No way can the CFL handle Canadian expansion past Ottawa. They've gotten tepid response from the East coast in the last two regular season games out in the Maritimes, and Quebec City is pretty meh as well. Certainly not a guarantee to get 20k per game, every game. Thus, those are the largest untapped markets that would be anywhere close for a franchise, and those teams would have revenue issues and trouble paying for a competitive cap roster.
The league of course makes the money off of expansion fees, and do you really see any cities who can't get 20k people to drop any sort of up front money? The other teams would be propping up any more expansion teams within a year or two.
One idea is to just scrap east vs west and play in one division. This isn't the era of train travel anymore, flights between all the cities are not that long and arduous. You'd have to balance the schedule among all teams, but forget the geography.
Other ideas would be to start the season a few week earlier in June, even play 2 or 3 less games, and end it by the end of October, if not earlier. Thus, better weather for fans to attend, more favorable/fair conditions for teams to play. Considering the league plays 2.5 months of basically summer weather, 1.5 months or so of Fall weather, then 2 or 3 weeks of winter weather at the end, doesn't make sense if you think about it in this climate.
Or, in conjunction with the above ideas, have the one division, and have no byes...top 4 teams make it as semi-finals.
All ideas that have been kicked around before.
|