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Then BMO Field opened in its new football-friendly configuration, and after one lavishly hyped and desperately marketed game, it became quite apparent that the problem in Toronto wasn’t what we thought … or shall we say “hoped”?

It wasn’t the stadium.

And just in case there were still a large market of CFL fans debating whether they should leave their TV sets and actually go to the games, the Argos proceeded to stink like limburger cheese.

And Ray got hurt, and meanwhile the club had already let Ray’s presumptive successor Trevor Harris go to Ottawa as a free agent, and their season went south faster than a planeload of snowbirds.

Which is how we got to Tuesday’s announcement that the Argos have reduced Grey Cup ticket prices in a number of sections to as little as $89 for the Bob Uecker seats, less than $150 for some others.

Ostensibly, this was to reflect a certain amount of “event fatigue” in a Toronto market that has been saturated with the NBA all-star game, the Raptors’ playoff run, the World Cup of Hockey, the Blue Jays’ runaway bandwagon and which, come the Christmas season, will play host to half of the IIHF World Junior hockey championships and the NHL’s 100th anniversary Winter Classic.

There’s probably some truth in that. Even a city as big and wealthy as Toronto has to turn off the money faucet at some point, and without a compelling reason for on-the-fence fans to spend the kind of money the Argos were asking, the Grey Cup was always vulnerable.