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Published Nov 14, 2025 • 4 minute read
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CFL commissioner Stewart Johnston addresses media as he gives his 2025 CFL State of the League presentation in Winnipeg on Nov. 14, 2025 Photo by John Woods /The Canadian PressArticle content
CFL commissioner Stewart Johnston did a lot of talking in Winnipeg on Friday. How much he listened is another story.
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The first-year league boss held the annual state-of-the-CFL address, a media Q & A that always starts with the commish gushing about how well things are going.
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The former TV exec says scoring is soaring, games are going down to the wire and quarterbacks are on fire.
That doesn’t sound like a league that needs controversial rule changes that cut at the heart of what makes it Canadian.
Yet Johnston is plowing ahead with what he announced in September without consulting coaches, GMs, players or fans, including the shrinking of the field to 100 yards, the moving of the goal posts to the back of end zones, and the shortening of end zones to 15 yards.
I reminded him what some smart and patriotic people said about it back then.
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You know, how Blue Bombers coach Mike O’Shea, a Canadian Hall of Famer, said he could never support the changes.
Or how Bombers special-teams coach Mike Miller, who’s from New Brunswick and played for 11 seasons, said he felt sick to his stomach watching the commish announce them.
Then there was B.C. Lions quarterback Nathan Rourke, the top player in the game this year and a Canadian to boot, who called the new rules “garbage.”
How could those comments not give Johnston pause, I wondered aloud.
His response was to gush over how great Rourke is.
And then this: “The two starting quarterbacks in this year’s Grey Cup game have come out very supportive of the changes. The large majority of players, agents, and coaches I’ve talked to have all been supportive.”
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I suspect it’s more a case of the commish filtering out things he doesn’t want to hear.
O’Shea has more than 30 years experience as a CFL player and coach. The game means everything to him.
Yet the new league boss takes office, pulls a pair of scissors from his desk drawer and begins trimming pieces of the Maple Leaf from this country’s football fabric after being on the job for a few months.
Make that make sense.
Johnston couldn’t.
Instead he blathered on about the 300 years of combined football experience his “team” on this file had and the “incredible consultation with some great minds.”
Then he went downtown to a meet-and-greet with fans and did more of the same, spouting his sales pitch like a used-car salesman trying to unload a rust-bucket with an oil leak, not even giving potential buyers a chance to ask questions.
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“We started talking about it and he was quick to defend it,” Rick Prychun told me. “We wanted to know why. That’s my only question. Why are we doing this? But in 30 seconds … you know the deal.”
Prychun lives in Alberta but has family ties in Manitoba. He holds four season-tickets for both the Elks and Blue Bombers, family members and friends using the Winnipeg tickets when he can’t get here.
He was actually under the impression the rule changes weren’t a sure thing, yet. I told him they are.
“No s—,” Prychun said. “They they can buy my season tickets if that’s how they feel.”
Prychun’s sister Ronda plans to keep going to games, at least if her brother keeps his seats.
“We made it through that American s—,” she said of the CFL’s U.S. expansion in the 1990s. “If we can make it through that, I can make it through this.”
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Their friend Bruce Tremblay, in from Vancouver, wasn’t as sure.
“We’ve had this game for what, 112 years?” Tremblay began. “And it survived. They’re trying to turn our game more into the American game. It’s not an American game. It’s a much more exciting game. When’s the last time we changed the field size or moved the goal posts?
“It’s absolutely crap.”
The man who produced it didn’t give him a chance to say that, though, filling their meet-and-greet with small talk.
“He asked all the questions,” Tremblay said of Johnston.
Not one person I asked in that restaurant/bar liked the changes.
A few tables over from Tremblay and the Prychun siblings, three fans in from Montreal – Kevin Walker and sons Matheson and Griffin – had similar reactions.
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“It lessens the product,” Matheson said, wondering what’s fuelling the commissioner’s moves. “Where’s all this data that he keeps talking about? He never told us where it comes from.”
Matheson lamented how missed field goal returns will all but disappear.
The Walkers don’t plan on cancelling their tickets, but they feel their loyalty is being misused.
“It’s just so fun to go,” Matheson said. “That’s what kills me. I think he knows that, when he’s making these changes. He knows that so many people love it so much that they’re still going to go. They’re going to put up with it.
“But I’m mad. They’re bad changes.”
To tear away strips of Canadiana at this particular time in history baffles them. Now is the time to market the league’s identity, not chip away at it.
“With the Canadian pride and everything… it’s the wrong call to make it more American,” brother Griffin said. “It’s baffling.”
As baffling as the commissioner’s selective hearing.
paul.friesen@kleinmedia.ca
X: @friesensunmedia
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