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“It’s very much about game flow, it’s very much about fan experience,” Johnson said before Monday’s first rules committee session.

“We’re trying to balance all of those things, while still protecting the integrity of the game. We don’t want to make the game completely different, but we understand that the flow and how things are experienced both in stadium and on broadcast are so important.”

Here’s a look as the some of the topics that will be discussed before the committee takes a vote on recommendations for changes on Wednesday:

• The CFL reduced the number of flags thrown by its officials by 13 per cent last year, which is a significant improvement, but it’s still not good enough.

“Reducing penalties is something we’ve been working on for a number of years now and we continue to realize that there are still too many penalties in the game,” Johnson said. “It’s a shared responsibility between coaches and players and officials, and we keep working hard to try to figure out ways to get that number down.”

Committee members also will try to identify penalties they can remove from the rule book.

“We took out a certain kind of penalty last year that reduced the number of penalties by about 100,” Johnson said. “It was a procedure movement by the offensive linemen. We allowed them to be a little more fluid and only stationary just prior to the snap.”

Another idea is changing the standard by which certain calls — like illegal blocks on kick returns — are made.