We Spoke to CFL Commissioner Jeffrey Orridge About the State of the League

Jeffrey Orridge sat in a conference room at Covenant House last Thursday night, his standard suit, tie and polished shoes replaced by black sweats and a pair of hiking boots.

By Thursday the 104th edition of the Grey Cup was just ten days away, but the commissioner of the CFL put his busiest time of the year on pause to spend a night on Toronto's streets as part of Covenant House's Sleep Out; a fundraiser for homeless youth. Orridge was the honorary chair of the event.

Growing up in Queens, New York, Orridge didn't have to worry about where he'd lay his head every night but the charity did reach him as a kid.

"I knew someone from Covenant House growing up, who I played basketball with," Orridge said. "There used to be a stigma about having to be in a shelter, at least until I met this guy. He was a great guy, great basketball player and became a really good friend.

"His circumstances were such that it was beyond his control and he needed a place and Covenant House provided that place. He went on and played basketball, got a scholarship to Iona and went on to work for IBM."

In many ways, Orridge is the person you'd want heading up the league that you're a fan of, or that you play for. His second season on the job nearing a close, he's taken a league that's long been known as a haven for second-chances for its players and as a door-opener for players of colour that in the past weren't able to get opportunities in the US, and led it into an equally progressive, socially-conscious place in 2016.

On Orridge's watch, the CFL has introduced a violence against women policy for its staff and players last year; a first for a pro sports league. The league has welcomed the LGBTQ community through the last two years, appointing You Can Play reps for each team and striking an apparel deal with the group this season. The league and You Can Play will host an official Grey Cup party on Friday in Toronto at Canada's first gay sports bar, Striker.

Orridge tore up the league's drug policy in 2015 and (after one season without testing, which raised eyebrows) came up with a thorough, more public one for 2016 and beyond. Last winter he implemented an anti-tampering policy to keep coaches under contract from straying to new teams.

Almost two full seasons into the job, though, the reviews from the masses aren't beaming for the commissioner. As good as the CFL's playoffs have been this year, with three of its four games decided in the final minutes of play, criticism of the officials and video review feels like it's at an all-time high. Glen Johnson, the league's vice president of football, said last week that two calls late in Hamilton's tight loss to Edmonton in the East semifinal didn't meet the league's standard.

Hamilton fans and players feel they were robbed of a chance to complete the comeback they started.

At least on Twitter, the backlash for that lands in Orridge's mentions. He's been OK with that.

"Video review is new. We are a leader in that space, it's innovative," Orridge said, adding that other leagues are watching what the CFL is doing with its rules."The goal was to get more calls right and we are getting more calls right. There is always going to be an element of human error. Referees are not perfect."

Many would say that the league's most pressing issue is slightly removed from the field, as attendance numbers in 2016 were down three percent from the previous season. While those numbers seem small, the visuals that go with them aren't pretty. Take the B.C. Lions' home playoff date with Winnipeg for the West semifinal, where 19,176 fans watched their team score a dramatic win over the Blue Bombers with their entire upper deck curtained off. In 2011, the Lions hosted the West final (granted that's one game deeper into the playoffs) and drew 41,313 fans.

In Calgary, where the Stampeders have run through the league, going 15-2-1 all the way to a berth in Sunday's Grey Cup, their attendance was down nine percent. While the Argos played at a brand-new venue at BMO Field, they averaged 16,380 fans through 10 regular-season home games. Still, coming out of their final season at Rogers Centre, their attendance was up 14 percent; a league-best in a situation that Orridge compared to ownership starting deep in its own end zone.

Orridge, like the Argos' ownership, looks at the Toronto numbers optimistically. He balances out low attendance numbers by mentioning attendance strongholds like Regina, Hamilton and in particular, Ottawa, where the Redblacks sold out all 12 of their home dates this year and have captured an elusive younger demographic that every team in the league covets.

The Grey Cup proved to be a tough sell in Toronto this year as well. Ticket sales crawled out of the gate in August when the host Argos overvalued the market, with a starting price of $169 for a seat. They slashed that starting price down to $89 and now claim they're closing in on a sell out, which was buoyed by the Redblacks earning a spot in the game on Sunday.

"This is the 13th year I believe out of the last 15 years that we've exceeded the two million person mark going through our turnstiles. It's a pretty good record," Orridge said.

"Despite that overall, we're still down slightly. I think there could be a number of different factors. When you look at win-loss records of some teams, that has an impact, certainly. When you look at the economic environment in certain provinces where there has been an economic downturn… if you look at Alberta in general, the financial issues that the province is having and the people who are affected by it, I think there are different circumstances in their ebbs and flows.

"The fact that we were up in TV audiences in the 18-49 year-old demo, we were up seven percent," he continued. "Overall on TSN we're up three percent. It means that people are continuing to consume our product. It means that the CFL is still an exciting destination for sports fans, so I'm certainly heartened by that."

This is where the comforts of home seem to complicate things for the CFL. The Argos poured cash into pregame tailgating and festivities on the BMO grounds this year to lure fans in, only to see that their 18-49 year-old TV audience increased 52 percent.

"We understand that our consumers, the younger generation, are consuming content in a much different way," Orridge said.

He and the league have tried to harness that. Their re-designed site, once it got up and running, has increased traffic 100 percent, Orridge said. The league has its first mobile app and signed a deal with Draft Kings this year, while working 18 of its players into EA Sports' Madden NFL 17. Its Facebook and Twitter accounts have grown substantially over the last year, and its Instagram consumption is up 293 percent.

"Those are all places where that next generation of fans is consuming content, consuming sports and entertainment and they're consuming it with the CFL. We feel pretty good about that," Orridge said.

Getting those fans to go from liking pictures and watching Vines to buying tickets is the tricky part. That consumption is well and good, but will it help the league five to ten years down the road as the fans that do go to games continue to age?

"What benefits the league is as large a fan base as you can get. As many people consuming it as possible. Whether it's in-stadium or whether it's on any linear platform like television, streaming social media, you want people who are engaged in the product," Orridge said. "We certainly are a major league and we're big league and we're vibrant."

The CFL is confident that seats will fill and TV ratings will continue to rise based on IMI Research study numbers that the league supplied to VICE Sports. The CFL is third in total fandom across Canada, at 46 percent, behind the NHL's 71 and MLB's 55 percent, with 44 percent of 18-34 year-olds identifying as CFL fans, tied for second with MLB behind the NHL's 71 percent.

The numbers tell the league that fandom for the Argos over the last two years has increased 18 percent, to 51 percent, and that fandom for the CFL is up six to 45 percent in the same time. Thirteen to 29-year-olds surveyed showed that Argos' fandom went up nine percent, to 30 per cent.

This year's Grey Cup playoff ratings were up 14 percent over last year, with a three percent increase in overall TV numbers, including a jump of seven percent this year for viewers between 18-49, with Toronto and Hamilton seeing the biggest TV ratings increases.

Orridge, who sees a bright future for the league, wouldn't go into details on the length of his contract as commissioner, other than to say that he's working on a board of governors' approved five-year plan for the league that runs through February 2020.

"The goal once again is to reach more and diverse and younger fans, to keep the fans that we currently have and to broaden our reach beyond just Canada," he said.