One of my favourite moments from the Grey Cup in Edmonton came on Friday night.

Hundreds of CFL fans from coast to coast gathered in a conference room at the Touchdown Atlantic to hear that the league’s 10th franchise is going to be the Atlantic Schooners.

The place erupted. It felt so real that this was happening. A true coast-to-coast league from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

Now, after all that optimism a few months ago, I’m not feeling as optimistic hearing the reports from TSN’s Dave Naylor that the group seeking to build a stadium is dropping the price tag by $50 million.

$130 million will get you a stadium, sure, but the reason is more to do with trying to appeal to a city council hesitant to drop public money into a football stadium.

The team was rumoured to be hiring Eric Tillman to start up football operations, but now they’re saying they’ll wait to see how the stadium vote goes until hiring someone to lead a new franchise.

Hmmm.

The ownership group that has been very aggressive and very positive that this is going to happen, seems to all of a sudden be pumping the breaks. And I’m left wondering why.