major announcement - big changes to cfl playoff and season start

[Tecno]

This, X100.

The changes are part of an all or nothing play by the league.
There is no turning back. Support it and the league has a chance to survive.

Of course there is.  You could fire Johnston tomorrow, have the BoG or next commish say "we made a mistake", and undo the GP/110YL/playoff changes.  Just blame it all on Johnston and say he went rogue.

Problem solved.  Heck, even Johnston could come out and say he got it all wrong, but of course that's impossible for that self-toot-sniffer.

[Tecno]

Literally no one is going to do any of that.

They already did.  Johnston got unceasing many-minute boos the entire time he was talking at the GC presentation @PAS/'26.  No one stopped booing until he handed the cup to SSK.

If that was any sort of good measure of public opinion, more than 50% of the fans around me were booing.  Way more than the 10-25% number they claim don't like the changes (in a rigged poll due to question wording, BTW).

It was brutal.  And he deserved it.

[Tecno]

There are rivalry games- like us and Saskatchewan, but there are also years where we play them in the preseaosn, 3 or 4 times in the regular season, and then again in the play-offs. A certain amount of fatigue sets in when you play the same team 5-6 times a season.

The fatigue is entirely dependent on whether you are winning or losing those games!  Last season, when SSK kicked our butt almost every time, I did start to get green fatigue.  But normally when we're kicking their butts I could have a season of just WPG vs SSK!

What will be guaranteed to be annoying though is if #1/#2 are always SSK/WPG and we have to face them in the playoffs TWICE.  That will totally SUCK ROCKS.  If SSK is basically on par with us that makes getting to the cup extremely hard.  And it could mean a "round 3 SF" is a brutal slobberknocker that leaves the winner wounded.  And not many other-team fans will want to see a WPG/SSK matchup in both round 1 & 3!

If the E reverts to being clearly worse, which it basically did in '25, this will mean the GC is really the West round 3 SF.  The actual GC then goes back to being a joke, where the E has to win via luck (like '22, '23 and possibly '24).

[Tecno]

They will not be "money makers,"  if attendance is dismal, which is pretty inevitable in most Canadian markets.

The question isn't whether attendance will be dismal, the question will be can they put more butts in the seats than they did for their (maybe meaningless and slightly cold) Oct games.  In most markets the answer is probably "yes".

If they beat their average, they win ($$).

[Tecno]

It's already highlighted as to who hosts which games.

So it's guaranteed 6 of the 8 games are played in their respective division?  Only the R1 "play-ins" can be in the "wrong" division.  Right?  I guess that's ok.

And the way the play-in seeding works it's basically random what side of the country hosts those games... unless the E is mega-weaker than the W and the last 3 place teams are always E.  If that were to happen too many years in a row the E might make a stink the W always gets both play-in games.

Might teams purposely try to be #3 in-division (assuming the stronger division) instead of #2?  Both #2 (if they lose) and #3 have 3 games to win, but #3 only has to beat the crap #8 team (easy peasy -- that was TOR in '25?!).  Then you get to face the loser (worst?) of #1/#2.  Only in the last game do you have to face the "best" in that division.  That sure seems like the easier path than being #2 and getting mollywopped on twice by #1!!

The more I'm looking at the format, the more I'm wondering why there's any round 1 division "showdown" at all.  That seems to be the worst aspect, making these play-them-twice scenarios as well as putting massive wear on players for basically no reason.  The reg season would have WAY more meaning if you just ditched that game and gave #1/#2 the round 1 bye.  Then #1 gets a R2 bye as well.

[Tecno]

The Grey Cup may be renamed the "Stewart Johnston Trophy for Athletic Excellence."

Trophy will have a pull-string at the bottom.  Yank it and let go and the cup lets out some random wormy sentence in that smarmy weaselly voice.

Pull... "next we're going to make the fields thinner!"

Pull... "watch me go to 11 men!"

Pull... "I'm improving your line of sight by 0.0012%!"