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Obviously, there's plenty of sentimental appeal.
The CFL was forever a nine-team, two Roughriders/Rough Riders loop, and to that it may return with the announcement yesterday a group has been approved for an expansion franchise in Ottawa.
But if sentiment was all it took, if nostalgia did the trick, the game would never have died a terrible, humiliating death — twice — in the nation's capital.
Those of us who experienced the glory days of Russ Jackson and company are getting on, and even those who can smile at the thought of Tom Clements and Condredge Holloway, of J.C. Watts's near miracle in the 1981 Grey Cup, aren't exactly kids.
To make it fly this time requires starting from scratch, erasing recent bad memories as much as resurrecting distant good ones. And just getting from here to the opening kickoff in 2010 at a refurbished Frank Clair Stadium is going to be a mighty tricky business — a challenge both for commissioner Mark Cohon, and for those who apparently don't fear to tread where others have failed so miserably.
At least for Cohon, it's a chance to put a more progressive spin on his administration, which so far has been dominated by talk of the NFL's Buffalo Bills incursion into Toronto, and the CFL's defensive posture.
There's an argument to be made the league doesn't really need to go back into Ottawa at all, that the risk of being three-time losers there hardly justifies the reward. But the uplifting aspect of the announcement itself, and especially the fact interested buyers came forward in the face of all the NFL rumblings, suggests some faith in Canadian football's future no matter what else transpires.
Rearguard action will necessarily continue, but at least there's also a direction forward.
Now all Cohon has to do is persuade the owners of the other eight teams to be a bit more generous than they were with the previous Ottawa Renegades franchise, which was competitively hamstrung from the start — one of the reasons, though certainly not the only one, that it wound up on the fast track to extinction.
The new Riders, or whatever they're called, are going to need an experienced CFL quarterback — and not the 17th best, which is what they'll get if every team is allowed to protect two in the expected expansion draft. They could also use a break on the import/non-import player ratio at the start, since quality Canadian talent is tough to assemble from scratch.
Let's see how forward-thinking the other clubs are, how much they're willing to give in return for a fat franchise fee.
The prospective Ottawa owners are also going to need to know that the salary-management system is for real, that the cost of operating a team is what the league says it is, with no nasty surprises. The business model has to work — otherwise even the most deep-pocketed investors aren't going to stick with a game in which they're guaranteed to lose money in perpetuity.
Jeff Hunt, who will front the new Ottawa operation, brings a record of great success operating a junior hockey club in the shadow of the NHL's Senators, which has to be the right kind of experience for taking on a CFL team.
His first task will be persuading the local political leadership the best future for Lansdowne Park involves a CFL franchise housed in a stadium renovated at public expense (which, to be fair, would also have other uses). Lord knows there's reason for skepticism, but Hunt's credibility, and the fact the league gave him some leverage by granting the franchise in advance of a stadium deal, suggests reason for optimism as well.
And if all of that falls into place, if the CFL plays it smart and the politicians play along and the new owners do everything right? Then it comes down to the paying customers, the most abused fans in professional sport, who haven't witnessed a winning season in several dogs' ages, who have seen a dead player drafted and Dexter Manley, who came on board in droves for a brilliant Grey Cup celebration in 2004 only to have their hearts broken immediately thereafter, who were saddled with Lonnie Glieberman as an owner not once, but twice.
They'll need every bit of the next 2 1/2 years just to get their nerve back.
