seating that government money paid for.

So it's Molson pretty much as-is, or nothing, for the Alouettes, for the foreseeable future.

I just don't see the benefit to the Als playing at Saputo. You get the shitty location of the Big O with the spartan environment and exposure to the elements of Molson Stadium. Yeah it would be a bit better with bucket seats and I'm assuming more skyboxes at Saputo, but on the whole it doesn't seem like much of an improvement to me. If the Als can't convince their fans to buy tickets to watch games at Olympic Stadium, then they might as well just stay at Molson.

On that note, it is crazy that Montreal has three big stadiums (one huge, two large-ish) and all three have some kind of fundamental flaws to them. Add to that list Autostade which barely made it a decade before it was more or less put out of service and demolished.

But that said, with the Als showing some signs of life this season, it's becoming clear that fans will come out to Molson Stadium. They may have just been waiting for a reason to buy a ticket.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by esquire

I just don't see the benefit to the Als playing at Saputo. You get the shitty location of the Big O with the spartan environment and exposure to the elements of Molson Stadium. Yeah it would be a bit better with bucket seats and I'm assuming more skyboxes at Saputo, but on the whole it doesn't seem like much of an improvement to me. If the Als can't convince their fans to buy tickets to watch games at Olympic Stadium, then they might as well just stay at Molson.

On that note, it is crazy that Montreal has three big stadiums (one huge, two large-ish) and all three have some kind of fundamental flaws to them. Add to that list Autostade which barely made it a decade before it was more or less put out of service and demolished.

.

If we place ourselves in the mindset of the day, pretty much everyone thought that after the Olympics the Big O would be the only stadium the city would ever need - or at least for quite some time.

It was a multi-purpose stadium (MPS) in line with what was in vogue at the time, but with a flashy Euro twist. The Expos were drawing well, or at least about as well as other MLB teams playing in MPS facilities. Alouettes attendance was good enough to fill it (or close) and soccer's Manic was in the NASL which for a short while (right around that time) was drawing bigger crowds than MLS averages today.

No one would have predicted that just a couple of decades later, the Big O would be seen as not fulfilling all of Montreal's stadium needs.

[elly63]

Schooner Sports and Entertainment's plan for a CFL team and a new Halifax stadium is expected to be revealed soon
Francis Campbell herald.ca September 24 2019

Regional council and local residents should get a preview of the plan to bring a Canadian Football League team and stadium to Halifax Regional Municipality within a couple of weeks.

“We received the proposal from the proponent (Schooner Sports and Entertainment) and we’re sifting through it,” Jacques Dube, chief administrative officer of the municipality, said Tuesday.

Dube said he and his team are working on a summary document to present to council and the public.

Dube and his staff were tasked nearly a year ago with assessing the viability of a proposal by principal SSE partners Anthony LeBlanc, Gary Drummond and Bruce Bowser and recommending to council if it should or should not be a go for the municipality.

The chief administrative officer and company only received the SSE plan in late August and Dube contends, despite the pending sneak preview for council, that his deliberation will take half a year.

“This is going to be a five- to six-month process, minimum, to get a final recommendation before council. At this point, we’re not in a position to recommend any particular option,” Dube said. “The update will be: here’s the proposal, here’s a summary of it, here’s all the documentation we’ve been given permission to release and we’ll be back to you, council, with a regular check-in.

“Obviously, should council want us to proceed with this, we’ll have a recommendation for them in five or six months from now, I suspect sometime in the spring,” he said.

Crown talks

The SSE ownership originally proposed a 24,000-seat stadium to be built at a cost of $190 million but tempered its vision to a $130-million community stadium with 12,000 permanent seats and the capability of adding 12,000 more temporary seats.

Through an agreement with Sport Nova Scotia, the stadium could accommodate minor sports when it is not in use for professional football.

