The Argos lifted the Grey Cup at the Rogers Centre in 2012, but may need to find a new stadium.

There's a lot of excitement in Toronto around the Blue Jays, who start their Major League Baseball season Tuesday night against the Cleveland Indians. For their co-tenants at the Rogers Centre, though, the Jays' remarkable offseason may not prove entirely positive; the renewed level of interest in the baseball team seems likely to boost their financial picture, and is probably related to the stories that have started popping up about the team taking their long-rumoured interest in converting their field to grass into a a definite timeframe for installation between 2015 and 2018. A grass field wouldn't work for a stadium that the team shares with the CFL's Toronto Argonauts, as football tends to chew grass up too much for baseball, and The Globe and Mail's Robert MacLeod has reported that Jays' president Paul Beeston has told the Argos they need to find a new home within five years.

From a CFL perspective, the most basic way to look at this is as the Rogers-owned Jays bullying the Argos out of a Rogers-owned arena, especially given recent reports of Rogers' growing distaste for the Bell/TSN-affiliated CFL. However, that's not really the whole story: while the quest for a new home is likely to be exceptionally difficult for the Argos, securing a better facility is probably crucial to their long-term future, and a deadline like Beeston's reported one might actually prove a valuable motivator for them to get that done sooner rather than later.

Khalif Mitchell will be taking his celebrations to Toronto.By and large, the CFL's most successful teams operate on the basis that talent is talent; a lot can be overlooked if the player's good enough. Sometimes, though, controversies on and off the field can become enough of a headache to move even a talented player. That appears to be the case with the B.C. Lions' decision to send defensive tackle Khalif Mitchell to the Toronto Argonauts for defensive end Adrian Awasom and the rights to a negotiation-list player.

Based on pure talent alone, that doesn't seem like a huge return for Mitchell; he's been a league all-star as recently as 2011, has a mix of size (he's listed at 6'5'', 316 pounds) and speed that's extremely rare in the CFL, is turning just 28 this year and can be one of the league's most disruptive interior pass-rushers when he's at his best. Given all the controversies Mitchell provoked this past season and what seemed to be an eroding relationship between him and the Lions, it's hard to fault B.C. for making this move, though. (Running back Andrew Harris doesn't seem too broken up about it.) The key question is which Mitchell Toronto will land; the 2011 version who dominated the line of scrimmage and was one of the most crucial components in their Grey Cup victory, the 2012 version who earned suspensions from both the league and his team, or a combination of both?

Rey Williams has returned to Regina as a free agent, showing it's a destination.There's an interesting contrast in the CFL: the league's smallest city has its most financially powerful team. The success of the Saskatchewan Roughriders has long been cited as a crucial factor in CFL TV ratings (as flawed as those may be), and the team has been at the top of the league (or occasionally right near it) the top in television numbers, social media numbers and merchandise sales for years. The Riders' popularity with fans across the country was undoubtedly a factor in the CFL's massive new broadcast deal (now believed to be worth upwards of $40 million annually), too; they're far from the only reason for the league's success, but they're a big part of it. However, while the team's had solid fan support for decades, that hasn't always translated into attracting top players in free agency; for some time, Regina has been viewed as a harder sell than bigger cities for top free agents. As Murray McCormick writes in The Regina Leader-Post, that may be starting to change: the team's brought in big names like Geroy Simon, Ricky Foley, Rey Williams and Dwight Anderson so far this offseason, and Williams told McCormick Saskatchewan seems like an attractive destination for players these days:

The Saskatchewan Roughriders have extended GM Brendan Taman through 2015.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders' decision Thursday to give general manager Brendan Taman a two-year contract extension reads as an attempt to ensure some continuity, and that makes sense from a number of perspectives. First, Taman's contract was expiring following 2013, so this extension (which goes through the 2015 season) gives him the security to think long-term when building the club rather than focusing solely on winning now. Perhaps even more importantly, though, long-term stability at GM has worked out well for many CFL franchises recently. Having the right man in place and keeping him there can be a key to CFL success. Taman's accomplishments with the Riders haven't yet reached the level of most of the league's long-term GMs, but the team's betting that he can get there.

