The elephant in the room

VANCOUVER – He was the big elephant that wasn’t in the room.

On Friday, when Canadian Football League Commissioner Mark Cohon gave his annual state of the league address – his fifth since taking office in the spring of 2007 and possibly his final one—B.C. Lions and Toronto Argonauts owner David Braley was noticeably absent.

Cohon’s contract is up in the spring of 2012 and it’s possible he won’t be offered another one.

To be fair, the collective audience included the media and some of Cohon’s staff. During some previous addresses the commissioner had been joined by team owners or directors, but not on Friday.

The fact that Cohon is an impending free agent might have created a distraction for members of the board and owners had they been in attendance.

Regardless of whether it’s Cohon or someone else sitting atop the CFL totem pole in a few month’s time, Braley remains the more important individual. He saved the Lions from extinction in 1996 and has built a franchise that is strong on and off the field.

His Lions are favoured to win this year’s Grey Cup against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Sunday at B.C. Place.

But the B.C. market is much different than Toronto as Braley, who lives in Burlington, ON but frequently spends time in Vancouver, has discovered. There is just far more competition in the Toronto area for sports and entertainment. Cohon said Braley had to see the situation up close to understand what fully needs to be done and what changes need to be made.

"This really is a long-term plan. It’s not a one-year fix," Cohon said.

Braley, appointed to the Senate last year and recently inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, joined the Argos as its full-time owner in the winter of 2010 (although he had secretly been financially backing listed owners David Cynamon and Howard Sokolowski prior to that).

When Cynamon and Sokolowski took over the Argos following the 2003 season, they breathed life, enthusiasm, energy and passion into the team. The Argos won the Cup in 2004, giving the owners an immediate return on their investment, although it had more to do with pride than actual dollars. The duo were in the public eye and had swagger.

That is not Braley’s style.

There is always excitement with owning a new sports property, in particular, with the Argos.

Many have tried to make it work on and off the field, but few have succeeded on a long-term basis. So now it’s Braley’s time, and as he heads into his second full season in Toronto, there is a plan in place. Cohon indicated it will include a spokesman/frontman for the team because Braley is more of a behind-the-scenes guy, wielding power, influence and ideas like the wizard of Oz.

That new person may be Chris Rudge, who is chairman of the Argos’ 2012 Grey Cup committee. He is a diehard Argos fan and is comfortable talking in public in a way that Braley isn’t. Rudge may even have his current duties expanded to incorporate the day-to-day operations of the Argos.

You could debate endlessly the appropriateness of one person owning two franchises in an eight-team league and why Cohon couldn’t use his influence to find another person to buy the team when Cynamon and Sokolowski had enough.

But any businessman who remotely follows the Argos knows it is a financial drain.

There are no rubes like Sherwood Schwarz out there, the New York insurance magnate who naively believed he could rescue the Argos when he bought the team in 2000 but who dumped the keys in the CFL’s lap in 2003.

Braley is a different duck. It’s been suggested he would own all eight teams if he could, more because of his passion for the CFL than the power it would bring.

Whether it’s a direct or indirect reason, the CFL will pump $1 million into Southern Ontario next year to help regenerate the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Argos. There will be plenty of action next year in Toronto because it will play host to the 100th Grey Cup, but beyond that, what?

Cohon, with his omnipresent smile, talked about Braley’s renewed energy and time to commit to the Argos and added: "We think he’s the right man to get it done." Frankly, there’s no one else standing in line to do it.

It was pointed out to Cohon that even when the Argos had back-to-back Grey Cup-wining teams in 1996 and ’97, Torontonians had an indifference to it and that little has changed. If anything, it may have grown even worse; that you couldn’t rile up interest among people in Toronto even if you tried.

"We hope people have that passion," Cohon said. "We think there’s that passion under the surface."

So how do the Argos make themselves relevant as a sporting entity competing against the increasing mite of the Maple Leafs, Blue Jays, Toronto FC and Raptors? How can they convince people to sit in a stadium that has lost its lustre? How can they bring back a lost generation and bring in a new one?

The City of Toronto and its mayor, Rob Ford, may be part of the answer.

He is an avid football fan and coaches high school football in the city, although he and his brother Doug, who is a city councilor, posed on the front cover of a Toronto newspaper openly promoting the idea of bringing a National Football League franchise to town.

When pressed on that subject the day the Argos announced their grand plans for the 2012 Grey Cup, Ford said he was there to support the Argos and the CFL. His brother however, didn’t back down or shy away from talking about bringing an NFL team to Toronto and the economic gain that would be derived.

Cohon has made some major gains in five years with the CFL, ushering in a new collective bargaining agreement, a drug policy, enhanced video replay, stadium infrastructure, reviving Ottawa as a future CFL market and possibly expanding into Atlantic Canada one day.

But Toronto is still an acute situation, and Cohon hasn’t changed the ongoing malaise. It’s been said a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and in the CFL that continues to be Southern Ontario, more specifically Toronto.

Cohon noted that there’s no magic wand to fixing Toronto. He knows that and so does everybody else. That is not news.

Braley has wielded his magic in B.C, but in Toronto the magic show needs lots of work to make people want to see it.

Perry Lefko keeps you connected to all the news in the CFL on Sportsnet.ca.