wbbfan

The places with tons of world-class pro facilities for many sports, are far poorer than we are up here. At the end of the day, it's the taxpayers who foot most of the bill for these mega venues, and then get zero monetary value back. It's not sustainable at all, and especially on this slippery road to recession, it's a quick way to ruin. You'd be surprised, actually. Build a cheap place to get in and drink with a ton of built-in atmosphere, and a reason to cheer/boo/react strongly, and young people come in droves. I've got an army of young cousins who didn't grow up CFL fans, but who have been branded into the game day experience. Not just here either, BC too. The reality is that high-level pro sports events in Canada are extremely limited. Hockey is prohibitively expensive and not sustainable at all for the huge majority of young fans. MLB and NBA are Toronto-locked. The Sea Bears have picked up on this, and the Goldeyes have been doing it for ages. You don't even need a physical Rum hut, though it does bring serious scalability. That's with the CEBL and AA being a strong tier below the CFL. Does anyone think that if you changed the name from Sea Bears to Blizzard, you would see an immediate jump in popularity? If you are a bad team in the CFL, you don't draw fans. That is always first and foremost.

no chance. The demographic isn’t what it was 8-10 years ago. The only markets with growth or decent crowds are no longer old people. The old fans are a larger piece of the tv viewership but if you look around any decent market today you see a ton more young people then old. That’s part of the real problem, and the solution to attendance issues isn’t to pander to the boomer generation more. Built a rum hut complete with atmosphere and you’ll see way more fans in edmonton then by changing the name back. Edmonton filled the stadium with young people for a soccer game in bad weather. Branding isn’t the issue. general economic situation isn’t helping, but for rum hut type fans you can have a pretty cheap night out in the cfl. The dip hit before the economy dipped and it didn’t bounce back like much of the live entertainment scene.

the struggles in attendance are far broader than edmontons name change as you can see reflected in calgary, ottawa, hamilton and toronto. It’s a far bigger contributing factor that edmonton has been a dumpster fire of an organization that entire time., Blaming the elk name change is like blaming the old bombers thunderbolt for the dark era in the late 90s. The league, aside from the riders and us, whove been league back bones by a large margin, and bc who has seen massive effort and expense to bring them back, has been a gigantic mess since covid. Changing the name wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. I’m sure we’ve seen this before too, I just can’t remember when. It’s not impossible to make sprint or early football work, but it’s damn hard. Making early football and such a long season work though, that might be impossible up here. Atleast to do and make a profit.

Don't let reality get in the way of a pithy retort!

As of next year, TV revenue could be the largest piece of the pie for the CFL.

With Rourke, Buck, and Butler, I think that O will still find a way.

Jake Dolegala

Lifetime tackle, Bryant gets the spot for as long as he wants lol. Bryant should've been at best RT in camp, and should've been well behind Randolph. Who starts for the Argos now. How many of the OL here would start on another team if cut, 2, maaaaybe 3 out of 9?

Even if we are a 4-5 win team this year and next, unless we found a good coach working for free, we wouldn't be able to replace em. Assuming the cap stays as is, the future is likely to continue with established HC/GMs with an ast GM. Or an established GM with a low-buck young coaching staff.

100%. With the coaching cap, we are married to this set up for another 2 years.

Hell yeah!

Same thing they did at the end of last year, too. Clercius is on the opposite end of the room from the old boys club. Such a damn shame, but I am sure they are gonna burry him till his deal is up.

Throw in kelly and we got a deal.

Yep, though in this case I think it’s the rest of the front office as well. KW has never been a main source of imp talent. No doubt he does some work on that, but by far the least of his contributions. Maybe that’s a problem, but he’s always been mainly a canadian scout. For my money, he does a great job of evaluating ni talent. Now our priorities in the draft have been a bit of a mess. but we are still doing pretty well with ni talent, atleast on D and the ol. The us scouts have not done a good enough job, not by a long shot.

none of those guys played under mos

Yep. And we already see some of the golden oldie wrinkles from previous ocs being brought back. That’s almost certainly input from zach. They have a good chance to off set each others weaknesses. Which would make for a great season of bomber football.

despite the crappy loss, I see significant reason for optimism. If jy can adjust the secondary and get them where they need to be, we will be very very good. I worry a bit about TC in the red zone, that’s been a weakness for him in the past. Generally, zach is excellent at converting tds. But I think that will be one of the keys to the season for O. Along with how tc manages to get brady involved when the run game struggles.

yeah he was retired when we drafted him due to knee injuries out of football for a year and a half i think. My biggest concern with eli is his efficacy in pass protection, cus it’s sucked when he’s been at guard. I’m not worried much about his body holding up i think it’ll be fine health wise. I get it with elsbury on paper. He is insanely athletic. He isn’t a road grader at C though. He might actually be better off at G. Some guys are just much better with a guy across from them 90% of snaps. His pass pro is excellent. If his run game comes along he is 100% worth the time to develop. That said, he will be nfl bound in a heart beat if he starts to put it all together.

100%, griffin is a beast. I think if you go with two db types at wil/sam, it doesn’t much matter which side each guy plays you can chase the 3rd slot or play field boundary or just roles. Kramdi at wil though and griffin on the slot wr is ideal for sure. I’ve really been impressed with nield, he’s gonna be a stalwart for us for a long time. We still have no business starting 3 ni wrs. Eli at c and singer in would be great. Lber is a black hole in our roster. but aside from biggies prime and when kyrie was healthy, it’s always been that way with mos and I suspect it always will.

it’s not as much his performance as it is his fit. The rest of the secondary is much worse with him at s vs at sam. S is like that. BA made every one much better. It’s a niche position to fill for our usage. Some teams play low mobility canadians and just scarecrow them, but that doesn’t fit with what we do. Same thing last year when we tried kramdi at S.

He has basically been the captain of the D since biggie left. He adjusted and got guys set previously at sam as well. Actually, could just play kramdi at wil too. He loves being in the box.

100% agree. We need some tweaks to personnel and coaching. but they will get there. Its very frustrating to watch the same cycle unfold, though. Kramdi wasn't brutal at S, but I think he should go back to sam. I thought hed be better at the S spot, but going back to last year it just doesn't work well. Could just start griffin at wil and let him play the snaps he always used to in rotation as well as more traditional wil stuff.

I believe you are right, in that it was closer to the sidelines. He didn't have good leverage, though. And it is harder to have great leverage in the CFL, but it's also so much more important. We have 10x more throws that can be made on every play, so the DBs really need to be using leverage to take something away on every play. Yeah its very short and precise. Great content from fans to players and coaches. If you give most teams in the CFL what we gave the cats, they will beat you much of the time. BLM, will beat you every single time and walk away doing it.

No problem, that is hilarious lol. Boykins kicked around the NFL prs a while, does some great work coaching DBs down south. He has excellent YT content, though it hasn't taken off yet. His video on off-man coverage is great, too. That is something that has long been a struggle here, too deep(soft) zone and playing off cover too passively.

Tackling is dirty hard work. Execution of tackling is a big indicator of discipline and motor. When its sharp, you see defenders gang tackling and holding guys up while others go for hits instead of trying for hits off the bat. Its the canary in the coalmine of every D. Its hard to be keyed up physically to be relentless and physical on D, when you don't have high energy/physical practices. 100%. I think JSK would've been a great fit in every way, if he was physically up to snuff. When you see this, what is almost always happening (with a vet) is they are not in position to turn their head and look. Its US football obviously, but here is a pretty good video breaking this down.