Former Adidas executive on shortlist for CFL commissioner job The Canadian Football League is considering another former shoe and apparel company executive as commissioner. TSN has learned that the CFL's search committee, headed by Jim Lawson, the chair of the league's board of governors, has interviewed Doug Hayes for the position. TSN senior correspondent Rick Westhead has more on who may become the successor to Mark Cohon.

Rick Westhead TSN Senior Correspondent Follow|Archive

The Canadian Football League is considering another former shoe and apparel company executive as commissioner.

TSN has learned that the CFL's search committee, headed by Jim Lawson, the chair of the league's board of governors, has interviewed Doug Hayes for the position, vacant since Mark Cohon resigned last fall.

Hayes, 57, is president of Alphabroder Canada, which produces corporate branded sports apparel.

Hayes, who lives in the Toronto area, is a veteran sports marketer, and was a longtime executive with Adidas-Salomon Canada. He has experience with sports merchandising and distribution, athlete marketing, and crisis management.

In 1995, while an executive with Adidas, Hayes commissioned a controversial magazine ad that featured a soccer team, the York Region Kick, posing naked, their hands placed to hide their genitals. Sports Illustrated refused to print the ad, but the campaign was widely discussed on U.S. and Canadian morning talk shows and in newspapers.

A year later, Hayes had to navigate a controversy that engulfed Canadian sprinter Donovan Bailey when he was quoted saying Canada was as blatantly racist as the U.S. Bailey denied making that comment, although he did tell Sports Illustrated that "people who don't appear to be Canadian (people of colour) don't get the same treatment. They associate you with your parents' birthplace, or your birthplace..."

At the time, Adidas sponsored Bailey and Hayes was left to explain the sprinter's comments.

Hayes declined to comment on his status with the CFL but rejected the notion that a sprinter's controversial comments left him managing a crisis.

"That's not crisis management," Hayes said.

He said when he became president of Crocs in 2008, the U.S. business media predicted the company wouldn't make it through the subsequent year before folding. Instead, Crocs, famous for its bright coloured rubber clogs, doubled its sales.

Hayes was president of Crocs until 2012.

If the CFL hires Hayes, he would be the second former Adidas executive to become commissioner. Tom Wright, the former president of Adidas Canada, was commissioner from 2002 until 2006.

Several people familiar with the matter told TSN the CFL has been surprised and impressed by the high pedigree of applicants for the commissioner position, which is expected to pay between $750,000 and $1 million a year. The league has hired executive search firm Spencer Stuart to help oversee its recruitment of a commissioner.

Tom Anselmi, the former Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment president and chief operating officer, is also in the running for the CFL's top job, three people familiar with the matter told TSN.