So far, the Mark Cohon era has been a bit of a bore, which for the Canadian Football League is good news.
It has been a long time since the game, forever cursed with interesting times, has experienced such a period of tranquillity. Aside from the revelation of David Braley's discrete investment in the Toronto Argonauts - and eventually his becoming officially the owner of 25 per cent of the league's franchises - there has been precious little backroom intrigue, with the trials, tribulations and controversies taking place almost exclusively on the field.
And as a result, unlike every one of his predecessors dating back at least to Donald Crump, Cohon hasn't been mired in perpetual crisis management, and hasn't had to live with coup attempts and constant speculation regarding his job security. Having insisted on a five year contract when he accepted the post, making him more difficult and more expensive to get rid of as a scapegoat or on the owners' whim, Cohon has been able to run a very tight ship during a period when most of the league's indicator arrows began to point up.
This morning, Cohon delivers his fourth state of the league address in advance of the Grey Cup game. His contract expires in the spring of 2012, so there will be at least once more of these before he's done, but it's a pretty safe bet that both he and his employers might want to extend his tenure, since there are some happy landmark events which will immediately follow: the 100th Grey Cup in Toronto in 2012, the return of the CFL to Ottawa in 2013, a new stadium in Winnipeg, probably a new stadium in Hamilton, perhaps a domed stadium for Regina (a concept that, had it been raised a decade ago, would have caused any commissioner to be laughed out of the room), and further exploration of the Maritimes market, with more one-off games, and maybe, just maybe the elusive tenth franchise.
A whole lot more fun than presiding over bankruptcies, franchise disappearances, and the Gliebermans.
What has made all of the good tidings which Cohon will deliver this morning real - and what has made the league's remaining problem areas, most notably the struggle to make it relevant in the largest market in the country, and the still real possibility of National Football League incursion, of less urgent concern - are soaring television ratings, and the financial bonanza they may eventually represent.
Two years (plus an option) remain on the league's television contract with TSN, a deal which has been enormously beneficial to both parties. When the time comes to talk again, the country's major sports television properties will be divided between two telephone companies, Bell (owners of CTV/TSN) and Rogers, both anxious to add distinctive, popular, PVR-resistant content for all platforms. In that environment, with the audiences it currently delivers, and with a bullet-proof culmination event in the Grey Cup, it's hard to imagine how the CFL wouldn't come out far ahead of where it is now.
There have been television bonanzas in the league's past, none of them panaceas. The difference now is the CFL's salary cap system - and specifically, a tweak made during the negotiation of the most recent contract with the players, which detached the cap number from a fixed percentage of revenues. Under the old deal, the owners would have been compelled to spend 56 cent of every new dollar earned on player salaries. Under the new arrangement, in which the cap increases by a specific amount for each year of the contract, the owners would be able to pocket most of the windfall, which would result in the most revolutionary change in the league's history: a business model offering all but guaranteed profitability.
If all of your teams are making money, if you're no longer depending on the generosity of rich hobbyists to stay afloat in tough markets, the game changes for everyone. Franchise values shoot up. There's money to be invested purely in the interest of making the product better.
And the annual commissioner's address is never again a place for putting a happy spin on what is, in reality, a death watch.
Mark Cohon didn't make all of that good stuff happen. Timing, cultural shifts, changes in the broadcast environment, all of those are beyond his powers - just as some of his predecessors were felled by circumstances which they did nothing to create.
But he has been good, he has surrounded himself with good people, he has avoided self-inflicted injury, he has played his cards right, and now it's breaking his way - or rather, it's breaking the CFL's way.