VANCOUVER—Outgoing CFL commissioner Mark Cohon was concluding his year-ending meeting with about 500 faithful CFL fans, who were dressed in all the league’s various colours, and he was giving out some prizes. One was just a Gatorade bottle, which he tossed to one of the hungover, but which ricocheted sharply off an overhead light standard and shot into the crowd. “Nothing like going out killing a fan,” Cohon said, and the adoring room laughed.

Vancouver is the terminal point of Mark Cohon’s eight years as CFL commissioner, and he exits with a strong list of accomplishments. New or renovated stadiums in Vancouver, Edmonton, Saskatchewan (in progress), Winnipeg, Hamilton and Ottawa. A collective bargaining agreement that de-linked revenues and the salary cap and stabilized the league’s financial picture, and a TV deal with TSN. He didn’t fix Toronto, but he leaves the league stronger than when he arrived.

And at the end, even he couldn’t complete a touchdown pass. In Cohon’s final year the game was at least plagued by deep cracks. And now the CFL has to figure out how much of that is cyclical, and how much is actually broken.

“It was the year of the defence,” says Hamilton coach Kent Austin, whose Tiger-Cats face the Calgary Stampeders in Sunday’s Grey Cup game. “There’s so much that could probably go into it.”

Scoring was down 13 per cent and, at a combined 45.48 points per game, reached its lowest number since 1985. If you delve in, it was actually worse than that — according to CFL statistician Steve Daniel, scoring by offences was actually down 23 per cent, but the gap was bridged somewhat by a sharp increase in special teams touchdowns. Turnovers were actually down; scoring dropped anyway.

There were a lot of close games, yes. There were comebacks. And far too often, the games were difficult to watch. The NFL is pinball and the CFL, this season, was played in the mud. And in a league made for offence, that needs offence, it has to be fixed.

“For the majority of fans and for our casual fans, what they really want is offence,” said Cohon. “That’s what our league is known for.”

Solutions require separating the signal from the noise, though. Everyone starts their explanations with quarterbacks getting hurt — that happened a lot, and as a result Kevin Glenn and Kerry Joseph both started playoff games, rather disastrously — and the new crop of QBs, which often resulted in conservative, less vertical play-calling. (“You don’t want your quarterback to lose the game,” said Tiger-Cats defensive co-ordinator Orlondo Steinauer, seen as a rising star in the coaching ranks.)

People point to defensive head coaches, starting with Chris Jones in Edmonton. And they point to the Ottawa expansion, which diluted the talent pool with another 46 players, and 20 Canadians. Oh, and injuries to stars like Jon Cornish and Chad Owens. People say all that can be turned around.

Well, some of it, surely. But there are structural questions that will face the next commissioner, and the rules and competition committees.

Based on several conversations with players, coaches and other CFL officials, it’s a puzzle full of interlocking pieces. The quarterbacks might have gotten hurt because expansion especially diluted offensive lines, where Canadians tend to land, partly because linemen trained in four-down football have trouble adjusting up north. As one player put it, the expansion draft “killed the depth on some teams, specifically on the offensive lines. That hurt. And the clutching and grabbing allows the front four or five, who are usually American guys, to get to the quarterback.”

Sacks, by the way, were up 27 per cent. Hamilton’s Zach Collaros, for one, estimates he got hit on about 70 per cent of his snaps this year. And many say clutching and grabbing, in a league where defensive backs can put hands on receivers, is an enormous problem.

“I think it’s been getting worse every year, and they’re trying to police it, but you’ve just got to play within the game,” says Hamilton slotback Andy Fantuz. “It’s the way it is. You get a lot of plays that would be made normally that aren’t made because guys are grabbing you.

“I mean, I like to use my body too, to push off, but you have guys draped all over you. It’s a little bit ridiculous . . . but that’s what it is now.”

“Illegal contact on a receiver is a huge problem in this league,” says Austin.

Austin is said to be lobbying for the NFL’s standard of no-touch defending of receivers; Steinauer says if that happens, “The scoreboard will light up. No doubt . . . if that’s the way it goes, they’ll get what they want.” And another player says, honest and blunt, “If they change the standard, then half the defensive backs are going to be out of this league, if you can’t grab and clutch.” Unintended consequences loom with that kind of move. But it would work.

The extra Canadians were an issue, too. Matt Coates started at receiver for Hamilton at times this season — “We’re 3-0 with him as a starter,” notes Collaros — and Coates, who was also a standout junior player, was playing on James Duthie’s flag football team two years ago. Add the NFL expanding practice squads by 10 and training camp rosters by 10, and that’s some 600 players that the CFL either won’t get until September, or won’t get at all. What if one of them is a quarterback that would have succeeded here? What if three of them are?

The flow was further killed by penalties being up 18 per cent, though the rate declined in the second half of the year and they were largely the result of holding and illegal blocks. Officiating is this league’s Moby Dick, sometimes.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

So the CFL has a smaller player pool, a greater gap between American and Canadian players that can put quarterbacks at risk, officiating that remains a seemingly intractable problem, and coaches whose conservatism and defensive acumen — and as Steinauer points out, the defences are just doing what they’re supposed to do — combined with some one-year trends that could reverse the flow.

So yes, the TV ratings declined a touch, and attendance drooped, and Montreal had 15,000 people for a playoff game. The league’s lifeblood sagged, and the league sagged with it.

None of it is the end of the world, even if Cohon is walking off into the distance, applauded by fans who may live miles from his privileged Toronto upbringing but whom he connected with anyway. They cheered him in that room, grilled him, and most of all, thanked him. Cohon came to understand the organic bond between the league and its fans; he learned it, and he lived it. He was treasured by the end.

The next commissioner will have to understand that connection, and be careful not to sever it. And the next commish will have to deal with Toronto, will have to gracefully shepherd David Braley towards his eventual retirement, and will have to hope the game itself can be fixed. Because if it isn’t, not much of the rest is going to matter.

Read more about: