With the official announcement of Stewart Johnston’s hiring, Randy Ambrosie’s tumultuous and often controversial tenure as CFL commissioner finally has an end date: April 24.
Since he announced his impending retirement in October, the question of Randy’s legacy has hung heavy in the air. He was a lightning rod for criticism in a way few who have held the title ever have been, bringing CFL loyalists closer to the commissioner-loathing cliché of other sports fandoms. In that respect, he played his role as the board of governors’ human shield to a tee but the failure to deliver on his grandiose ideas soured even those relationships. In the end, he dodged the knife in his back only by bowing out of his role, having lost the support of the majority of the shadowy cabal that pulled his strings.
And yet, a quick glance around the three-down league shows a product and business that is as strong as it’s ever been. While there is a long to-do list awaiting Johnston when he takes office, he might be the first commissioner to inherit no existential crises. CFL ratings are strong, attendance is ticking back up, there is long-term labour peace, and league revenues have risen enough to spark a dramatic increase in the salary cap — at least theoretically. Most importantly, Ambrosie succeeded in smothering fires in three different markets and amassing arguably the strongest collective group of owners in CFL history, some of whom ironically voted in favour of his exit.
Based on those accomplishments alone, you’d expect the Winnipeg, Man. native to be revered rather than reviled. Ultimately though, Ambrosie failed spectacularly at one of the most fundamental aspects of his job: controlling the narrative around the league. He was a competent commissioner right up until he opened his mouth, stumbling and bumbling his way through almost every issue.
Ambrosie was at his best during the Randy’s Road Trip era, presenting himself as a man of the people with a beer in his hand. He was never able to operate with the same level of ease in front of the media and it showed. He clung to meaningless buzzwords and pre-prepared talking points like a life raft until a wave of nervous energy would spur him to hyperbole. Right from his debut press conference, he wrote cheques that he could never cash, vowing to double league revenue. Even worse, whenever a delicate situation forced him to avoid public comment out of fear, he created an air of opacity around the league that let speculation run rampant.
Nothing exemplifies this disconnect between optics and results more than his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the league’s cancelled 2020 season. As a society, we are probably too hard on leaders for their errors and missteps during what was an unprecedented moment in our history, and Ambrosie is no exception. The fact that the CFL has emerged from the depths of its single greatest economic crisis not only alive but stronger is darn near miraculous. Yet nobody who watched the league fumble through that lost year remembers anything close to divine intervention.
In a moment when CFL fans and employees were looking for a clear-headed saviour, Ambrosie grovelled for $150 million in front of parliament in a way that seemed directionless and showed no semblance of a plan. When they desperately needed reassurance that the game they loved would survive, he publicized merger talks with the XFL and created panic over a fourth down. While nothing ever came of those conversations, every misguided announcement bred discontent and sowed resentment among the league’s most passionate fans. We’ll never know if another leader could have forced a bubble season into existence or landed the plane more smoothly amidst those historic headwinds, but it wouldn’t have taken a PR savant to better reassure the paying customer.
No commissioner is immune to the “only in the CFL” moment, but public gaffes seemed to define the Ambrosie era in particular. From all-star snafus to the botched stats rollout, his level of personal blame varied but it seemed like nothing ever went off without a hitch. On the missteps big enough to colour his legacy, it was often because the CFL’s fearless leader set himself up for failure.
Ambrosie may have come closer to CFL expansion in the Maritimes than any of his predecessors but all the donair sauce in Halifax wasn’t going to make a publicly-funded stadium appetizing post-pandemic. Rather than acknowledge that reality and pivot, the commissioner kept promising that a tenth team was right around the corner despite a myriad of contradictory reports and the lack of a viable ownership group. At various points, he either pleaded with or threatened the Nova Scotia populace to try to get his way, occasionally projecting his pipe dream on a Quebec market that was even less interested. All that came of it was the same failure that any reasonable person would have expected, except with twice the public ridicule.
His pet project, CFL 2.0, suffered from the same lack of self-awareness. Given that there was initial skepticism that the Global program would produce a single viable CFL player, the fact that every franchise now has at least one, if not more, reliable international contributors should be viewed as a rousing success. Unfortunately, Ambrosie decided to market what could have been a fun and harmless initiative to grow the game as a path to substantial foreign revenue that would uncover football’s Yao Ming. Neither of those things was ever going to happen but those ridiculous assertions, along with a problematic partnership in Mexico and the unnecessary expenditure of a globe-trotting combine circuit, hamstrung a generally inoffensive idea from day one.
Even when it came to player discipline, Ambrosie failed to effectively construct a storyline in which he was the hero. He may have been the most heavy-handed adjudicator in league history, issuing some record suspensions and continuing Jeffrey Orridge’s policy of punishing off-the-field offences against women regardless of their legal status. Though ethically debatable, this approach is overwhelmingly endorsed by fans but Randy never got full credit because he let the baying mob shape every narrative. Precedent suggests that no other sports league and no other commissioner would have levied as harsh a punishment against a star like Chad Kelly for non-criminal accusations as the CFL did last year, but a persistent lack of transparency made the league office look slow to react even when it wasn’t. Without a leader willing to seize the podium with both hands and clearly lay out a timeline, due diligence came across as apathy and a nine-game suspension looked soft.
In all of these circumstances and dozens more, the actual outcomes that Ambrosie generated can’t be realistically labelled as failures. At worst, they were the expected status quo. At best, he took positive steps that are reflected in the overall health of the league today. The problem was that his whole tenure seemed to happen with Yakety Sax playing in the background and the commish chaotically tripping over his own feet.
For that reason, it is fair to suggest that Randy has sometimes been unfairly maligned despite leaving this cultural institution better off than he found it. When we look back on his tenure in 10, 20, or 30 years, we may find that all his blunders seem quaint in retrospect and that our view of him has softened.
His commissionership may not age like fine wine, but it could mature like cheese. The visible fungus on the outside will bloom into a palatable rind and the mold within will sweeten to a point where it can be served on a Jake Gaudaur cracker with some Mark Cohon salami — hopefully as an amuse bouche for something better to come.
But just like a good cheese, no matter how it ends up tasting, those of us who experienced it fresh out of the package will remark just how badly it stunk at the time.
The post Opinion: Randy Ambrosie’s CFL legacy defined by bad optics, not bad results appeared first on 3DownNation.
