CIS Corner: McGill Redmen plan move to OUA, but is it for the greater good of the university game?

Long story short, Montreal's McGill University has deep-pocketed donors who are loath to pay for mediocrity on the football field. And the university football league in Quebec long been wracked by tensions between its French-language programs — including the colossus Laval Rouge et Or — and the three English-language teams.

So perhaps it comes as no shock that the Redmen, who are the oldest football program in North America but have also gone winless in four of the past five seasons, have decided to take their ball to Ontario. There has been some deep tension within the Quebec university football league for some time, especially after an ineligible player controversy with the Danny Maciocia-coached Montreal Carabins last fall. (Long story short: the Carabins lawyered up and got to keep a win where they played an ineligble player.)

McGill athletic director Drew Love announced Thursday the Redmen will apply to join Ontario University Athletics for football in 2013, creating a 12-team league in one province and leaving an odd-number five-team loop in their own. With the type of support McGill gets — one alumnus just gave the program $1.5 million last fall, seriously, who does that for CIS football?! — it's not surprising they want to scramble away to get out from under the Laval Rouge et Or's boot. There's no other way to read the decision to apply to be the 12th team in Ontario University Athletics football other than McGill admitting it can't compete against Laval.

Make no mistake, McGill is doing this because they can. It might run counter to that stated aim of Canadian Interuniversity Sport, which like it or not, puts academic success ahead of winning or making money. How would going from a league where all but one opponent is within a two-hour drive, to busing to London or Windsor, give Redmen footballers more study time?

That's not to say McGill is without its reasons. A program that owns a Vanier Cup title has not made the playoffs since 2006. It would also reunite with the 'old four' of Western, Queen's and Toronto. Carleton and Ottawa were also the Redmen's league rivals in the 1970s, '80s and '90s.

Unlevel playing field

And CIS has long had unaddressed issues about the gap between top programs and the ones which are scuffling. There's also the element of whether teams like Laval and Sherbrooke, which run on a business model more akin to major junior hockey, tilt the playing field.

In La Belle Province, Laval has won the Dunsmore Cup nine consecutive seasons and 10-of-11 overall since an all-Quebec grid league was created in 2001. So McGill shouldn't be slammed for attempting to jump to another league. It's only fair to question how this fits into its academic mission and whether it's for the greater good of CIS football.

The reason that all-Quebec league took form a decade ago was that the Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., and the University of Ottawa under the OUA umbrella from the old O-QIFC. That made sense. Those schools are in Ontario, according to my fleeting grasp of geography (I went to Queen's, so you have to bear with me). For Queen's, their travel demands didn't change very much. Their move paid off handsomely for Queen's when the Golden Gaels won the Vanier Cup in 2009, defeating Laval along the way. Ottawa has had mixed results. It prospered early on an OUA team, but has lost their recruiting pipeline into Quebec and now looks like a program in virtual freefall.

McGill's move can be read as somewhat self-centred. McGill can obviously afford to trade busing across Montreal to play Concordia or the U de M to trekking to Windsor, London and Kitchener-Waterloo. It's fair to wonder if the other two Anglophone programs, the Bishop's Gaiters and Concordia Stingers, have such wherewithal. The Gaiters play at a school with fewer than 3,000 undergrads, for pity's sake.

Further moves ahead?

Yet that could happen. One can see McGill leaving the Q setting off a Canadian scale-model version of the 'conference apocalypse that's unfolded in U.S. college football. Moe Khan of TSN Radio 690 tweeted that OUA coaches are already concerned about Bishop's and Concordia coming over, creating an unwieldly 14-team league.

What happens then? Does the Quebec league try to get Halifax's Saint Mary's Huskies to balance out its numbers, which could hurt the already shaky Atlantic University Sport football league? How crazy would it be if half the teams in CIS football belonged to one league, yet the national body would still require four regional winners to compete in the tournament? It's already ridiculous enough the winner of the four-team AUS goes into a semifinal bowl game. (The AUS reps have lost their last four semifinals by a combined 146-57.)

McGill's move could have ramifications far down the line if it comes to pass. There's also the question of watering down the OUA. York and Waterloo are nowhere near competitive, yet someone else will soon be fishing in the same recruiting pond.

The OUA, flush from having produced two of the past three Vanier winners, now has the possibility use a division format like most major BCS conferences. That's exciting. Let's not ignore, however, that this comes off as a case of might is right.

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Contact him at neatesager@yahoo.ca and follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.