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When Mark Cohon was hired as the commissioner of the Canadian Football League, it seemed he had precious little on his plate.
It had been a long, long time since life in that post was uneventful. Ever since Jake Gaudaur headed off to retirement after securing a landmark television contract for the league, anyone brave enough or foolish enough to accept the mantle has found life at the top none too comfortable.
At times, the pain was self-inflicted, and at times, external forces were in play. Rarely was the support of the governors universal or unequivocal, and often a coup d'état remained a real possibility.
Cohon's two predecessors, Michael Lysko and Tom Wright, both left office with boot marks on their backside, one fired and one allowed to walk away because of lost confidence among his employers, and in both cases that messy business was embarrassingly played out in public.
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But the new guy, bright and young and optimistic and blessed with a last name that carries a lot of weight in the Canadian business community, had a couple of distinct advantages going in.
The league had just signed a new, five-year television deal with TSN, handing over everything but the kitchen sink in return for a modicum of financial stability.
And, having demanded the security of a five-year contract, Cohon wasn't quite so likely to feel the heat early on.
Plus, the league itself, after a tumultuous decade and a half, seemed to have reached a kind of stasis. It is what it is, and but for the possibility of returning a ninth franchise to Ottawa, or the longer-shot possibility of expanding somewhere else, Cohon's role seemed that of caretaker.
So much for that easy ride.
With the Buffalo Bills coming to Toronto to play two games a year starting next fall, and with all signs pointing to the NFL franchise relocating to Toronto right about the time 89-year-old Ralph Wilson departs this Earth, Cohon has been presented with a challenge that in the past was purely theoretical. He will almost certainly be the one to deal with the arrival of the great colossus. That, and not any marketing or television initiative, or the return of a dead franchise, will define Cohon's term as the commissioner.
Rhetorically, at least, he is off to a very good start. At the traditional pre-Grey Cup state-of-the-game news conference yesterday, Cohon, in his prepared remarks, did something that no other CFL commissioner has done — he acknowledged the NFL might well come to Toronto and that the CFL had better have a strategy to deal with that.
"If I think working with the NFL can grow our business and the quality of our organization and expand football in this country, that's what I'm prepared to do," he said.
Later, in response to a question, he went further. "You have an owner in Ralph Wilson in Buffalo who has said, 'When I die, my estate will sell the franchise,'" Cohon said. "You have the Bills interested in marking Toronto as part of their territory. … So I think there are all of these things lining up that indicate it could happen. I'm not sticking my head in the sand. That would be the worst thing for the CFL commissioner to do. So I think there's a real potential."
That may be conventional wisdom, but when it comes out of the mouth of the CFL commissioner, it's also unprecedented.
Let's all say hello to the elephant in the room.
What you could also hear emerging yesterday — when put together with information gleaned from other CFL sources — is the beginning of a strategy for co-existence. The best card the CFL has to play is its history, its cultural significance — and the possibility that it could be wiped out by an NFL incursion. Assuming that that's in no one's interest, it would want a few small concessions in return for playing nice: a new home for the Toronto Argonauts at BMO Field, and perhaps the money to renovate the stadium in order to accommodate CFL football; some pairing of season's tickets, giving Argos buyers an added incentive; and shared sponsorship dollars.
Do that, and the CFL might be willing to shift its season back a few weeks to avoid the meat of the NFL schedule and act as happy partners in developing football in Canada.
To make that kind of deal, understanding that the would-be Toronto NFL owners don't give a damn about what happens to the Argos, is going to require considerable negotiating skill, exceptional nerves, considerable guts and a bit of good fortune.
Mark Cohon, welcome to the job.
