The start of the 2008 CFL regular season is in danger of being overshadowed by the NFL’s move into Canada.

The Canadian Football League is in trouble again.

At a time when a new season is set to begin, the stories are more about what’s happening off the field -- specifically with the Buffalo Bills playing games in Toronto -- than on the field.

This is exactly the kind of thing that plagued the CFL in the 1990s when it was in danger of folding under a financial mess, and as recently as 2003 when the owners of the Toronto Argonauts and Hamilton Tiger-Cats stopped paying their bills. The headlines were all about the CFL’s doom and gloom.

It took a while for that to be turned around. New, solid ownership rescued the Argos and Tiger-Cats and even though the Ottawa Renegades ceased operations after a four-year run, there remains hope of restoring a team in the nation’s capital.

Each of the CFL’s eight teams appears to be on solid financial ground which combined with a new TV contract is good news. New commissioner Mark Cohon last year inherited a league without the baggage that burdened his predecessor Tom Wright from the first day Wright took the job and became nothing more than a four-year headache.

But the Bills coming to Toronto and the threat that might present are gaining as much attention in the media as training camp stories – and from some interesting sources. The National Post, a CFL sponsor, has printed passionate articles from both Cohon and B.C. president Bob Ackles extolling the virtues of the league. It is somewhat unusual to have members of a league, in particular its commissioner, writing articles that are designed to promote the league and, indirectly, defend it against the invasion of the big, bad NFL.

This is coming at a time when the CFL and the NFL have broken off talks on a new agreement for reasons which are not entirely clear, but surely have to do with the CFL saying "thanks, but no thanks" to what the NFL offered.

At best this can be described as a standstill, but there are signs of the disagreement becoming more militant war. Cohon and his counterpart, Roger Goodell, don’t appear as buddy-buddy as their predecessors were in 1997 during the historic CFL-NFL agreement in which the NFL essentially bailed out the financially-strapped CFL.

A league is only as solid as its weakest link and though there does not appear to be a weak link financially among the CFL teams, history suggests it can happen at any time, triggered by any number of reasons.

In the midst of all this, you have B.C. senator Larry Campbell’s hopeless quest to keep the NFL out of Canada for any regular-season games by means of Parliament. It’s not certain if the CFL is even on side with his plan.

If you go to the Toronto Argonauts’ website, you can see an advertisement that provides information on the Bills’ games in Toronto. Because the Argos play in the same venue, Rogers Centre, in which the Bills will play their games in Toronto, they are essentially caught in a Catch-22. Had they had their own stadium – and remember, this was the plan they abandoned because it made financial sense to stay at Rogers Centre – they could lead the anti-Bills’ charge. Not only are the Argos tenants at Rogers Centre, but the landlord, Rogers Communications Inc., is behind the promotion to bring the Bills to play in Toronto. Never mind that Rogers would like to increase the number of games in Toronto and it will be first in line to buy the team once the Bills’ owner, Ralph Wilson, dies. He has already said he will sell the team outright to the highest bidder to avoid estate taxes.

There is so much being written about the Bills’ invasion – and the debate and spin jobs are going in all different directions – that it’s become a big topic, mainly in Toronto but picking up significant traction across the country because of the Post’s articles, in particular the ones written by Cohon and Ackles.

The start of the 2008 regular season is almost upon us, but it is in danger of being overshadowed by the NFL’s imminent invasion into Canada.

When the talk is more about off the field than on the field, it is a bad sign.