Naylor’s Kickoff: CFL selling new season as first step towards brighter future

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While the opening night of any sports season brings a feel of excitement and anticipation, tonight’s Canadian Football League opener in Calgary between the Stampeders and Montreal Alouettes will have a little more significance.

It’s the first time the CFL has opened on time since 2019 after the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the entire 2020 season and the early part of 2021, resulting in a 14-game regular season that kicked off Aug. 5. The 2021 Grey Cup game was pushed to December just as the Omicron variant wave was taking flight.

Few professional sports leagues got hit harder by the pandemic than the CFL, sending it down desperate paths. It started in 2020 when the league went fishing for a federal government bailout – a $30 million interest-free loan which was denied – and continued in early 2021 when the CFL considered a merger with the owners of the XFL.

Opening week in the CFL is always an intriguing time. Many like to wager on the under for games as offences try to get things together. This year could be different however due to a rule change. TSN's Davis Sanchez has more.

More than anything, being unable to play for 21 months tested the loyalty of everyone associated with the CFL game – the owners, the players and, of course, the league’s fans, who were dragged along through all the uncertainty.

All of that ends tonight.

If nothing else, the CFL’s pandemic experience reminds us how the economic engine of this league is still driven by ordinary fans in a very traditional way.

The league is aggressively trying to develop revenue streams beyond the bums-in-seats stream, but for the foreseeable future that’s what the CFL is going to rely upon most.

And during the pandemic, no bums