Argos undone by lofty expectations The franchise should have acknowledged just how big the challenge of restoring their fan base is and how long that might take, Dave Naylor writes.

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The 2016 Toronto Argonauts could have used a lesson from the 2015-16 Toronto Maple Leafs when it comes to setting public expectations.

The Leafs, you may recall, entered last season by stating publicly that they didn’t expect to be a very good team, that they were at the beginning of a long rebuilding phase and that everyone was going to have to temper expectations and stay patient.

The result was that despite the team finishing with the worst record in the National Hockey League, the season was deemed a success purely by virtue of adapting a different approach to building a winner.

The expectations heading into this season concerning the Argonauts had little to do with football and everything to do with what kind of revival the team could anticipate with its long-awaited move to BMO Field.

For years, the Argos business struggles in Toronto had been largely chalked up to playing in a Rogers Centre venue unfit for CFL football, where the atmosphere was akin to playing football in a shopping mall.

Move them to a smaller, outdoor facility, add tailgating to the mix and some real football atmosphere and the Argos could fill the stands and become instantly more relevant in the city’s crowded market place, or so the thinking went.

That was certainly the message being delivered by the Argos themselves, right down to the publicly stated goal of selling out every home game and amassing 20,000 season ticket holders for the 2016 season.

We all know that didn’t happen, not even close.

Which is why the Argos should have taken a page out of the Maple Leafs’ book by acknowledging just how big the challenge of restoring their fan base is, how much work it’s going to take to turn things around and how long that kind of thing might take.

Had they done so, the 2016 season might not feel like such a kick in the gut for every CFL fan in Toronto who bought into the team’s lofty expectations for their first year at BMO.

What the fans, and the Argos, learned this season is just how far this team had fallen by the end of its days at the Rogers Centre and that rebuilding the fan base is going to take more than some slick advertising and simply opening the doors.

Unfortunately, it’s not going to be an overnight sensation, like the Montreal Alouettes move to Percival Molson Stadium or the lightning-in-a-bottle arrival of Toronto FC.

To the contrary, this is going to be a long, hard struggle that’s going to require some unique and innovative ideas.

Truthfully, the vast majority of those who went to Argonaut games this season enjoyed the experience, despite the team’s mostly poor play on the field. There just weren’t enough of them, with Toronto finishing a distant last in CFL attendance yet again, with ugly scenes of empty seats splashed all over television screens across the country for every home game beyond the season-opener back in June.

Behind the scenes, the Argos were whispering positive things about revenues being up compared to the Rogers Centre days, but that seemed to say more about how bad those days actually were than it did about any new-found prosperity.

There were some obvious things that need fixing, such as a schedule that featured far too many midweek games.

But Toronto FC dealt with the same dynamic and its fans somehow managed to fill the stands any night of the week, just at the Blue Jays had no trouble attracting fans no matter when they played.

It didn’t help that the Argonauts had a terrible year on the field and featured, even by CFL standards, a roster that was mostly anonymous.

Their big splashes in free agency – left tackle Josh Bourke, linebacker Keon Raymond, defensive lineman Brian Bulcke – were all either released or benched before the end of the season.

The bet that quarterback Ricky Ray could remain healthy through a season at age 37 turned out to be as wrong as counting on young backup Logan Kilgore being ready to take over when Ray went out.

Trading for quarterback Drew Willy, benched in Winnipeg after an unimpressive first third of the season, looks horrible now. Willy showed next to nothing after arriving in Toronto, despite the Argos surrendering a first-round draft pick and one of their better defensive players in the deal.

On defence, either co-ordinator Rich Stubler has lost his touch or the Argos don’t have the right personnel to play his system because it was as woeful as the offence for most of the year.

All that said, it would be foolish to buy into the notion that a better year on the field would on its own have made the first Argos season at BMO a roaring success.

The Argos were 2-1 the night they drew 12,373 to their second home game of the season on a beautiful July evening, which is essentially when the dream of an Argo renaissance in 2016 died.

From that point on the crowds improved slightly, while the team went 3-12, including losing their final seven games by a combined score of 245-113.

The good news, and the bad, is that not that many people seemed to notice.

Be sure to check out CFL Insider Gary Lawless' perspective on how to fix what went wrong this year in Toronto.