EDMONTON — In a league in which the one-year-plus-option contract for players is commonplace, the Canadian Football League has signed its commissioner, Mark Cohon, for at least three years.

It’s not hard to see why.

Young, bright, cheerful, proactive and media-savvy, Cohon’s performance record since joining the CFL in 2007 is impressive, to say the least.

In its news release announcing the contract extension, the league itemized a lengthy list of accomplishments on Cohon’s smiling watch, including: soaring TV ratings; stable attendance (28,000 per game average); labour peace; implementation of a salary cap; upgraded infrastructure (new and renovated stadiums); expansion to Ottawa; on and on.

Conscious of nourishing nationwide grassroots support, growing the market, and strengthening ties to the feeder system, Cohon successfully put the Canadian college draft on TV and the Internet and launched Touchdown Atlantic.

More than anything, Cohon understands the league is not merely selling a unique brand of football, it’s selling genuine Canadiana, telling stories, creating memorable moments.

The financial follies that dominated CFL news in years past are a hazy memory under Cohon, a pragmatist who has skilfully navigated around the weird reality that one man, David Braley, owns both the Grey Cup champion B.C. Lions, and the Toronto Argonauts, who will play host to the league’s 100th Grey Cup game in November.

Braley, like Cohon, is passionate about the CFL and over the years has quietly put his money where his heart is to put out many a financial fire.

At the Grey Cup in Calgary in 2009, Cohon’s media presentation was dominated by conflict-of-interest questions about Braley, which the pragmatic Cohon smoothly defused, and angst over the collective-bargaining agreement with the players, which was being negotiated at the time.

With little else to gain traction on, reporters repeatedly queried Cohon about the possibility that the Canadian-import ratio would be tampered with, the fabric of the unique Canadian game compromised.

Without getting into any contractual details, Cohon calmly insisted he and the league were well aware of the importance of not tampering with the essential Canadian-ness of the product.

Even the upset over the National Football League’s Buffalo Bills playing regular-season and pre-season games at Toronto’s Rogers Centre seems to have abated, as people have realized there is a difference between sucking some dollars out of Toronto to benefit Buffalo and testing the centre of the universe for future NFL expansion, or a franchise move.

It wasn’t all that long ago that the league careened from crisis to crisis, its marketing strategy a mom-and-pop joke.

Back in May 1991, then Ottawa Rough Riders general manager Jo-Ann Polak came up with the revolutionary idea of assembling all eight CFL quarterbacks for a couple of days of shmoozing with the media, fans and season ticket holders.

It was quite a roster: Tracy Ham, Matt Dunigan, Damon Allen, Doug Flutie, Kent Austin, Mike Kerrigan, Tom Burgess and Danny Barrett.

Dunigan, Allen and Flutie have since been inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, and Austin should be headed there, too.

On Cohon’s watch, the league and its member clubs are far more sophisticated in weaving their marketing efforts into the daily plan.

As the 2012 CFL season begins to loom in the distance, the CFL has a similarly impressive list of QBs: Travis Lulay, Drew Tate, Ricky Ray, Henry Burris, Anthony Calvillo, Buck Pierce, Darian Durant and Steven Jyles.

With the CFL schedule about to be announced, there are rumblings, or perhaps just whispered wish-fulfillment fantasies that would leverage the obvious matchups to best advantage, and on opening weekend.

So some are hoping to see Lulay’s Lions play Pierce’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers in a Grey Cup rematch, with Calvillo and the Montreal Alouettes playing Durant and the Saskatchewan Roughriders in a Grey Cup echo.

That would leave Burris and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats facing Tate and the Calgary Stampeders; with Jyles and the Edmonton Eskimos playing Ray and the Argonauts.

Veteran starters Burris and Ray, transplanted to the East Division, would face their former backups in those two games.

As opening weekends go, that would be a narrative bonanza, and perhaps even an artistic, on-field tour de force. But it remains to be seen whether the league wants to indulge its fans with wall-to-wall rematches out of the gate, or sprinkle those games around the schedule.

Edmonton Journal

jmackinnon@edmontonjournal.com

Twitter.com/rjmackinnon