The domination of Edmonton '73-'82

[Marauders]

In the decade from 1973 to 1982, the Edmonton Eskimos were in the Grey Cup final nine times.

The Eskimos have been in eight Grey Cup final games since, and that is impressive enough, but it was nothing like the domination of that club during that decade.

How did that impact the CFL and the other teams in the West Division especially?

[Brockleigh]

I don't know that there was a definitve impact, at least not the way that the league has unfolded since then.

At the time the Eskimos started coming into prominence, The Saskatchewan Roughriders were coming to the end of their Buffalo-Bills-style, perennial bridesmaid era, The Calgary Stampeders were competent from time to time, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers were rebuilding, and the BC Lions were still kind of an expansion team haven't-earned-their-stripes-yet kind of outfit (despite coming into the league 20 years earlier). The Eskies kind of stepped into the vacuum and didn't let go.

What really set Edmonton apart from the other CFL teams, especially in the Western Conference, was getting the 1978 Commonwealth Games (an Olympic Games style competition for countries in the British Commonwealth). The stadium built for the games seats 60,000 people, and since the Edmonton Oilers hadn't yet moved to the NHL and therefore become a serious entity, The Eskimos were the only games in town. People came in droves to this burgeoning team, and the gates that the team garnered from the stadium paid for good Canadian talent and strong Imports fron the States.

It was an advantage that Edmonton exploited until the mid 80's, when the CFL instituted their first salary cap, following the free-spending reign-of-error in Montreal of Nelson Skalbania. Even when Edmonton couldn't spend the money from their large crowds on players, they channelled the funds towards making their infrastructure the best in the CFL. That's led to the Eskimos being a perennial powerhouse to this day.

No one has successfully copied the Eskimos model. The BC Lions moved out of the dilapidated Empire Stadium into the 55,000-seat BC Place in 1982, but they don't have the same football culture that exists on the Canadian Praries, where football is almost as important as hockey. Calgary has had some severe ups and downs over the years, and while they have a solid fanbase now, they couldn't pull the kind of gates that their provincial rivals could, and even flirted with bankruptcy a couple of times. Perhaps with the oil boom in souther Alberta, they have a chance to copy the Edmonton model, but there's no plan in the works for a large stadium to replace McMahon.

Winnipeg is building a new stadium, but while they have a rich history and an incredibly successful run through the 80's and 90's, I don't see them getting the same kind of crowds as in Edmonton even if the new building could fit them all, and therefore building up a serious warchest. It's the reverse in Regina, the league's smallest market, but where they have arguably the most ardent supporters. No one is building a new stadium for the Roughies, even though they could probably fill it every game, no matter what the capacity would be.

Out east, football comes second to hockey, and you don't have the same following for football. All four Eastern cities have had their teams enter receivership, and two didn't come out (actually for Ottawa, that happened twice). There just isn't the same level of support. Toronto did have crowds of 52,000 coming out every week to watch a pitiful Argonauts product in the mid-70's, but only because it was fashionable at the time, and by '78, the big crowds were gone.

It's great for the city of Edmonton that they were able to successfully capitalize on an opportunity and create not only a strong football team, but such a culture of excellence that not making it to the Western Final every year means the season was an abyssmal failure. Unfortunately for the rest of the CFL, it's something that was singular to the city, and can't be replicated elsewhere.