Jim Lawson to become interim CFL commissioner, Mark Cohon to officially step down Jan. 9

The CFL will have a new commissioner a little sooner than many had expected. Mark Cohon, who's been in that role since 2007, had previously announced this August that he wouldn't be seeking a new term when his contract expired in April 2015, but Dan Ralph of The Canadian Press reported Thursday that Cohon will be exiting stage left (hey, he's a Rush fan!) in January. He'll be replaced on an interim basis by Jim Lawson, the chair of the league's board of governors. Here are the key details from Ralph's piece:

If this move was initiated from the board's side, it appears rather curious. Yes, Cohon's unlikely to be able to do too much from now to April given his imminent departure, but why is having Lawson as an interim commissioner any better on that front? At first, this looks like a shakeup for no real clear reason, and it's removing a commissioner who has a substantial amount of solid business and political connections that he could have potentially still used to benefit the CFL in the next few months (say, with the ongoing efforts to move the Argonauts into BMO Field). Lawson has done a good job of running the CFL's board since his September 2013 appointment, and he has connections of his own in Toronto thanks to his work with the Woodbine Entertainment Group and various law firms, but the league already had him involved. Pushing Cohon out early and giving Lawson two hats as both board chair and commissioner (and two hats that can be difficult to wear at the same time) seems unusual, as it's removing someone who could have still benefited the CFL without an apparent gain.

Another possibility is the board thinking that the commissioner search was going to extend beyond April. In that case, it makes some sense to have an interim commissioner already established and in place as the new season gets closer. Perhaps Lawson's interim role will last a while, and the board's trying to give him enough time to make some changes. That's still unusual, though, as it wouldn't seem that hard to just make Lawson interim commissioner in April if he hadn't found a new commissioner by then. Doing this still seems curious on the board's part, and it makes one wonder if team politics have become involved again.

If Cohon initiated this move, though, that would make more sense. Perhaps a new job's already come up for him that he wants to start early. He's been particularly linked to Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment's impending CEO vacancy, but Tim Leiweke isn't expected to leave there until June 30. There are certainly plenty of other attractive job options out there for Cohon, though, so if something's come up, perhaps it makes sense for him to pursue that. If he didn't choose this early departure, though, there are a lot of questions about why it happened. It's not necessarily a crisis for the league to have Cohon leaving earlier than he initially planned, but there doesn't seem to be any real upside to it for the CFL, and it raises questions of what's going on behind the scenes at the board level.