SSE has negotiated with Canada Lands — the federal Crown corporation tasked with managing and redeveloping surplus military properties — for the purchase of an eight-hectare plot of land in the 33-hectare Shannon Park site by Halifax harbour.

In a recent note to its stakeholders, Canada Lands reported that it was approached by SSE in 2018. Canada Lands signed a letter of intent that outlined specific conditions that SSE must meet before it would consider any sale of land.

The conditions include requiring SSE and HRM to undertake public engagement with the community regarding a community stadium use; that Canada Lands and SSE co-ordinate efforts with Millbrook First Nation and neighbouring developing plans; and, that HRM approve a revised concept plan for Shannon Park lands.

“To date, the conditions outlined in the letter of intent have not been fully satisfied,” the Canada Lands notice said.

“That’s the site they suggested and we’ll look at that, certainly from a transportation and planning perspective, road access, ferry access, transit access, all those kinds of things, the impact on the neighbourhood,” Dube said. “We have no real comment to make until we’ve gone through it in a little more detail.”

Multiple funding options

Anthony LeBlanc said in an email Tuesday that his group has worked closely with senior staff at HRM over the past weeks to provide clarification where needed and to answer any questions.

“Both HRM and SSE strongly agree that it is of critical importance that we are transparent and very collaborative and consultative during this process, therefore we are working toward releasing the business plan and proposal to the public in the very near future,” LeBlanc said. “We humbly believe that we have put together an innovative proposal that has a variety of options for public sector participation in conjunction with significant private sector involvement, and all we ask is that everyone review the concepts with an open mind.”

He said the community stadium proposal should be considered a positive, not just for HRM and Nova Scotia but for the entire Atlantic region.

Dube, sitting in on a capital budget plan discussion at council Tuesday, said there are a number of funding options in the SSE plan. The one that seemed most reasonable for the municipality is a tax incremental financing (TIF) model, a public financing plan used as a subsidy for redevelopment, infrastructure and debt financing

“That’s not really an impact on the capital budget,” Dube said. “It’s not a direct hit on the capital budget.”

[thurmas]

If the Alouettes fan interest rebounds to the Calvillo era with the way they are playing and Adams looking like the real deal to fill Calvillo's shoes for the next decade so far which is possible. What I could see happening is the Als playing 1 or 2 regular season games at the Big O per year to make some extra coin off fan demand if there is interest to draw a crowd of 30,000 plus for a particular game to compensate for the lack of potential revenue that Molson stadium prohibits from generating.

[thurmas]

Originally Posted by elly63

Schooner Sports and Entertainment's plan for a CFL team and a new Halifax stadium is expected to be revealed soon
Francis Campbell herald.ca September 24 2019

Regional council and local residents should get a preview of the plan to bring a Canadian Football League team and stadium to Halifax Regional Municipality within a couple of weeks.

“We received the proposal from the proponent (Schooner Sports and Entertainment) and we’re sifting through it,” Jacques Dube, chief administrative officer of the municipality, said Tuesday.

Dube said he and his team are working on a summary document to present to council and the public.

Dube and his staff were tasked nearly a year ago with assessing the viability of a proposal by principal SSE partners Anthony LeBlanc, Gary Drummond and Bruce Bowser and recommending to council if it should or should not be a go for the municipality.

The chief administrative officer and company only received the SSE plan in late August and Dube contends, despite the pending sneak preview for council, that his deliberation will take half a year.

“This is going to be a five- to six-month process, minimum, to get a final recommendation before council. At this point, we’re not in a position to recommend any particular option,” Dube said. “The update will be: here’s the proposal, here’s a summary of it, here’s all the documentation we’ve been given permission to release and we’ll be back to you, council, with a regular check-in.

“Obviously, should council want us to proceed with this, we’ll have a recommendation for them in five or six months from now, I suspect sometime in the spring,” he said.

