In a League of Our Own
What Were The Findings of Phase II On The Viability Of The Regional-Based Semi-Professional Development-Focused League Option? Around the world there is growing recognition that a young player’s football education is not complete at age 18 and that further honing and tuning of their skills is needed before they are fully ready to jump up to the rarefied heights of first team football. Many of those we spoke with as part of our public consultations identified the CHL as a possible model for a new region-based, developmentfocused football league in Canada. The CHL is an umbrella organization overseeing the WHL, the OHL, and the QMJHL. It is worth noting that the circumstances behind the CHL’s formation in 1975 are applicable to the current circumstances in division III football in Canada. While junior hockey faced a problem Canadian football would love to have (two professional leagues fighting for young, elite talent in the lower leagues), there are several important lessons to be learned from studying the history of junior hockey. First, the CHL gave the three regional leagues some national uniformity, particularly in regard to player contracts. Second, it required the elite professional leagues to negotiate in good faith for players across Canada. Third, it indirectly guaranteed a national standard in play and oversight in the development of young Canadian hockey players. Fourth, and most importantly, it did this not by creating an entire league from scratch, drafting feasibility studies, building new infrastructure and securing investors for new teams — rather, it was born of a constitution drafted by a single Toronto lawyer. A minor first step perhaps, but one that over time gave junior hockey a measure of uniformity across Canada while still preserving the unique identity of each regional league. Even though it was the predatory practices of the NHL and WHA that forced junior hockey’s hand in 1975, we hold the opinion it would be in the best interests of Canadian football to find a way to work with the existing framework of leagues, clubs and teams in the country, encouraging them to work to professional standards, rather than attempt to engineer a new league structure from scratch, as has been the practice in the past. An arrangement similar to the CHL that would unite current and aspiring “non-amateur” and “semi-professional” leagues, clubs and teams under a similar philosophy and competition framework, while still allowing each league a high degree of independence and entrepreneurial freedom to respond to local complexities and opportunities is, in our opinion, the most viable of the models we studied and the one that holds the best chance of prevailing over the long term.
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