CFL or NFL?

On December 7, 2008, the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League (NFL) will play the first of eight games (scheduled over the next three years) in Toronto at the Rogers Center, formally the SkyDome. For the Canadian Football League (CFL) this is cause for concern.

The League and its American counterpart have always shared the continent, and both are rich in history. While the American league featured the NFL Championship until the merger of the American Football League (AFL) and the NFL in 1967 created the Super Bowl, the CFL (offically formed in 1958) can trace its origins back to the 1860s.

Growing up in Windsor Ontario gave me the chance to indulge in both forms of the game. During the high school week I played football the Canadian way, on the weekend I watched football the American way. To this day I watch both leagues.

If you ever get the chance to attend a CFL game live, say in Winnipeg, or Edmonton, or Calgary, you might be swept away by the seemingly cult following on which the CFL game survives. With only eight teams in the league, over the course of the 20th century some storied rivalries have developed. From Calgary and Edmonton to Hamilton and Toronto, these games have polarized fans, and have helped provide heat to the simmering crazy of game day at Ivor Wynne Stadium, for example.

However, the history of the CFL has seen teams become renamed, plagued by season after season of financial losses, with Ottawa's own team returning only to disappear four seasons later. While the NFL has seen teams relocate -- the St. Louis Rams from Los Angeles and the Indianapolis Colts from Baltimore --and has had teams leave and return again --the Oakland Raiders returned from Los Angeles and the Cleveland Browns reincarnated --these goings-on never seem to affect the financial success of the NFL.

If a team opens up in a new NFL city --the Jacksonville Jaguars, for example -- they land in an untapped resource of NFL followers, and the market soon expands on this. In the CFL, not only does the league not have enough money to infiltrate new football markets, when they do open a new team, the following isn't always there.

This is not an argument for Canadian football fans lacking a passion for football, or that the CFL lacks history; after all, the Grey Cup saw its 95th game last season! This is about marketing.

After many seasons watching both CFL and NFL games, I believe the NFL began doing something the CFL should have, long ago. PICK A DAY TO PLAY!!

It's hardly an epiphany or a ground-breaking revelation to proclaim that people like routines. The NFL has created its own image in the cornerstone of routine in people's lives --the same way that Hockey Night in Canada has also. The way the NFL clusters its games on one day --Sunday --has shoehorned itself into the lives of ordinary Americans.

The CFL doesn't do this; games could be on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday afternoons for example, which makes their tv schedule hard to follow.

Of course we can't chastise the CFL totally, the NFL has more money. Ever wonder why? The Super Bowl, Monday Night Football (now Sunday Night Football), have become regular events because they fit nicely into everybody's schedule, and everybody knows when the games are played. When is the Super Bowl? the first Sunday in February (it moved from the third Sunday in January); when is Sunday Night Football? EVERY SUNDAY NIGHT, like clockwork.

The bottom line; when you cement your games into the convenient routines of ordinary people, they will watch, they will become FANatics. The CFL needs a Sunday night!