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Super Bowl 60 is over, the Seattle Seahawks trounced the New England Patriots 29-13, Bad Bunny gave a spectacular, moving halftime show, and the National Football League (NFL) cemented its reputation with its premier yearly sporting event.
However, there is another football league that is not as popular, that plays the game differently than the NFL, and that is unique to the North: the Canadian Football League (CFL).
Full disclosure – I am a massive NFL fan.
There are hundreds of millions of dollars spent trying to improve the CFL, but it won’t do anything to bring it closer to the NFL.
I would love to see another football league compete with the powerhouse that is the NFL because it is the only top four sports league (NFL, NHL, MLB, NBA) to not feature a Canadian team.
But I would rather see Canada come together to convince NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the league to bring a team to Canada.
Whether the team is in Toronto or the capital, Ottawa, I think football in Canada would grow in a better way if the country has a NFL franchise, not a separate league.
NFL teams like the Buffalo Bills and the Seattle Seahawks have been adopted as 'Canada's teams'because of their close proximity to major Canadian cities.
The CFL was established in 1958, a good 38 years after the NFL was founded, and has always been seen as the weird, unorthodox, less-popular Canadian brother to its American counterpart.
Let's compare the two leagues.
The Super Bowl on Feb. 8 broke records in attendance, viewership, and advertising revenue, most of which came from commercials.
The halftime show by Puerto Rican rapper and singer Bad Bunny averaged more than 128 million viewers, with the game itself peaking at 125.8 million viewers.
The 2025 Grey Cup, where the Saskatchewan Roughriders took down the Montreal Alouettes 25 to 17, had a peak audience of 5.01 million viewers, four per cent of the NFL’s viewership.
I was happy that CFL Commissioner Stewart Johnston announced major rule changes last fall that will be introducedover the next two seasons to improve the state of the league.
“This is all about making our great game even more entertaining,” Johnston said in a press conference in September 2025. “We are trading field goals for touchdowns, while improving fan experience in stadiums and at home.'
The biggest change is the goalpost moving to the back of the end zone. Before, the goalposts were at the goal line, where a player could just run into a post at any time.
The move copies what the NFL has done for the last 60-plus years.
A more technical change is that benches will be required to be on opposite sides of the field in all stadiums, getting rid of the previous CFL setup that had the benches on the same sideline.
That’s like if the courts let the prosecution and defendant sit at the same table during a trial; it just doesn’t make any sense to have opposing teams on the same side.
The field is also being shortened to 100 yards from 110, and the end zone to 15 yards from 20, although the end zone and field width are still the largest for any form of gridiron football.
One thing missing from Johnston's announcement that I hope is addressed soon for the CFL is the number of teams. Currently, there are only nine teams in the league, compared to the NFL’s 32.
To make the CFL more competitive, add another eight to 10 teams, so it’s not the same few teams winning the Grey Cup, and preferably not another Ontario-based team, since a third of the CFL teams come from this province.
These changes may be a step forward for a league that is practically on its deathbed, but I don't see the reason to keep funding a league that will never beat its southern version, even for Canadian fans of football, many of whom still do not understand the rules of the CFL and would rather just watch the NFL.
If the CFL truly thinks these things will improve the league to get to the level of the NFL, it has its priorities wrong.
