A 13-team CFL? That seems unlucky

The Touchdown Atlantic game in Moncton this week has obviously led to a lot of speculation about the CFL adding a 10th team in Atlantic Canada. That's fair; rumours of a team in either Halifax or Moncton have been swirling for quite a while, and given the response to the preseason and regular-season games in the area, it seems at least possible that there could be enough fan support in the region to sustain a team. There are still questions of who'd have the money to own it, if they'd be able to get enough corporate support and where they'd play, though.

Still, football down east is doing well at the high school, club and CIS levels, and the apparent recent decision to move the 2011 Uteck Bowl (a CIS national semifinal, featuring the Atlantic champion and the Ontario champion that year) to Moncton bodes well for football in that city. It wouldn't be totally unexpected to see an Atlantic team somewhere around the time Ottawa finally enters the league in 2013, or perhaps even later; it all depends on how and if the remaining issues are addressed.

There's a big jump from that to speculating about a 13-team league, though, as CFL on TSN panelist and TSN.ca columnist Chris Schultz (pictured at right on his 1991 Toronto Argonauts trading card, which can be yours for just $0.01!) did yesterday. Schultz's piece talks about 12 teams, but excludes Ottawa from the 12-team list at the bottom, although he calls the Ottawa franchise "a reality" further up in the piece. Unless he knows something we don't about Ottawa, the only one of these franchises that's been officially announced yet, it seems likely his proposal would result in 13 teams.

Where exactly would all these extra teams go? Well, Schultz proposes Moncton for the next team in 2014, and that seems pretty reasonable. His other suggestions are a little more suspect. He proposes putting another team in Halifax, even though the conventional wisdom has questioned if the Maritimes are strong enough to sustain one CFL team, let alone two. There's a chance Halifax could support a team, and they'd certainly have a great rivalry with a Moncton team, but that would split the already-limited fan and corporate dollars in the Atlantic between two franchises.

There's a similar problem with putting a team in Saskatoon, another one of his proposed sites. Yes, the Roughriders are the league's dominant team economically, but they have a proud history and tradition of being a provincial franchise. Putting another team in Saskatchewan will only hurt that, and it's unclear how many Rider fans they'd even be able to convert. Sure, it would lead to a great rivalry, but the corporate dollars are again an issue, as is a CFL-class stadium. The biggest problem with a Saskatoon team is that it wouldn't bring much in the way of new fans or new revenue to the league; Saskatoon is already firmly within the Riders' market, so a team there would just transfer some fans and revenue from one franchise to another.

Schultz's suggestion of a team in Quebec City is probably the most reasonable of the three franchises he proposes after Moncton. There's a tremendous appetite for football in Quebec, and a Quebec City franchise would likely draw in new fans of the CFL game. The CIS Laval Rouge et Or are huge in Quebec City, but the Montreal Alouettes have a smaller presence there; the Alouettes do have some tendencies towards being a provincial team, a la Saskatchewan, but they're much more of a Montreal team than anything else. A Quebec City team could bring back memories of the old Canadiens-Nordiques battles in the NHL, and Montreal-Quebec games would be tremendous. Moreover, there's already a pretty good stadium there, Laval's Stade PEPS, which is hosting the 2010 and 2011 Vanier Cups. It would need significant expansion to accommodate a CFL franchise, but that doesn't seem too terribly far-fetched. Quebec City also probably has a slight edge over Halifax and Saskatoon in terms of potential corporate dollars, but those are still a bit of a question mark, as is potential ownership. Still, if you're convinced further expansion is important, it's not a bad place to consider.

The question is if we really need further expansion, though. Overexpansion into the U.S. almost destroyed the league in the 1990s. The idea behind it wasn't necessarily horrible, but the execution was appalling; minimal consideration was given to locations, stadiums, markets, or ownership stability and the whole event turned into a gong show. The league expanded way too quickly, lured by the sight of expansion cheques without considering the long-term implications. That almost proved fatal.

The league's current approach makes much more sense. Take expansion slowly, and focus on sustaining the health of the existing teams first. When a decision is made to expand to a city like Ottawa, make sure there's enough time that all the ducks are in a row before the first kickoff. If a similar move is eventually made towards either Moncton or Halifax, that could be logical; if that doesn't work out, Quebec City might. It's true that a 10-team league is much easier to deal with than a nine-team league, and that's more desirable in the long term. The league could even eventually grow beyond 10 teams if the circumstances are right. Each new franchise has to be the right situation, though, and it has to be handled the right way. Expansion for the sake of expansion can cause much more harm than good.