We've been told to just accept that the Argos are coming to BMO. The reason, because Tanenbaum/Bell bought the team right? And ML$E/Tanenbaum own the stadium...err no. Well, let's put them there just because they need a home... Something just isn't right here. It has never sat right with me. Why buy a failing financial team in hopes of moving them to a stadium where they don't have the almost free sweetheart deal they had at Skydome in rent, don't get parking $ and pay mgmt/staff fees, and have it make money? The offset is "they get" 2 Cup games and potentially the winter classic. Why couldn't they have those things without the Argos move? Difficult but not impossible. 2 Cups could come over time if the Argos had a smaller home outside of BMO. All just speculation, so why doesn't this sit right?
I was looking into 2nd division Soccer in Can/USA and read that the NASL is the official 2nd division for Soccer in North America. USL is now 3rd division and won't be competing with NASL. USL is becoming a farm team league for MLS. NASL is trying to be an independent, non-cap, follows international calendar, organized similar to Liga MX where it's split into 2 seasons Spring and Fall league. Further digging revealed that NASL was working with the CFL to try to create an all Canadian division of NASL where CFL cities would be the homes of NASL teams with affiliations in place to play in those cities stadiums...hmmm. Ottawa and Edmonton would move to this new division and new teams in Hamilton, Calgary, Winnipeg and Saskatchewan. Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal already have MLS teams and the article stated they would not move from MLS but there was nothing about affiliations of CFL teams in those cities with NASL teams. The division and affiliations were supposed to be in place for 2016. So having a division 2 team in Toronto owned by someone else (non-ML$E) in a time of revolt(at the time of this concept, we were in our 7th year, of failure) would not be the best thing for ML$E would it?
So did Larry/Bell buy the Argos because it was a great investment? Is it possible they were trying to block something? Does anyone know anyone at the CSA that can ask how the NASL Canadian / CFL affiliation thing is going? An article July 10, 2014 in SBNation discussed the concept as well [
http://www.sbnation.com/soccer/2014/...da-partnership ] but nothing was stated after that.
Is this just total coincidence here or was there some kind of play happening behind the scenes?
I'd be very interested if anyone has any details or inside contacts they can ask about this partnership thing for an update.
Bones...