Ambrosie aggressively pursuing CFL’s new identity Commissioner’s vision to connect the CFL to football-loving nations around the world is unfolding faster than a two-minute offence, Dave Naylor writes.

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There’s still a long off-season to come, free agency awaits and bargaining on a new collective agreement hasn’t even begun, but the Canadian Football League’s international outreach continues to roll on.

Three weeks after hosting a combine and draft in Mexico City, the CFL announced a strategic partnership with the German Football League on Thursday.

The agreement is similar to the one with Mexico announced during Grey Cup week. The CFL will look to send players to Germany for development while seeking to recruit the best German talent to the CFL.

And it’s not stopping there. Next week commissioner Randy Ambrosie will be in Austria and France, followed by a meeting in Scandinavia where he will talk with football leaders from Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark.

It’s possible, perhaps even likely, that he will return with more international agreements in his pocket as his vision to connect the CFL to football-loving nations around the world unfolds faster than a two-minute offence.

“We certainly hope so,” said Ambrosie. “The initial reaction and response to this global outreach has been so remarkably positive. We’re talking about building bridges and supporting one another, how do we help grow the game and generate interest in our great game. I am optimistic that we come back at the end of next week and we’ve got several more partners to add to the mix.”

There are still plenty of people scratching their heads about what this is all about. It essentially boils down to the CFL trying to open up the rest of the world for player development and recruitment, then monetizing these new relationships through the development of broadcast and sponsorship opportunities.

While the precise dynamics may be different in each country, the CFL’s recent Mexican experience provides a window into how this could all work.

Mexico is a well-developed football nation with roughly twice as many college programs as Canada, including some that include 75 full-ride scholarships. However, with no true professional circuit, most of the best players simply quit playing the game when their university careers are done. The establishment of the LFA, a four-year-old semi-pro circuit, has changed some of that, but the CFL alliance gives players in that country something much bigger to shoot for.

The hope is that will keep more Mexican players in the game beyond university, strengthening the LFA as players aim to make it to the CFL. When they do, that can increase CFL interest in Mexico, helping to develop broadcast and sponsorship opportunities.

That may all sound a bit far-fetched but it’s worth noting that the Mexican draft on Jan. 14 was covered my multiple media outlets and CFL is already in the early stages of conversations about a potential broadcast contract in that country.

“We come back from Mexico and we end up having one of the networks reach out and ask us if we were interested in a potential broadcast partnership,” Ambrosie. “We're certainly talking about it ... recognizing we're going to have players coming to their very first training camps. Part of this exercise is sowing the seeds and we’re doing that now, so whether we have a Mexican broadcast contract in 2019 is probably not the best measure. It's making sure that we're doing all the right things that can lead to potential TV opportunities around the world in seasons to come.”

Since the Mexican combine three weeks ago, both U SPORTS (the national governing body of university sport in Canada) and the CFL Alumni Association have released statements endorsing the direction the league is going. The timing of those statements was interesting, coming in advance of the start of formal collective bargaining where the current players will be asked to climb on board.

In just what form international players will appear on CFL rosters remains the biggest mystery. If you’re creating new opportunities for players around the world, don’t you have to be taking opportunities away from some current players? What that all means and how it will shake out remains the biggest elephant in the room in this conversation.

“I’m certainly looking forward to an opportunity to share a vision with our players, to show them concrete examples of how this very idea has benefited professional athletes around the world and how I’d like to bring this same benefit to our league and our players," Ambrosie said. “Hopefully together, the players association and our league will find a way to an agreement that is ultimately good for the future of our game.”

Meanwhile, as that is playing out in the background, the CFL expects to have 20 to 30 of the top players in Europe participate in its March combine in Toronto, an event normally reserved for spring draft prospects.

“In the best of all hopes we will certainly invite those federations to think about getting their best players to participate in our combine,” Ambrosie said. “In the grandest of ideas we’d like to see a number of players participate in the combine and perhaps we have a draft of all the European players who have gone through the combine, sometime between now and start of the season.”

The league had given serious consideration to staging a combine in Europe this winter, but decided the logistics and costs make it more worthwhile to fly the best prospects to Toronto for the March event.

It’s going to bring a very different flavour to the annual event and is further proof of how aggressively the CFL is pursuing its new identity.