Earlier this week, a Quebec City Radio host went to air with a scoop.<\/p>\n
According to veteran sports journalist Sylvain Bouchard of FM93, the Canadian Football League has been in serious talks with business and political leaders in Quebec City for more than a year about an expansion franchise and new stadium to be built on the site where the Colisee, former home of the NHL\u2019s Nordiques, still stands.<\/p>\n
That story got a lot of traction in CFL circles because it seemed to come out of the blue.<\/p>\n
So here\u2019s what we do know about expansion under CFL commissioner Stewart Johnston, who has been on the job for 14 months.<\/p>\n
At his introductory address last April, Johnston said that expansion was not at the top of his agenda. But with the announcements of changes to the rules, field dimensions and playoff format, plus the completion of new media deals, his early to-do list is largely behind him. So, it makes sense that he would embrace expansion, which represents many of the qualities he\u2019s embraced in his leadership \u2014 change, growth and momentum. <\/p>\n
He also said early in his term that when the time did come to add to the league\u2019s existing nine teams, his focus would be squarely on Canada as opposed to the U.S.<\/p>\n
That really leaves only two possibilities \u2013 Atlantic Canada and Quebec City. And given that the league has been there, done that when it comes to trying to stir up interest for a team on the East Coast, Quebec City is a logical choice.<\/p>\n
Johnston watched the CFL\u2019s very public courting of Atlantic Canada and the expectations that came with that, so it makes sense that he might go about it in a very different way.<\/p>\n
Quebec City is a about the same size as Winnipeg. And given the growth of football in the province of Quebec, it\u2019s surprising that the CFL hasn\u2019t had greater interest before now.<\/p>\n
One school of thought is that Quebec City\u2019s football soul belongs to the local U Sports team, the Laval University Rouge et Or, perennial winners with a roster stocked entirely of French Canadians.<\/p>\n
The CFL shouldn\u2019t even think about Quebec City, some say.<\/p>\n
It would be understandable, however, that some might see that a completely different way \u2013 that the success of the Rouge et Or, combined with the growth of grassroots football in Quebec, are solid reasons why the CFL should be trying to establish a franchise there as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
Factor in the natural rivalry with the Montreal Alouettes and the potential to substantially boost the value of the French-language RDS contract, and it starts to make a lot of sense.<\/p>\n
First let\u2019s address the presence of the Rouge et Or.<\/p>\n
In March, Jacques Tanguay, the financier backer of the Rouge et Or, was quoted in the Quebec press as being supportive of a CFL team in the city \u2013 provided it came with new infrastructure.<\/p>\n
So, the Rouge et Or are presumably on board.<\/p>\n
Is there room for both teams? This season the Laval plays four regular-season games between Sept. 5 and Oct. 18, with anticipated playoff dates after that. For a city of more than 800,000, that shouldn\u2019t be a complete drain on the market\u2019s appetite for football.<\/p>\n
Laval typically draws 10,000 to 15,000 to Stade Telus-University Laval, a facility that might be able to house a CFL team temporarily. But a permanent home would have to be in the 25,000-seat range with amenities befitting a modern professional sports team, which is why the vision for Quebec City has to involve a new stadium.<\/p>\n
Of course, the league that Quebec City has been trying to woo the past 15 years is not the CFL but the National Hockey League. It became aggressive on that front around the same time Winnipeg got its franchise back, building a new arena to NHL capacity in 2015, one that remains ready and waiting for commissioner Gary Bettman to say the word.<\/p>\n
The fact is Quebec City is not on the NHL\u2019s radar, just as Winnipeg would never have been had the league not had a crisis to solve in Atlanta, with an owner walking away and not a single buyer in the market.<\/p>\n
That was a Halley\u2019s Comet kind of moment in the business of the NHL and it\u2019s not likely to come around again. That means that alongside the Rouge et Or and the local QMJHL franchise, a CFL team would be the big dog in town.<\/p>\n
So, what\u2019s the timeline for all this?<\/p>\n
Well, if there\u2019s one thing we\u2019ve learned about Johnston it\u2019s that he likes to work fast. His first year on the job has been characterized by a series of aggressive initiatives that including new rules and plans for new field dimensions and a new playoff format, not to mention a new broadcast partner added to the mix starting in 2027. All in just a little more than a year on the job.<\/p>\n
So it shouldn\u2019t surprise anyone if talks between the CFL and Quebec City civic and business leaders began not long after he took the job.<\/p>\n
The CFL has been craving a tenth team in earnest since the early 1980s when the CFL first awarded a conditional franchise to a group proposing the Atlantic Schooners. But those Schooners, like the proposed Schooners team of 35 years later, never set sail<\/p>\n
And now it appears the CFL is aggressively trying to plant its expansion flag somewhere else. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this week, a Quebec City Radio host went to air with a scoop. According to veteran sports…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":717118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,22551,24738,82,84996],"class_list":["post-717117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-expansion","tag-quebec-city","tag-sports","tag-stewart-johnston"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=717117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/717118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}