The Toronto Argonauts went back in time Thursday playing a pre-season game at Varsity Stadium, a place they once called home.
The game meant little more than giving the Argos and the visiting Montreal Alouettes a final chance to look at some players before the regular season starts next week.
The Argos won the Grey Cup last year, but it hasn’t translated to robust season-ticket sales. It is business as usual, which is to say the Argos must continue to maintain their presence as the most visible professional sports franchise in the community.
Going back to Varsity was a throwback in time to a place that housed games that are forever etched in the fabric of the Argos.
Varsity once had a capacity of 27,000 and a dedicated audience, but the stadium is only a shell of what it once was — a place that has been forgotten.
Had the owners that bought the team after the 2003 season had their way, Varsity Stadium would have become the Argos’ new home.
They purchased the team with a plan toward giving the team a place to create a fan experience, decorated with reminders of their past when pro sports in Toronto consisted of only the Maple Leafs and the Argos.
Going back to Varsity made perfect sense, both to the University of Toronto and the Argos, both willing to partner on the stadium. Political resistance by the people in the neighborhood ended the idea, which forced the owners to look to the north end of the city on the campus of York University to try a new plan.
It had some momentum until the Argo owners analyzed everything and decided to stay at the Rogers Centre.
Who knows if the Argos will ever find a new home? They are about to enter into a new five-year agreement to stay at Rogers Centre, their home since 1989.
As the Canadian Football League moves forward with modernizing some of its stadiums, the Argos remain at a stadium once considered state of the art, but too big for the core audience that pays to see the team play. The passion is strong. The days of going to games to see and sit in the stadium are long gone.
At some point the team will have to move and is exploring possible sites.
Ideally it would be downtown, but the demographics of the city have changed and that may mean the Argos will have to look beyond the downtown boundaries.
But at what cost?
At a time when public funding for stadiums has become almost impossible, notwithstanding the gift the provincial government gave to Hamilton by footing the majority of the bill for a facility for the Pan Am Games in 2015, there does not appear to be a surplus of money available to build a separate place for the Argos to play.
If current owner David Braley decided to put forward a good chunk of the funding towards building a new stadium it would surely be his greatest legacy. He has done his part buying the B.C. Lions and the Argos, saving both franchises and, to a greater extent, the CFL.
Expecting him to dig even deeper into his own pockets is not necessarily realistic. But who ever thought he’d own two teams at the same time?
Meanwhile in another part of the city, Major League Soccer’s Toronto FC play in a stadium that would be ideally suited for the Argos were it not for the fact it was never built to accommodate a CFL-sized field. It surely has to rate as one of the biggest fumbles by the politicians who run the city.
The CFL has investigated the possibility of the Argos playing at the soccer pitch, but has adamantly decided against a shoebox solution. It’s been done before, specifically with the now-defunct Memphis Mad Dogs, during the days of the CFL expansion into the U.S., which had to be done for economic survival.
That was 20 years ago, even if it seems like yesterday, when the CFL stood for the Crazy Football League. It is not nearly as nomadic now.
So the Argos proved they could go home again to the place where they once played for a night of nostalgia. But is this pre-season game at Varsity a move back to the past to rekindle an idea for the future? For one meaningless pre-season game, it gave pause for thought.