The Canadian Football League has a multi-million dollar problem, but looking south for the answer is pure institutional delusion. Dr. Reginald Bibby’s proposal to revive the "CFL USA" experiment is a textbook example of academic theory colliding with the meat-grinder of sports media economics. Suggesting that expanding into four American border markets—Spokane, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Syracuse—will miraculously solve the league's television revenue woes is not just wrong. It is a fundamental misreading of how the modern sports ecosystem operates.
We have seen this movie before. In the early 1990s, the league greenlit an expansion south of the border to salvage struggling Canadian franchises with American capital injection. It resulted in a chaotic three-year run of folding franchises, empty stadiums, and a hasty retreat back to an all-Canadian format by 1996. To believe that dusting off this exact playbook in 2026 will yield a different outcome is willfully ignorant.
The core assumption driving this lazy consensus is simple: the United States has more people and more media money, so putting teams there automatically guarantees a bigger piece of the broadcast pie. This logic is completely broken.
The Media Rights Illusion
The primary argument for American expansion rests on the fact that the CFL’s current broadcast deal with the CBS Sports Network brings in a meager $1 million annually. That number is undeniably painful for a professional sports league. However, thinking that placing franchises in secondary or tertiary American markets will force major networks or streaming giants to open their checkbooks is a massive leap in logic.
Modern sports broadcasting is entirely driven by live-event inventory that commands premium advertising rates or drives direct-to-consumer subscriptions. American television executives do not buy sports properties out of geographic novelty. They buy them for reliable, massive viewership numbers.
Consider the current state of American football television programming. The market is completely saturated. Between the NFL’s absolute dominance, the multi-billion dollar machine of college football, and the spring football consolidation of the United American Football League (UFL), the American sports calendar has zero unserved demand for gridiron football.
Imagine a scenario where an executive at ESPN or Amazon Prime Video is looking at the autumn sports slate. They already possess rights to high-profile college matchups and primetime NFL games. The idea that they would spend tens of millions of dollars to acquire the rights to a league featuring teams in Spokane or Syracuse playing three-down football on a 110-yard field is laughable. The audience draw simply does not justify the expenditure.
The Saturated Border Market Fantasy
The selection of the proposed expansion cities exposes a deep disconnect from actual sports consumer behavior. The strategy targets four specific border-adjacent regions:
- Spokane, Washington
- Milwaukee, Wisconsin
- Detroit, Michigan
- Syracuse, New York
The theory claims that short travel distances and proximity to existing Canadian franchises will generate regional rivalries. This completely ignores the entrenched sports culture of these specific markets.
The Detroit Contradiction
Detroit is already an elite, hyper-saturated sports city. It supports the Lions, the Tigers, the Red Wings, and the Pistons, alongside massive fanbases for the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. The city is utterly consumed by American football culture. A Canadian rule football team operating in the shadows of Ford Field would not be viewed as an exciting alternative; it would be ignored as a minor-league novelty.
The Milwaukee Blockade
Milwaukee is fiercely loyal to the Green Bay Packers, the Milwaukee Bucks, and the Brewers. Furthermore, the state of Wisconsin is entirely red-and-white college football territory. There is no historical or cultural precedent to suggest that fans in Milwaukee would spend their entertainment dollars to watch a brand-new football team play under foreign rules.
The Spokane and Syracuse Realities
Spokane and Syracuse are college towns through and through. Spokane belongs to Washington State University and Gonzaga basketball. Syracuse is entirely dominated by the Syracuse Orange. These fanbases are built on multi-generational alumni networks and deeply tribal loyalties. You cannot manufacture that level of engagement by simply dropping a professional franchise into an existing stadium and hoping for the best.
The Fallacy of Pre-Existing Stadiums
The argument heavily emphasizes that these American cities already possess suitable stadiums, thereby avoiding the massive facility hurdles that have stalled domestic Canadian expansion in places like Halifax. This is a classic case of valuing convenience over viability.
Just because a stadium exists does not mean it is suitable for Canadian football. The Canadian game requires a field that is 110 yards long and 65 yards wide, with 20-yard endzones. The vast majority of American football stadiums—built specifically to accommodate the standard 100x53-yard American field—cannot fit a Canadian field without massive, structurally impossible alterations to the lower seating bowls.
