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When Toronto played host to the 100th iteration of the Grey Cup in 2012, organizers brought Justin Bieber in to perform at halftime.

This was before Bieber morphed into a surly, talk-show punchline. There was no particular reason to dislike him (other than the music).

When he popped up on stage, dressed like an evil Pilates instructor, the Rogers Centre crowd began to boo him ruthlessly. To drown out the jeers, they cranked the bass so high you could feel the fillings working their way out of your teeth. Bieber sang. People booed. Everybody suffered. It was the only real Toronto moment of the evening.

Bieber's sin wasn't being a pop singer at a rock 'n' roll event. It was in being major league. He was too big, too self-important and too flashy for Canada's annual celebration of quaintness.

You don't go the Grey Cup to see the very best. That would be happening on a weekly basis further to the south. You go to celebrate a unique and sustainable brand of second-bestness. That's its charm.

A century ago, pro sports were a tough sell. There was something slightly sordid about the idea of being paid to play a game. Spectators preferred the more innocent pleasures of amateurism.

Since there is no real money to be made in something given freely, that gentle community instinct was beaten flat by corporate interests. Like any business, sports thrives on growth. Everything – the leagues, the spectacle, the dollar figures, even the size of the participants – is constantly expanding.

At every Super Bowl, they give over a main room at the local convention centre to radio hosts from around the world. They are wedged in there like ticks, table after endless table of them. Since no American sports jock can speak without screaming, you walk in there at midday and it sounds like the prelude to a riot. Five days before the game, what can they all possibly be talking about? How many times can people go deep on special teams or the running game or matchup X? Apparently, an infinite amount of times. Electronic sports media has become Talmudic.

This is what the people who run the leagues want – more and more people sitting in the same room yelling over each other about their product. You don't have to be inside the machine to feel its relentlessness. It's contagious.

When you hear the NHL talking about expanding into China, you know we've wandered off the true path. Soccer and basketball can expand into China, because Chinese people play basketball and soccer. They do not play hockey. Or know how hockey's played. Or care. Or even have ice.

What they have is a great many people who are currently doing foolish things with their disposable income, like putting it in the bank. The Chinese have a spare sports-sized hole to fill with that money, and the NHL would like to jam itself in there, whether it fits or not.

There are some frontiers hockey will not cross. China is one of them. And yet we're talking about it because the NHL cannot be happy with its profitable piece of North America pie. Revenues of nearly $4-billion aren't enough – though it's half-again what they earned a decade ago. Like everyone else, the NHL has a rapacious need to expand to all sorts of places hockey doesn't belong. It will eventually lead to some sort of catastrophic decline, and then perhaps we'll cycle back to amateurism for a while. It's ever the way.

Meanwhile, the CFL and the Grey Cup continue churning on in their small, comfortable corner of the big world. They've already learned the hard lesson about going where you're not welcome.

It's remarkable how long ago the CFL's U.S. expansion now seems. Instead of killing the league, it reinforced its core value – a very Canadian emphasis on never aspiring to get too far above your station. It's a game played at a high – rather than the highest – level. It's more than good enough as long as you have a deep vein of tradition running underneath as a support structure.

In 2016, the Toronto Argonauts – the one CFL team that couldn't adjust to that program – will move out of Rogers Centre and into BMO Field. It's a good example of moving backward to get ahead. Inside the larger and frequently two-thirds-empty dome, the Argos looked puny. At BMO, an arena built on a utilitarian European model, they will feel correctly sized. As long as they keep the tickets cheap, people will come. It's a proven design – they already fill the place for second-rate soccer.

Big or small, the long-term success of leagues or teams isn't really about the sport. It's about their connection to the people who watch them. They must in some way define themselves through their fandom. That's the NFL's secret – nothing feels more American than football on a Sunday.

At some point, the Kennedys playing touch football at the family compound became a more potent symbol of that country's values than Ted Williams coming back from the war. It was more hopeful.

This weekend, the Grey Cup will continue on in that same tradition for us, though more quietly. A great many Canadians who don't regularly watch the CFL (or any other sport) will tune in on Sunday night. It doesn't really matter who's playing. That's not the point. It's a national block party. This is a chance to see all your neighbours one last time before winter really kicks off.

The game will be good or bad. The halftime act will just be bad. For most people, the result has little significance. The most important thing is that it's a small reminder of something we do. Just us, for ourselves. Something we don't feel any need to push on other people. That's why it will never fade.

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