For the first time, new commissioner Stewart Johnston stepped up to the podium to provide the CFL’s annual State of the League address.
The event is always one of the highlights of Grey Cup week as it provides a window into what’s going on at the league level in any given year.
With it being his first State of the League address, we also got a chance to see how Johnston plans on handling the event. I think it’s safe to say he plans on taking a more traditional approach than his predecessor, which is probably a good thing.
Here’s the good, the bad, and the dumb of the CFL’s state of the league address.
The Good
We all have moments in our life where we look back and decide that we’d do something differently if given the chance.
It’s safe to say Johnston had one of those moments earlier this year when he announced significant rule changes that will come into effect over the next couple of seasons. When asked if he could guarantee the league will never switch to four downs, he chose not to do so, suggesting (fairly, I think) he would never offer guarantees.
Could he have worded his statement differently? Probably, however, on essentially an infinite timeline, it’s impossible to say for sure that it would never happen.
In his opening remarks and when asked about it later, Johnston was very clear this time around that at least under his watch, the CFL would remain a three-down league with a 65-yard wide field, 12 players on the field, and feature larger end zones.
It wasn’t all perfect from Johnston when it came to the rule changes — I don’t think he effectively acknowledged those who are against them. Asking those fans to at least give the changes a chance seemed like an easy thing to include.
Overall, though, Johnston did what any good leader should do when they’ve made an error: admit the mistake and show you’ve learned from it. Will his answer put some fans at ease? Only time will tell.
The Bad
Listening to Johnston speak throughout the morning, it became abundantly clear when the commissioner was looking forward to answering a question and when he wasn’t.
The answers to questions for which Johnston was clearly prepped and excited to answer were generally thoughtful and quite transparent. These are qualities that Johnston hoped to bring to the role and the league in general.
A good example of this was when he was asked about the possibility of the league one day disclosing player salaries as a way to encourage fan engagement. Johnston said that this was something that would be coming up during the offseason’s general meeting and that the agenda for said meeting would be made public.
On the other hand, some of the more difficult questions surrounding some of the issues facing the league received a pretty obvious non-answer.
Perhaps the most non-non-answer came when Johnston was asked by 3DownNation’s J.C. Abbott about the football operations cap. Both of this year’s Grey Cup head coaches emphatically suggested the league axe the cap, so it was topical.
Johnston was specifically asked about small, underpaid coaching staffs having to now adapt to new rules, which was an entirely fair question and Johnston danced around it by suggesting how great the changes could be and that coaches are excited for them. What he said was fine, but it had nothing to do with the question asked.
If the cap is staying and there aren’t any big changes coming on the horizon, then that’s fine. It would have been better to just say so rather than give an answer that you’d expect to hear from a politician — not someone who has spent much of his short tenure as commissioner preaching transparency.
The Dumb
Given Johnston’s more straight-forward approach to the event and more professional style than Randy Ambrosie, his predecessor who liked to fill time with stunts and overlong answers, the availability didn’t offer up many moments of levity.
It wasn’t until the question and answer period was nearly over when Johnston started taking some questions in French, which he did quite well comprehending, that Johnston got his first laugh.
When asked about the future prospects of the the CFL expanding to Quebec City, Johnston said he was thankful that the question was asked slowly, which helped his understand.
It was a light-hearted moment that showed the Johnston’s ability to have some fun at his own expense. Hopefully there are more of these moments in the future.
