With the off-season in full swing, CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie has penned a monthly blog to fans to remain connected with CFL followers across the country.

Below is his February entry and the first of a regular feature on CFL.ca.

Randy’s Word (February 2018)

SOMEWHERE OVER CANADA — Hi everybody. We’re always looking for more ways to connect with you, our fans. So, I’m going to share a note like this with you from time to time so you know what I’m up to and, more importantly, what we’re up to at the CFL.

Road Trip

As I write this, I’m on a cross-Canada tour, with town halls scheduled this month in all nine CFL cities plus Halifax. It’s more of a listening tour than a speaking tour. I want to hear your ideas for our game and our league. Does including Halifax mean a tenth team is on the way? Time will tell if we can make expansion happen there but I do want fans there, and everywhere where we don’t have a franchise, to know that they are part of the CFL Family too. To the fans who are taking the time to come out and chat on a winter night: thank you, it means the world to me. We’ve dubbed this Randy’s Road Trip but the truth is it’s about you, not me.

Sportsmanlike Conduct

Not so long ago, I attended the NFL Pro Bowl in Orlando. (No, not because it was in sunny Florida!) The winners of our cross-Canada CFL NFL Flag Football tourney – a group of 11 and 12-year-old girls and boys from Saskatchewan – were there representing us in an international competition. Man, you should have seen these kids! They finished the tourney 2-2 and lost a hard-fought semifinal 7-0 to the U.S.A. team. But what really made me proud was their game with a team from China, which was clearly overmatched from the outset. Once it was clear the game was very one-sided, the Junior Riders started encouraging their opponents, and cheering them whenever they made a play. I said to someone that I think at that age I would have been far less mature and much more inclined to want to run up the score. Congrats to Grayson Dakis, Peter Boersch, Kaidin Clive, Jesse Engen, Jordyn Hein, Kaidyn Keith, Jett Lamb, Tayen Lloyd, Jaxon Thorne and Dayton Varga as well as coaches Tyler Lloyd and Scott Thorne for making us all proud. MVP awards (as in Most Valuable Parents) also go to their Moms and Dads for raising kids who know that respecting one another and winning friends is more important than winning games.

Women in Football

I was also in Orlando, along with Christina Litz from our league office and Jim Popp and Catherine Raiche from the Argos’ football operations, for a special session on getting more women involved in football operations. The driving force behind the NFL’s encouragement and recruitment of women is a Canadian named Sam Rapoport, their Director of Football Development. We’re making progress in our league as well. Catherine, for example, recently joined the Argos as Director of Football Administration, after previously working for the Alouettes. I’ve asked Christina, who heads up our marketing and digital content as well as our strategy, to play more of a role in football operations. And we recently added a young lady named Sarah Taplin as an intern in our own football operations department. Welcome, Sarah! One of the things I’m proudest about in our office is the number of strong and talented women, in various departments, who play important roles. If we can change the perception of football and the sports industry as male bastions, we can do our small part to help change society as a whole. And that is a pretty awesome goal.

That’s it for now. Sometimes I’ll use this forum in this way, to pass on information that may not make news sites or the sports pages but is still pretty cool. On other occasions, I might devote an entire note to an issue facing our league. I hope you like it. Let us know what you think. You can respond below or you can email us at randyword@cfl.ca.

Thanks for making everything we do at the CFL possible.

Randy.