How much does continuity at general manager matter? Well, three of the last five Grey Cups have been won by long-tenured GMs. That would be Montreal's Jim Popp (who's been with the franchise since it was in Baltimore in 1994) in 2009 and 2010 and B.C.'s Wally Buono (who's been there since 2003) in 2011. Those franchises have been continually strong for most of the last decade, and continuity at the top's a key reason why. One of the other GMs to win is Toronto's Jim Barker, who counts as at least moderately-tenured (he won this season in his third year with the franchise, his second as GM). The exception is Calgary's John Hufnagel, who won in his first year with the team (2008), but the Stampeders' sustained success under Hufnagel since and their run to the Grey Cup game this year shows they've reaped the benefits of keeping him around for the long term.

Ron Lancaster Jr. accepted the Commissioner's Award on behalf of his late father in 2008, but made his own mark as a CFL coach.

Sad news has hit the Canadian football community, as Drew Edwards reported Wednesday that former CFL assistant Ron Lancaster Jr. was found dead in his Hamilton apartment Tuesday night. Lancaster, the son of legendary CFL quarterback, coach and executive Ron (who passed away in 2008), was a long-time CFL assistant with Toronto, Edmonton, Hamilton and Winnipeg. Teams he worked with went to five Grey Cup games, winning three. Edwards writes that Lancaster has been coaching junior and high school football in Hamilton since 2007, so his passing is a loss for that city as well.

Joey Elliott's Bombers tenure had promising moments, but wasn't consistently solid.

Change is in the air in Winnipeg. The Blue Bombers are going to play in a new stadium this year, and with the releases of quarterback Joey Elliott and Canadian safety Ian Logan officially announced Tuesday, it's clear there are going to be some different faces on that new field. Neither release is particularly surprising, but these are both players who were considered crucial parts of this franchise at one point. Moving on without them demonstrates the Bombers are trying to head in a new direction.

Kristopher Robertson blew away the field in the 40 Sunday, but almost wasn't invited.

The fastest player at this year's CFL combine almost wasn't invited. Concordia Stingers' defensive back Kristopher Robertson, who blew away the field in both the broad jump and vertical jump Saturday, continued his dominance of the combine Sunday, posting an event-best 40-yard dash time of 4.423 seconds that tied then-Laurier receiver Shamawd Chambers' combine-best time from 2012. (The overall record for the CFL combine is the 4.31-second mark Bishop's running back Steven Turner posted in 2010.) Video of Robertson's impressive run is available here. What's really remarkable is that Robertson's only at this event because he shone at a regional combine in Quebec City this week; this is the first year those league-organized regional events have been held, so in any other year, Robertson might never have made it to the combine. It makes you wonder how the scouts and executives who draw up the list of combine invitees missed such a promising talent.

Bishop's defensive lineman Elie Ngoyi recorded a combine-high 40 bench press reps Saturday.

The CFL's annual combine always provides an intriguing look into how draft prospects stack up in a variety of metrics, and this year's was no exception. The first day of testing Saturday saw some notable surprises, with a pair of players from Quebec universities perhaps being the most prominent ones. Bishop's defensive lineman Elie Ngoyi put up 40 repetitions of 225 pounds on the bench press, the second-highest total in CFL combine history, while Concordia defensive back Kristopher Robertson (who was only invited to the national combine after a great showing at the Quebec regional combine, further proving the value of those events) blew away the field in both the vertical jump and the broad jump, posting combine-best marks of 43 inches and 10 feet, five and a half inches respectively. That doesn't necessarily mean either Ngoyi or Robertson will be a top draft pick; neither impressed enough in CIS play to crack the top-15 list of prospects in December, although Ngoyi was ranked #12 in September, and game performance can matter just as much (if not more) than raw athletic numbers posted at the combine. It does mean that both will carry a lot more buzz heading into the draft than they would have without a strong combine showing, though.