Originally Posted by
greatwhitenorf
I got on the soapbox a page or two back about why TFC have greater future prospects than the Argonauts and why nothing should ever be done to diminish the perception that BMO Field is first, foremost and always a soccer stadium. This, coming from someone who grew up loving the Argos.
My instinct in this is shaped by many years of roaming the city in both a personal and professional capacity with sports. Having a family has certainly made it clear which of soccer or football is foremost in the minds of the young, desirable audience that any sport strives for. That's your future. That's who's buying tomorrow's tickets. That's who commercial sponsors will be marketing to.
Just take a wander any weeknight to any playing fields in the 416 or nearby environs and it's soccer mad. My own experiences have taken me to parks with multiple pitches like Lamoureux, McLevin(Abbas Ali), Eglinton Flats, Eglinton Park(N Toronto), Downsview, Ashtonbee Reservoir, Sunnybrook, Centennial, Summerlea, Carmine Stefano, North York Civic/Esther Shiner, G. Ross Lord, Richview, Bluehaven, Rememberto Navia, Flemingdon, Jim McPherson, Clairlea, Ellesmere Reservoir and Wanita plus many school fields or single field parks like Dieppe, Highview, Earlscourt and on and on.
Plus multi-pitch venues on the outskirts like Bay Ridges, Vaughan Grove, Mt. Joy, Hershey Centre-Icelands complex.
It's insane how many people are involved. Try getting a parking space near the field most nights. Try finding open area for kids to warm up before a game. Try finding open space to conduct practices. Toronto is absolutely soccer saturated and approaching a point where you could call it a crisis as space on teams or house leagues begins to get tight.
This isn't new nor is it news. It's been going on for generations. Nothing but growth. Given this country's immigration policies and trends, you can be sure it's tailored for even more growth to come. You can't say that about Canadian football in Toronto.
If you're a parent, you can't remotely consider letting youngsters indulge in full-contact tackle football. Not with all the emerging data on head injuries from heavy contact sports like football. Not with highlight reels this week showing Vontaze Burfict in full-on rage mode against the Steelers. So when kids finally get involved with football, it likely isn't until junior high or high school. At that point, you're starting with a tiny percentage of participants compared to those who began playing soccer years before and are still playing. Those football playing opportunities are dwindling as high schools continue to drop the game from their intramural curriculums.
Where the CFL absolutely loses is that when/if kids do take up an interest in football, the CFL is absolutely drowned out by the NFL's multi-platform media machine. It's this huge, sexy beast full of charismatic superstars and highlight reel plays that get blasted all over the US and Canadian media and utterly dwarf anything the CFL can offer.
Sure, you can say that MLS and TFC pale in comparison to the top European leagues. But they're not here, on our doorstep, to offer a live, attendable alternative. MLS is the only choice for those wanting a live-game experience. And so far, it would seem sports fans in this city have endorsed TFC in the most vital manner possible - with their wallets. They buy TFC tickets and merchandise, they show up and they support vociferously.
All this while the team has largely been a complete pooch on the pitch and no one's sweetheart in the media.
You don't see TFC or MLS being propped up the way Toronto Sun features the CFL on multiple pages every week or TSN goes about nibbling the toes of the CFL, with pre- and post-game shows, nightly in-depth or situational reports and highlights galore. MLS on TSN means stark, spartan game coverage and then? Boom - straight into another vital program like the 50 Most Nonsensical Refs Calls of The Past Year. None of the build up or follow up, none of the mid-week analysis, no playoff previews. Nothing to capture or build a soccer audience the way they coddle the CFL.
It has all the appearance of a grumpy associate doing a deliberately shabby job.
There's all manner of ballyhoo that playing in the Rogers Centre worked against the Argos. Yeah, well, that situation also isn't new or news. But if the so-called Argos fans love the league so much, how come they never turned out to at least say thanks and show appreciation after the team won the Greh Cup in 2012? Season tickets dropped below 4,000 soon after. Last season's attendance was absolutely hilarious but it wasn't like it was a dramatic drop from the previous two years. Is it because everyday sports fans were cynical and skeptical about how bogus the 2012 cup victory looked after that inexplicable trade that sent top QB Ricky Ray from Edmonton to Toronto?
In 1983, the Argos won their first cup in 33 years and the victory parade absolutely paralyzed the downtown core for hours as a crowd close to 100,000 jammed the route from start to finish. You can look it up. It was mental. I was there. Ticker-tape cascading down on Bay St., fans lined so deep the vehicles couldn't get through without cops opening temporary gaps, fans piling onto the cars to hug or kiss players. It was like the war just ended.
In 2012, I went back to see how that parade crowd compared. It was stunning. Not much more than a couple of thousand thinly strung along Bay St., many of those simply curious bystanders, stopped for a moment, then walking along in the opposite direction as they headed somewhere else or just caught up in a delay as they waited to cross the road. Can't blame them. The reward at the end of the route was the cruel and unusual sight of Rob Ford and his Don Bosco Bozos sharing the stage area with the cup.
I was sad for the club but here was the clearest evidence that despite all media tub thumping for the Argos, they had simply lost the attention and interest of the city. It wasn't just that they weren't interested in the Argos, they weren't interested in the CFL period. It just isn't a big enough prize anymore in a city accustomed to its other pro teams playing the best from across the continent.
TFC, MLS and the game of soccer are moving in all the right ways to grow and develop sound foundations for decades to come. The work done to bring in top talent has improved the quality of play annually and this year earned the club international recognition with Giovinco's image appearing all over European media as he continues to play well and remain a part of the Italian team heading to Euro 2016. The fact that TFC can feature such promising home grown talent like Osorio, Chapman, Morgan, with many others in development at the academy and TFC II only promises better things to come for club and country.
Soccer fans get this. Even those fan boys that love to wear shirts of trendy Euro sides like Barca, Juve, Bayern or (shudder) Chelsea and talk down about MLS still show up at BMO Field when the going gets good. Once TFC begin winning consistently, that will become much less of an issue. They have it in them to be giants in this city. One title will bring back the Bay St. madness described above.
You can't say that about the Argos and never will. No matter how much love and money the TSN/Tannenbaum axis drop on them, it won't change anything. The perception is that their stewardship is simply a caretaking job to let the NFL come to Toronto someday. How sickening must that be for die-hard CFL fans?
Nothing in that mandate says BMO Field should be changed in any way to alter the long-established designation that first, foremost and always it is a soccer stadium. One forced by politics to stretch to accommodate shambling, hard-up renters who've been kicked out of their parents basement.
MLSE have a good thing going with TFC. As long as they don't piss off the soccer fans who have been, and can forever be, the best friends BMO Field could ever hope for. Screw it up again with soccer fans and they will be very hard to retrieve.