During the 1993–1995 expansion era, the Sacramento Gold Miners were forced to play at Hornet Field, a college facility surrounded by temporary bleachers and portable toilets. The field dimensions were heavily compromised. The only American venue that comfortably accommodated the Canadian field without major issue was the Alamodome in San Antonio. Relying on American college or minor-league facilities in 2026 would result in an inferior on-field product that immediately signals "second-rate" to the American viewing public.
The Roster Quota Delusion
The proposed expansion plan includes a mechanism to stimulate regional interest: requiring American franchises to carry a fixed number of players from their home state or adjacent jurisdictions. While this sounds great in a marketing meeting, it is a logistical nightmare that would actively destroy the competitive balance of the league.
Professional football is an elite numbers game. The current CFL roster rules are already highly delicate, requiring a specific ratio of National (Canadian) players to Global and American players to maintain the league's domestic identity. Introducing a hyper-specific state-level quota system for American teams creates immediate mechanical failures:
- Talent Pool Disparities: The high school and college football talent output of Michigan or Wisconsin completely eclipses the output of eastern Washington state or upstate New York. A Detroit-based team would have access to an elite pool of local athletes, while a Spokane or Syracuse franchise would be forced to sign sub-par talent just to hit a bureaucratic roster metric.
- Competitive Imbalance: The Canadian franchises would still be bound by the traditional National/American ratio rules. The American teams, operating under entirely different state-specific recruitment pools, would create an uneven playing field. If the American teams dominate due to a massive local talent advantage, Canadian fans will lose interest. If the American teams fail miserably because their local talent pool is shallow, American fans will stop showing up.
Lessons from the Billion-Dollar Graveyard
I have watched leagues throw hundreds of millions of dollars into the wind trying to establish secondary professional football brands in the United States. The Alliance of American Football (AAF) collapsed mid-season. The original XFL folded after one year, and its resurrection required a massive merger with the USFL just to survive as the UFL.
The American sports consumer has been trained to value the highest echelon of competition above all else. They want the NFL, or they want the deeply rooted traditions of the NCAA Power Four conferences. Anything positioned below that line is immediately labeled as minor league.
The sole success story of the original CFL USA experiment was the Baltimore Stallions. The Stallions drew massive crowds and captured a Grey Cup in 1995. But why did they succeed? It wasn't because Baltimore fans suddenly fell in love with the rouge or the waggle. It occurred because the NFL had controversially ripped the Colts out of Baltimore a decade prior, leaving a massive, football-starved stadium completely vacant. The Stallions were a temporary surrogate. The exact moment the Cleveland Browns relocated to Maryland to become the Baltimore Ravens, the Stallions packed up their bags and moved to Montreal.
The specific conditions that allowed Baltimore to succeed for two seasons do not exist in Spokane, Milwaukee, Detroit, or Syracuse in 2026. Every single one of those markets is already completely aligned with an existing football hierarchy.
Redefining the Expansion Question
The real issue facing the Canadian Football League is not a lack of American cities; it is an identity crisis at home. The league keeps asking how it can capture foreign eyes instead of addressing why it is losing ground in its own major metropolitan areas.
Instead of chasing a fantasy broadcast contract from an American network that views the league as midday programming filler, the focus must shift entirely toward maximizing domestic relevance. The ongoing talks regarding a $350-million, 25,000-seat stadium in Quebec City represent the actual path forward.
A tenth Canadian franchise creates a perfectly balanced ten-team league with two five-team divisions. It solidifies a natural, intense provincial rivalry with the Montreal Alouettes. It locks in domestic French-language broadcast growth through RDS and TVA Sports. Most importantly, it honors the exact thing that makes the CFL valuable: its distinct, unyielding Canadian identity.
Chasing American television dollars by planting franchises in sports-saturated border towns is an expensive distraction. It dilutes the brand, strains the league's operational resources, and chases a demographic that has proven time and again that it will not watch. The CFL does not need to become a regional American footnote to survive. It needs to conquer its own backyard.
