Grey Cup: CFL Commissioner Orridge vs NFL Commissioner Goodell

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Editor's note: With the NFL's Super Bowl coming to the Bay Area in February, CSNBayArea.com Senior Insider Ray Ratto is in Canada to cover the Grey Cup and see how the other half lives. Bookmark Ray Ratto's Grey Cup blog for complete coverage leading up to Sunday's game.

WINNIPEG, Manitoba -- Tuesday is traditionally the last truly quiet day of Grey Cup Week. The massive influx of mobile distilleries has not yet begun, but the teams that are ostensibly the focus of the week did, at late-afternoon in downright malarial conditions for this time of year -- 30, with wind out of Santa's nostrils at eight km/hour.

The Western Division champion Edmonton Eskimos, whose uniforms seem to be but aren't fairly blatant knockoffs of the Green Bay Packers, will collide repeatedly Sunday with the Eastern Division winner Ottawa REDBLACKS, who used to be the Ottawa Renegades, who used to be the Ottawa Rough Riders, and are in any event only two years old and thus have an emotional need to put their nickname in all-caps.

It is a grand testimonial to distinctive if nonsensical branding.

But the REDBLACKS -- which are plainly a shoutier homage to the famous 1943 NFL team the Phil-Pitt Steagles that combined two bankrupt teams and created a new bankrupt one that only the end of World War II could untangle -- are part of a slow but careful attempt by the league and its new commissioner Jeff Orridge to ease the league into its next phase, which is, I suppose when you listen to his answer, part 21st century, part 20th.

“I think there are certain things about the character of our league that will always be part of it,” he said in an amazingly easy-to-get interview for someone whose first name is “Commissioner.” I asked once, and he turned up available and chatty a day later, beating the usual turnaround time of his American counterparts by ... oh, months?

“You see in the way the fans from across the country don’t just embrace the Cup, they actually come to where the game is played, whether their team is in it or not. That always has to be a part of our game, its accessibility.”

But Orridge, the first American-born (New York City, of course) CFL commissioner and, he proudly adds, the first black commissioner in any North American sport, began in the TV game and was in charge of CBC Sports until the network decided to de-emphasize that department. That means he is more than merely conversant with business-related terms and concepts like “branding” and “growth opportunities” and “YouTube” and “drug policy” and “expansion.” Ottawa’s return to the league, which happened during his predecessor Mark Cohon’s time, has heated talk about expanding eastward past Montreal and into Quebec City and maybe even the Maritimes (more about that later in the week).

That, and the $2 billion worth of new stadia, including Investors Group Stadium in Winnipeg, brings the CFL closer to the American model of having all its stadiums upgraded and named for offshoots of Amalgamated Money International.

“The game has to grow, and we have to be ahead of the curve on that,” Orridge said. “But we always have to remain mindful of who we are, and what the character of this league really is.”

As a result, he will be mightily visible this week, doing not only the annual State of the League address (that helped firm Roger Goodell’s reputation as a once-engaging but now ossified public figure), but a town hall with fans asking the questions, and making sure to tour the various team gatherings (which are essentially portable meeting hall/taverns facilitated by anyone who can run a tap).

They are all places Goodell can no longer easily go now that he has become the NFL’s easily caricatured front-man/villain, and exactly why you’ll have a hard time seeing him come Super Bowl Week in San Francisco save the odd promotional photo op.

But fan gatherings are events Orridge cannot skip because they are the essence of the Grey Cup. That means he will be offered all manner of food and drink, which he turns down because, well, you never can tell where that bratwurst has been or who actually made what’s coming out of that keg.

[RELATED: Grey Cup: Setting the scene for Canada's Super Bowl]

“I have to politely decline all manner of libation and provender,” he said with a laugh, going so deeply formal (who the hell says “libation and provender” any more?) that you almost wanted to reach into the phone, grab him by his eyelids and shriek-shake him with a, “YOU MEAN A CHEESEBURGER AND A BOTTLE OF DIEU DU CIEL, RIGHT?”

Orridge is more affable than that, of course, and though he probably could use a healthy 16 ounces of the finest Manitoba brew just to cut through the hours between meetings, he will remain engagingly sober just out of fear that otherwise he might become the subject of inquiry in a “Man In Expensive Suit Punches RCMP Horse” story.

Orridge is, therefore, light years distant from Goodell’s lucrative yet lonely position, which in some ways is also indicative of the job he has. He keeps good relations with both Goodell and Canada’s other sporting behemoth, NHL commissioner and lead accordionist Gary Bettman, as well as NBA commissioner Adam Silver, so he even blanched when he was asked, “Have you ever been tempted to ask Roger how makes ends meet on only $44 million a year?”

“Oh, I have to no-comment that,” he said with a laugh more nervous than mirthful. Professional courtesy and all that.

He does, however, seem the sort who would fantasize about it in the odd private moment ... when, unlike his American brethren, he isn’t busy meeting with the hoi and polloi alike, and turning down beers with his good angel in one ear while the one at the other is whispering, “Go ahead. You’re 55 years old. You grew up in Queens, for God’s sake. Come on, eight won’t kill you.”

And before you know it, he ends up on the business end of a deputized horse’s jaw, and then bundled into a van and taken for prints and pictures, and there you go.

Frankly, in some ways, he’d be an ideal symbol for us all. He’d certainly make the Super Bowl more fun.

 

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