A lockout in the CFL? Yeah, right.

So, there's talk of a possible lockout in the Canadian Football League next year.

How many times have we heard this story before?

The CFL, which commissioner Mark Cohon will have you believe is doing well because of the boffo TV ratings and increased ticket sales, is really an entity which is a take one step forward and hope that you don't take two back.

It has managed to survive through the threat of bankruptcy - remember how acute things were in the mid-90s that the league had to go to the U.S. to create franchises and acquire some economic relief?

And how it needed the National Football League to loan it $4 million so it could use the money to give some of the franchises financial relief, most notably Saskatchewan?

And how it revived the Ottawa market, only to see it fold four years later?

And the collapse of ownership in Toronto and Hamilton?

And…

Well, there's a brief synopsis of how the league came through those ordeals and is still around today.

All it will take is another crisis to cause the CFL to teeter. A lockout will surely do it.

Would the players really risk the monies they are making to try and force the owners' hands? Would the owners actually play hardball?

If the CFL actually did not start on time, it might as well not start at all. Any kind of suspension in the schedule would create lost revenues from which some teams would really feel the financial pinch.

Saskatchewan stands to reap a profit of close to $2 million this year. Shut down the league for a year or part of it and that would hit the Roughriders right where it hurts.

Most teams are lucky to break even or reap a small profit each year, but some are really taking sufficient losses - notably those in the southern Ontario market. A lockout might actually reduce their losses, but it would also kill the franchises because people will find other ways to spend their money. Attendance is not exactly skyrocketing in those markets anyway.

No, we've heard rumours of a lockout/strike so often and it always results in nothing more than speculation.

If nothing else, however, it's another thing for Cohon to discuss in between talk of football possibly coming back in Ottawa, a regular-season game in New Brunswick next year and the continued banter of a CFL drug policy.

If a lockout actually happened, it would be a blemish on Cohon's pristine record so far. Many men before him have faced the threat of a lockout/strike and it has never happened.

And it will not happen next year.