CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie shared optimism that a '21 season will happen, but "didn't dive into the specifics on what the league has accomplished these past few months to ensure it will," and so "likely left most people with more questions than answers," according to Taylor Allen of the WINNIPEG FREE PRESS. During a virtual state-of-the-union address yesterday, Ambrosie "mentioned several times that there's been some encouraging news on COVID vaccines." And while the vaccine updates are "promising, the CFL can't put all its eggs into that basket," because even if the vaccines are as "effective as claimed it's a very long way to having them distributed to the general populace." Ambrosie, asked if he is confident the CFL can still play football if a vaccine is not ready in time, said, "We're going to be planning accordingly. We're going to be looking at a lot of ways to get fans into the stadiums, to get them into the stadiums safely, so we can play in front of our fans." Allen notes despite all the uncertainty, the CFL "will be unveiling a 2021 game schedule shortly." Ambrosie said that things such as "playing games in a 'bubble' are still on the table," but for the "time being, the schedule will look no different than any other year, with teams playing an 18-game season in all nine CFL stadiums across the country" (WINNIPEG FREE PRESS 11/17).
ALL ABOUT A VACCINE: TSN's Dave Naylor said, "I'm sure we’ve never had a CFL state of the league address that mentioned Pfizer and Moderna, which are the two companies that believe they have an effective vaccine they hope to roll out early in 2021." He added, "It's clear what the commissioner wants to do is meet with public health officials across the country, get a sense of when they think the vaccine will be available to the public, what they're imagining in terms of people in public spaces like stadiums for next summer, and then have a vision that they can either scale up or back, possibly push the schedule forward a little bit if that would coincide more with the release of a vaccine and people feeling safer." Naylor continued, "As these conversations go along, I think he wants to bring the players association in as part of these so they can construct the business model for 2021 together" (“SportsCentre,” TSN, 11/16).
