{"id":8847,"date":"2025-07-19T20:07:21","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T20:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/8847\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T20:07:21","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T20:07:21","slug":"commissioner-stewart-johnston-explains-how-cfl-can-improve-after-stampeders-riders-air-quality-delay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/8847\/","title":{"rendered":"Commissioner Stewart Johnston explains how CFL can improve after Stampeders-Riders air quality delay"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the fourth time in the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ history, a game was postponed on Friday night when the Green and White were poised to host the Calgary Stampeders.<\/p>\n

For the fourth time in the Saskatchewan Roughriders\u00a0history, a game was postponed on Friday night when the Green and White were poised to host the Calgary Stampeders. However, Friday\u2019s game was the first in team history to be postponed on the day of the game.<\/p>\n

With the air quality index exceeding the CFL and\u00a0players’ association’s\u00a0cap, the decision was made to postpone the 7 p.m. kick-off to 7:45 p.m. to allow for possible\u00a0wind to clear smoke from the Regina area as it had done 70 kilometres\u00a0to the west in Moose Jaw 45 minutes earlier. That\u2019s when the wind stopped, trapping a smoky air mass in the Saskatchewan capital. Communication between Canadian Football League commissioner Stewart Johnston, the Riders and the Stamps began at that point.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe truly thought this was going to be an hour delay. That is what all the conditions and all the markers showed us. So when the wind died and didn’t move, it became such a real-time fluid condition.\u201d Johnston, who is in his first season as\u00a0CFL\u00a0commissioner, told the Rider Broadcast Network\u00a0stakeholder safety was paramount.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe developed a policy in conjunction with the CFLPA and the players.\u00a0We’ve got a cap on air quality before we feel comfortable playing; it’s got to be at a certain level or under. We got word earlier that things might be tricky\u00a0and then monitored closely over the day. We’ve got meteorologists in every market.\u00a0The trickiest thing about wildfire smoke is it’s unlike precipitation, where our radar is great at anticipating lightning or issues like that — predicting wind is a lot more challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n

The decision was\u00a0made to postpone the game indefinitely, still hoping\u00a0the smoke would clear allowing the air quality index to drop to an allowable rate. If that had happened, players would have been given an abbreviated 30-minute warm-up before kick-off. Eventually, it was decided\u00a0the contest would be postponed to Saturday if the players could not begin a warm-up by 10:45 p.m.. Three hours later, the 620 CKRM Co-operators Rider Broadcast Network<\/a> informed fans the game was going to be postponed to 2 p.m. Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did everything we possibly could to get this game in tonight. Unfortunately, the weather didn\u2019t cooperate, and the wind didn\u2019t cooperate, and here we are,”\u00a0Roughriders\u2019 president and CEO Craig Reynolds said while becoming\u00a0emotional when speaking following the postponement, praising fans for staying throughout the delay.<\/p>\n

The announcement left fans across the country shocked that a game would not go ahead, among them was commissioner Johnston.<\/p>\n

\u201cDisbelief, disappointment, discouragement, and certainly appreciation for everyone, the fans, those in the concession, security, the players, everyone involved here was pulling for this game to happen and stuck it through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the postponement announcement, fans who endured the delay flooded social media with their disappointment, an emotion\u00a0Johnston acknowledged.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you’re not sitting in your seat watching a football game, anything less than that will not be as good,” Johnston added the league will work to improve should situations like these arise in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a learning experience for me and us as a team is to be significantly more specific in the words we use in communicating. We should have described exactly what we were reviewing:\u00a0the air quality index is this,\u00a0the winds are at \u2018X\u2019 kilometres per hour,\u00a0Moose Jaw is down to a three and we think that condition is coming to us. It’s on us to be far more specific in the information we give because transparency is incredibly important. We were trying to communicate, but I think we didn’t go far enough in our detail.”<\/p>\n

Reynolds and the\u00a0Roughriders will connect with fans who had tickets on Friday to thank them for their unwavering support.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u00a0can\u2019t believe our fan base,\u00a0I\u2019m trying not to get emotional, but I was blown away today. I couldn\u2019t believe how they were tonight and the number of people who stuck it out. They wanted to see football as much as we wanted to play football. We have the best fans,\u00a0I\u2019ve said it over and over but tonight proved it. We have literally the best fans in the world and we wanted to play football for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Saskatchewan Roughriders are back in action on Saturday when they travel to play the B.C. Lions, a game that can be heard across the 620 CKRM Co-operators Rider Broadcast Network.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here is the conversation\u00a0I had with Johnston:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the fourth time in the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ history, a game was postponed on Friday night when the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,9151,82],"class_list":["post-8847","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-cflsaskatchewan-roughriderscraig-reynoldsstew-johnston","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8847","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=8847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}