The CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie was in town yesterday to talk football and future of the league with a hundred Alouettes Season Members. The development of amateur football in Canada, reffing, the rules of the game, the return of the XFL, the involvement of players in their community, safety… there were plenty of topics covered and questions asked.

Check out a few highlights of the successful evening:

“NFL players are supersized, but the players in our league are superathletes. Those are the guys we want here.” – Randy Ambrosie on the particularities of our game.

“Show me another sport in which kids of all sizes and with different physical abilities can show up and be important for their team. That’s football.” – Randy Ambrosie

“The reason for the one challenge rule is that we wanted to make it valuable. It should be used for a truly defining moment because we know that the pace of the game is very important to our fans.” – Randy Ambrosie

“One of the things we’ve been thinking about as part of our 2018 business plan is the entire game experience. Next year, we will have two national theme games, one of them being a Kids Day.” – Randy Ambrosie on wanting to attract the next gen of fans.

“We have to work on safety, on safe tackling… We have to listen to the moms and we need more women around the table!” – Randy Ambrosie on the development of football in Canada

“Five of our home games will be held on Friday night in 2018 because that’s what our fans wanted.” – Patrick Boivin on the importance for the @CFL and the Als to be aligned with their audience.

“It’s been too long since we’ve had a Grey Cup in Montreal and we have a very strong interest in bringing it back in 2021.” – Patrick Boivin

“We want our players to be healthy. We are going to triple down on the message about concussions this year and we want to be better than any league in the world on this issue.” – Ambrosie on how the prevention and the recovery from concussions are priorities for the CFL

“Pound for pound, there are no players in the world who are better than our guys in the community. They are world-class human beings. I’m proud to be associated with them and all of our fans.” – Randy Ambrosie

“No other group is more important to us than our fans. If we don’t have our fans, we don’t have our game.” – Randy Ambrosie

Thanks to all the Season Ticket Members who came to chat with us!