Crown talks

The SSE ownership originally proposed a 24,000-seat stadium to be built at a cost of $190 million but tempered its vision to a $130-million community stadium with 12,000 permanent seats and the capability of adding 12,000 more temporary seats.

Through an agreement with Sport Nova Scotia, the stadium could accommodate minor sports when it is not in use for professional football.

SSE has negotiated with Canada Lands — the federal Crown corporation tasked with managing and redeveloping surplus military properties — for the purchase of an eight-hectare plot of land in the 33-hectare Shannon Park site by Halifax harbour.

In a recent note to its stakeholders, Canada Lands reported that it was approached by SSE in 2018. Canada Lands signed a letter of intent that outlined specific conditions that SSE must meet before it would consider any sale of land.

The conditions include requiring SSE and HRM to undertake public engagement with the community regarding a community stadium use; that Canada Lands and SSE co-ordinate efforts with Millbrook First Nation and neighbouring developing plans; and, that HRM approve a revised concept plan for Shannon Park lands.

“To date, the conditions outlined in the letter of intent have not been fully satisfied,” the Canada Lands notice said.

“That’s the site they suggested and we’ll look at that, certainly from a transportation and planning perspective, road access, ferry access, transit access, all those kinds of things, the impact on the neighbourhood,” Dube said. “We have no real comment to make until we’ve gone through it in a little more detail.”

Multiple funding options

Anthony LeBlanc said in an email Tuesday that his group has worked closely with senior staff at HRM over the past weeks to provide clarification where needed and to answer any questions.

“Both HRM and SSE strongly agree that it is of critical importance that we are transparent and very collaborative and consultative during this process, therefore we are working toward releasing the business plan and proposal to the public in the very near future,” LeBlanc said. “We humbly believe that we have put together an innovative proposal that has a variety of options for public sector participation in conjunction with significant private sector involvement, and all we ask is that everyone review the concepts with an open mind.”

He said the community stadium proposal should be considered a positive, not just for HRM and Nova Scotia but for the entire Atlantic region.

Dube, sitting in on a capital budget plan discussion at council Tuesday, said there are a number of funding options in the SSE plan. The one that seemed most reasonable for the municipality is a tax incremental financing (TIF) model, a public financing plan used as a subsidy for redevelopment, infrastructure and debt financing

“That’s not really an impact on the capital budget,” Dube said. “It’s not a direct hit on the capital budget.”

I would hope the big businesses on the east coast could team up and help the group get this thing built ie the Sobeys, Irving's and McCain's. Super Fry Field has a certain ring to it ha ha.

[thurmas]

Well Matt Nichols season is done he had season ending shoulder surgery this afternoon. I am not sure but this may be the end of his career as a Blue Bomber as well with his age, injury history and being a free agent next year likely looking for $400,000 plus a year. Now it is up to Streveler to try and break the 29 year Grey Cup curse for the Blue and Gold and bring the club of Bud Grant and Cal Murphy back to its former glory.


https://www.empireadvance.ca/bombers...ery-1.23959059

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by thurmas

Well Matt Nichols season is done he had season ending shoulder surgery this afternoon. I am not sure but this may be the end of his career as a Blue Bomber as well with his age, injury history and being a free agent next year likely looking for $400,000 plus a year. Now it is up to Streveler to try and break the 29 year Grey Cup curse for the Blue and Gold and bring the club of Bud Grant and Cal Murphy back to its former glory.


https://www.empireadvance.ca/bombers...ery-1.23959059

That is not good. Not good at all. I would think that Toronto and Ottawa might be interested in Matt for next season.

[thurmas]

Originally Posted by Andy6

That is not good. Not good at all. I would think that Toronto and Ottawa might be interested in Matt for next season.

It's tough but Strev's has brought a new dimension to the team with his toughness and running ability and stronger arm. He does need to improve on reading coverages though. I think Matt is done it makes more sense for the Bombers to use the Nichols money to resign Strev long term and finally develop their own qb for the first time since Dieter Brock!