A CFL state of the union address is all about separating fact from fiction.
EDMONTON — It was 2005 in Vancouver, and then CFL commissioner Tom Wright — who never met a question he couldn’t pretend to answer — was making his way through the minefield that is the Canadian Football League commissioner’s news conference.
In the back of the room stood Bill (The Undertaker) Baker, the old Saskatchewan and B.C. defensive tackle who would spend nine months in the commissioner’s chair himself in 1989.
He watched Wright soft-shoe through 45 minutes with Canada’s nosiest sports writers, and was still laughing afterwards when we asked him what was so funny?
"They’re impossible questions," Baker said. "I mean, those questions can only be answered at about two o’clock in the morning, when you’ve had about a dozen beers."
He staggered for effect: "’OK, I’ll tell you the real story...’"
It is absolutely true: What the CFL commissioner can say on the record and off the record have about as much in common as Riderville and the Betty Ford.
My history with the commissioner’s news conference is best summed up with this thought: Just because it’s true, it doesn’t mean the commissioner can say it. And just because he can say it, it doesn’t mean it’s true.
It is a metaphor for where the CFL exists, in that nether region between fact and fiction.
Somewhere between the National Football League, which is capturing the attention of an alarming number of young Canadian football fans with fantasy pools and video games while the CFL is not, and Canadian college football, something the average Canadian could not possibly care less.
For every professional-looking TV shot of a slo-mo, spiraling long bomb the CFL gives us, there is that car driving by in the background, or a row of houses just outside the stadium fence that you just never seem to see on Monday Night Football.
There are entire receiving corps of white guys, for Pete’s sake. One of them — Saskatchewan’s — is maybe the best in the league!
So it is a thankless job, Cohon’s, identifying the requisite successes necessary to brag his league up to the level of the other major sports, while trying not to dwell on the fact it is the campiness of the CFL that might just be its most endearing trait.
At times, Cohon’s predecessors have fallen off of that fence. Like former commissioner Mike Lysko, who sat in the same chair back in 2001 and tried to paint himself and his league as the envy of the all the big boys.
"While other professional leagues are dealing with contraction, we’re expanding," Lysko boasted that morning in Montreal. "We are an upward trending league in a downward trending industry.
"David Stern and Gary Bettman, they look longingly over the fence at us. And we divide (the profits) by nine."
And there was this: "There is equity in this league. Equity and credibility that the XFL would have killed for. Every problem we have is fixable."
Including Lysko himself.
He was fired after a couple of seasons, guilty of saying what he thought more often than what his owners would have prefered.
That’s where Cohon has a shelf life in this league.
He was quick with a number during his address Friday morning in Edmonton:
• Half of CFL games were decided by seven points or less in 2010, and "almost half" were decided in final three minutes.
• The league drew two million fans. Regular season attendance was down 4.5 percent, mostly because the B.C. Lions down-sized to Empire Stadium and the fact "the new Argos owners were much more transparent in the reporting of their crowds."
Yet, faced with questions from the Francophone media over Alouettes complaints regarding their hotel and dressing room, Cohon switched into commissioner mode again.
He may have wanted to say, "Is anything ever good enough for you whiny Quebecers?" or, "My Gosh, do you divas EVER stop expecting preferential treatment?"
Instead, he stuck to his mantra.
"I don’t think this is in any way going to impact their ability to perform on the field Sunday," he said. Despite the rephrasing of the same question at least three times — as we in the media are wont to do — Cohon proved impossible to move off-message.
Then, moments later when the annual subject of expansion to Quebec City arose, Cohon dropped this little nugget, free of charge: "(Quebec City) is part of Montreal’s territorial rights. It would be a negotiation we would have to have (with the Alouettes) if we ever had a team there."
Translation: Before you guys start blaming The Rest of Canada on this one, you might want to check up on what’s going on in our own back yard.
It was pure brilliance.
Especially for a guy dumb enough to be the commissioner of the CFL.
