Good Article About CFL's US Expansion Experiment

This article is a book review of Ed Willes new book End Zones and Border Wars about the CFL's expansion to the US in the 90s. The article mentions how the era is one fans would prefer to forget and I don't blame them as it is pretty depressing. One tidbit from the article (and obviously the book) that I found interesting was this:

"The CFL was secure in the hands and hops of Carling O'Keefe in the 1980s, but when the three year $33 million dollar deal expired, the league scrambled."

Wow. $11 million a year seems like a lot for beer money even today. I'm not sure if the CFL and local team deals together would come to that much. I've always thought that the CFL teams could probably do better with beer sponsorship but with the current duopoly of Molson Coors and Anheuser-Busch InBev it isn't that easy to play teams off of each other. 

The CFL was secure in the hands and hops of Carling O'Keefe in the 1980s, but when the threeyear $33 million deal expired, the league scrambled. - See more at: http://www.nsnews.com/news/cfl-fumbled-its-way-through-southern-expansion-1.784750#sthash.s4wjrK98.dpuf

The CFL was secure in the hands and hops of Carling O'Keefe in the 1980s, but when the threeyear $33 million deal expired, the league scrambled. - See more at: http://www.nsnews.com/news/cfl-fumbled-its-way-through-southern-expansion-1.784750#sthash.s4wjrK98.dpuf

 

 

The CFL was secure in the hands and hops of Carling O'Keefe in the 1980s, but when the threeyear $33 million deal expired, the league scrambled. - See more at: http://www.nsnews.com/news/cfl-fumbled-its-way-through-southern-expansion-1.784750#sthash.s4wjrK98.dpuf

The CFL was secure in the hands and hops of Carling O'Keefe in the 1980s, but when the threeyear $33 million deal expired, the league scrambled. - See more at: http://www.nsnews.com/news/cfl-fumbled-its-way-through-southern-expansion-1.784750#sthash.s4wjrK98.dpuf

The CFL was secure in the hands and hops of Carling O'Keefe in the 1980s, but when the threeyear $33 million deal expired, the league scrambled. - See more at: http://www.nsnews.com/news/cfl-fumbled-its-way-through-southern-expansion-1.784750#sthash.s4wjrK98.dpuf

The CFL was secure in the hands and hops of Carling O'Keefe in the 1980s, but when the threeyear $33 million deal expired, the league scrambled. - See more at: http://www.nsnews.com/news/cfl-fumbled-its-way-through-southern-expansion-1.784750#sthash.s4wjrK98.dpuf