“This is Argos Football” is the slogan plastered around BMO Field. And for the first time in a long time, attending a game felt like a football event.
The Toronto Argonauts beat their division rivals on Monday night to take sole possession of first place in the CFL East Division.
The tailgate was well attended with fans getting the chance to catch a glimpse of Doug Flutie, as well as touch, talk to and catch footballs from the former CFL superstar. Many left with autographs from the 1996-97 back-to-back championship team members in attendance that were honoured at halftime.
A few even got emotional seeing Flutie in the flesh, a man who still bears a striking resemblance to the bobblehead that was given away to those in attendance. The former Heisman Trophy winner quite frankly looks like he could suit up today.
Even the Argonotes ended their holdout and were back in the crowd, striking up the band after first downs.
The home team orchestrated a length-of-the-field drive that ended in a game-winning field goal as time expired. All was right in the double blue world.
The Argos attracted their biggest crowd of the year going head-to-head with the Blue Jays on a chilly Monday night after a day full of rain.
All and all, it was a win not just in the standings, but in perception for a franchise who could have expected much worse when they saw the CFL schedule them with a mid-summer Monday date.
The promotion for Flutie was so popular, the bobbleheads were even being sold outside the stadium on the secondary market to collectors.
Only issue is, you can only have Doug Flutie Bobblehead Day and name him as an all-time Argo once. And, there’s only one Doug Flutie.
There has been lots of ink spilled on the CFL’s ability to attract fans at the gate. No need to pile on that issue in this space.
What is equally pressing but harder to prescribe is the ability for CFL players to resonate and inspire fans the way Flutie clearly has.
My main takeaway as I left BMO Field was bewilderment in the reaction among other men of my generation for that era of CFL football. Although I was pleasantly surprised, one thing became clear: Nothing close to that exists currently.
I wasn’t near tears. But, full disclosure: Seeing the key members of the back-to-back Argos team brought me back to my CFL-loving childhood. As a kid, I wore No. 31 and tried to reverse against the grain like Pinball Clemons. As a youth football player, I remember trying to round my out patterns with a speed cut like Derrell Mitchell. I remember trying to settle in soft spots in zone defences like Paul Masotti.
CFL players were athletes you idolized just like your favourites in any other sport. King on that hill was Flutie, who inspired a wave of kids playing quarterback with gloves not because they were needed, but because he did it and it was cool.
Flutie was a mixture of Wayne Gretzky and Steve Nash on a football field, as he was both a cut above the rest and improvisational in his style of play.
I’m no longer a youth football player, but I’m involved with multiple levels of the game in Canada. As prolific as he is I don’t think kids are saying, “I want to throw a corner route with great anticipation or touch like Ricky Ray.” In fact, I don’t see kids wearing Ricky Ray jerseys. I still see more Starter throwback No. 31 jerseys in the stands than I see Adidas replica No. 15s. To be clear, you can’t go to a Maple Leafs game without seeing a 17 for Wendel Clark or a 93 for Doug Gilmour. But if you saw them in higher proportions than Auston Matthews 34s it would signify an identity crisis.
Mitch Marner has come to a few Argos games this season and fans have swarmed his box for autographs with a thirst that doesn’t exist when the competing players exit the field.
The three most recognizable football players in the stadium in Week 5 were Flutie, Clemons and Brandon Marshall, in that order. The first two are in their 50s. The last plays in the NFL and was only on the Argos sidelines to show respect for his former coach and mentor Marc Trestman.
The marketing of players is something Henry Burris has addressed as a concern and to his credit something new commissioner Randy Ambrosie, a former player himself, has highlighted as a critical issue.
The league has partnered with Whistle sports to showcase the athletic ability and personality of its players through trick shots.
They’ve also made a point of magnifying their players’ social-media activity.
The league’s “Bring it in” campaign is designed to introduce young players to the game.
Marketing is something everyone likes to talk about in terms of investment, but the results are hard to quantify.
What is more pertinent is the supply of marketable players. Most would agree that if Doug Flutie was coming out of Boston College now, he’d be a first-round draft pick in the NFL and never make it to the CFL.
Conversely, smaller present-day quarterbacks and products of read-option schemes — like Russell Wilson, Johnny Manziel and maybe even Cam Newton — would have been overlooked by the NFL if they had played in the 1980s.
In a way the CFL’s progressive nature and success in the past has contributed to its current demise. Watching Flutie’s highlights play on the big screen when he was being lauded in a pre-game ceremony, I couldn’t help but notice the offence he was running in 1996 had the same zone-read and read-option principles that have become vogue in the NFL now.
Flutie was utilizing a check-with-me-at-the-line audible system well before Peyton Manning was given the licence to scream “Omaha.”
The unintended consequence of creating a fun system for supreme athletes like Flutie to flourish and capture our imaginations was that those philosophies were appropriated down south and stripped the CFL from some of its unique personality.
Now in an attention-economy era where there are more entertainment options and more competition, the CFL’s historical great differentiator is less apparent.
Which begs the question: How does the league reinvent itself in an era of celebrity culture to build up those stars that stand out from the fray, to create conversation and inspiration?
How does the league get Ray, Bo Levi Mitchell, Mike Reilly, Zach Collaros and Kevin Glenn to be as identifiable as Flutie, Matt Dunigan, Damon Allen, Danny McManus and Tracy Ham were before them?
Forget about the Toronto Argonauts — this is the league’s greatest task.
The Flutie magic was back in the air in a CFL stadium on Monday night. It was a chance to appreciate what was a one-of-a-kind cultural phenomenon in the Canadian sports landscape. And ponder the important question: What and, more importantly, who is next?
