VANCOUVER — On the whole, it’s probably a good thing the Canadian Football League doesn’t carve its choices of Grey Cup host cities in stone.

Presumptive hosts are developing an alarming habit of throwing up their hands and saying: “Not yet!”

Fortunately, the Godfather of the CFL, David Braley, is there to pick up the pieces, and so it will be when a badly kept secret is made official Friday morning, that his B.C. Lions will throw the 2014 Grey Cup bash.

That will make three substantial paydays in four years for the good senator, two of them pickups from the discard pile. He only needs the proceeds from another dozen or so to nearly break even on his outlay over a long career as the CFL’s No. 1 benefactor.

The Lions, you will recall, won the Cup on home turf at BC Place Stadium in 2011 — a game they only hosted because Hamilton’s Ivor Wynne Stadium was finally acknowledged to be in the last stages of decomposition — and Braley’s Toronto Argonauts did the same last November at Rogers Centre, in a 100th-anniversary celebration that broke all records for revenues.

The latest city to drop back and punt is Winnipeg, which had been the front-runner for the 2014 game in its new Investors Group Field. But owing to construction delays, a park that was supposed to have opened last year — while dazzling, by all accounts — won’t get its first test until this summer, and the Blue Bombers appear to have decided that they’d rather play a full season in the new facility and work out the bugs before taking on the big show.

“Only the Bombers could find a way to lose a Grey Cup without playing in it,” wrote one commenter on a Winnipeg story about the day’s developments.

“What is factual is that it is sometimes better for the overall status of the organization when you are dealing with a brand new facility, to work out the kinks and get fully acclimated to the new facility before hosting a major event such as the Grey Cup,” said Bombers spokesperson Darren Cameron. “But financial drawbacks on us possibly hosting in 2014 were not and are not a concern whatsoever. We are in a great financial position to host this event whenever it is appropriate for us to do so.”

Originally, the 2014 Cup had been provisionally awarded to Ottawa after the Jeff Hunt group was granted a franchise in 2008, but it might be 2014 before the team plays a game in its new Lansdowne Park/Frank Clair complex.

So now, the Lions are getting the championship game and festival more or less third-hand, even though (if you’re still following the musical chairs) it would normally have been their turn, anyway, had they not jumped the queue to relieve Hamilton of the 2011 finale.

It will be good for David Braley’s bottom line.

No figures are available from last year’s record-shattering blowout in Toronto, because private owners don’t have to divulge their balance sheets, but one report pegged Braley’s take to be as high as $10 million, after losing $3 million on the Argos during the regular season.