One team and one team only can win a championship every year. As fans of teams, it does often feel like our particular teams are destined to never do so - or hardly ever - or not in almost 30 years in the case of the Toronto Blue Jays. Blowing an 8-1 lead on Saturday felt like the Leafs having a 4-1 lead over Boston in game seven in 2013 and managing to lose that one. And all other playoff series since. Usually in seven games just to stretch out the eventual misery we feel as fans. And it felt like 13 seconds did this past January or the Music City Miracle or Wide Right. It just feels like it's not fair. Well, it isn't fair and it's never going to be. We had our chance, some will say, 30 years ago too, going to four straight Superbowls. I grew to hate the Superbowl by the winter of 1994 when the Bills lost to Dallas for the second time. For the first two, I made chlli and had people over; the second two I watched alone. I knew what was coming - or what wasn't coming.
Around 1pm yesterday, I was pretty sure of what was coming in Orchard Park but with the Bills floating into the game as two touchdown favourites and a big playoff rematch coming next week in Kansas City, I had predicted that the Steelers would keep it close. You know, any given Sunday etc etc. My Proline ticket required the Bills to win by 16 but I wasn't really that confident about it. Then on a third and long from the two yard line, Josh Allen tossed a dime to Gabriel Davis. I could smell the turkey wafting from the kitchen by then (which we put in the oven just after 11.30am) and I could smell a rout brewing. With a rookie quarterback making his first NFL start, it just felt like it might be an easy afternoon for the Bills. And of course it was. Some of the stats from the game are eye-popping: They averaged 10.2 yards per offensive play which was the third highest in a game in all of NFL history - eclipsed only by the Chiefs in a game five years ago and by the Jets in a game 50 years ago; Allen finished (without playing much of the fourth quarter) with 424 passing yards, marking a new non-OT franchise single game record; Gabe Davis had three catches for 171 yards - an average of 57 yards each. We could go on. On the other side, Steelers quarterback Kenny Pickett was 34 of 52 for 327 yards and looked pretty good at times.
The CFL stopped publishing game-by-game attendance figures after the lost season of 2020. They have recently released aggregate team-by-team numbers which they say are up over last season. Up by how much isn't clear. Winnipeg, winners of the last two Grey Cups following a long drought, leads with an average of 27,600. Canada's largest city is in last place with an average attendance of just 11,018. In a stadium with a listed capacity of 25,000, that's less than 47% of tickets sold. For a "gate-driven" league, the CFL's Toronto problem is only getting worse. Television ratings are also down with the games over the Labour Day weekend, usually the league's top-drawing regular season match-ups, down almost 20%. The Riders v Bombers game was the only one to draw more than 700,000 viewers so far this season. The Argos v. Ti-Cats "Labour Day Classic" drew 332,000 which was down more than 100,000 from a year ago. There was a time in 1970s when American college players would come to the CFL for the money as the average pay was more than the NFL was offering. I would think that the average CFLer now needs an off-season job to get through the year - just like they did in the 1940s and 50s.
I miss the days of Stephen Brunt and Bob McCown talking about how to fix the CFL - mostly because I liked them on the radio together. Brunt was an encyclopedia of CFL history, including the often-hilarious details of the crazy US expansion experiment of the early 1990s. Did I ever mention that I took in an Edmonton Eskimos v Las Vegas Posse game at Commonwealth Stadium in 1994? In oh-so typical CFL fashion, it was originally scheduled to be a home game for the Posse, but on account of not paying the rent wherever their "home" was in Vegas, the game was moved to Edmonton. The Eskimos won. As a sixty-year-old old stock Canadian (a term coined by Stephen Harper), and because my dad was a fan for his entire life, I miss the glory days of being among 50,000 fans at Exhibition Stadium to watch the Argos lose.Then fire Leo Cahill again. I wonder what 97 year-old Marv Levy, who coached the Alouettes to two Grey Cups (1974 and 1977) would think of the fortunes of the CFL today. I wonder if there is any saving it now.
Up next for the Bills is yet another trip to Kansas City against the Chiefs who also play tonight. It is the CBS "national" game in the 4,25pm time slot and the second consecutive Bills game to be called by Jim Nantz, Tony Romo and Tracy Wolfson. Yesterday's blow-out in Orchard Park made them work hard to hold casual viewers - something they probably won't have to worry about for this game.
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