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It is a phenomenon that seems to defy explanation by the very nature of the Canadian Football League itself: How can the balance of power in a nine-team league be so heavily slanted towards the West, year in and year out?

Players come and go between teams in both divisions, as do coaches and general managers.

Heck, even ownership hasn’t been exclusive between East and West since, for a time, David Braley owned one team in the East and one in the West. (It’s no surprise that during those years Braley’s Lions were most often better than Braley’s Argos.)

No matter how you measure the CFL, it always seems to come out that West is best.

That’s bad news for the four Eastern Division teams facing four Western opponents this weekend, since the trend in head-to-head matchups this season has been overwhelming. The West is 25-5-1 in those games with the East. Take that back to the beginning of August 2016 and Western teams are 50-10-1 against the East. 

That’s a winning percentage of .819, slightly higher than that of the NBA champion Golden State Warriors last season, to put it in perspective.

This isn’t exactly a new trend, it’s just usually not as extreme as what the league has been experiencing this season, where the first-place Argonauts have 7-7 record in the East, while the fifth-place B.C. Lions are 6-7 in the West.

Last year, the Ottawa Redblacks won the East with an 8-9-1 record, which would have put them fifth in the West. 

But the trend goes deeper than that. Since the CFL introduced the crossover rule back in 1996, where the fourth-place team from one division can earn a playoff spot ahead of the third-place team in the other, there has never been a team go from East to West.

Western dominance in the CFL is so consistent it almost feels like part of nature.

Consider the case of this season’s Edmonton Eskimos. Edmonton got off to a remarkable 7-0 start, but those first seven games included five against teams from the East – including two against Hamilton.

Now in the midst of a six-game losing streak that’s dropped their record to 7-6, they’ve faced Western opponents in five of those six losses.

So the question is … why?

It’s been suggested that Western teams thrive because the CFL game means so much more in that part of the country, so that energy translates into success. That seems plausible until you recall that the place where the game means most, Saskatchewan, went three decades without a home playoff game.

Others have said that Western teams have been more consistently operated in terms of ownership, management and coaching.

In the West, where three of the five teams are publicly owned, there has undoubtedly been less turnover, although one could certainly argue that just goes hand in hand with success. With more success, the less change you require and vice versa.

Who knew the CFL had its own “chicken or the egg” debate?

It’s certainly no coincidence that the West’s historic dominance has coincided with its superior ability to develop and introduce quarterbacks to the league.

A small sample of quarterbacks recruited and introduced to the CFL by Western teams: Doug Flutie, Dave Dickenson, Travis Lulay, Tracy Ham, Darian Durant, Kevin Glenn, Ricky Ray, Henry Burris, Bo Levi Mitchell, Damon Allen, Matt Dunigan, Kent Austin, Khari Jones, Mike Reilly and Matt Nichols.

The Eastern list includes Zach Collaros, Trevor Harris, Kerry Joseph and Michael Bishop.

Western dominance is also at the heart of what drives those who call for the CFL to go to one division and a more balanced schedule for each team.

But that would erase one of the league’s most enduring quirks: its inexplicable tilt in one direction – the mystery with no answer on this side of the stars. 

 

American officials

After another leaky weekend by CFL officiating crews in Week 14, there are rumblings about wanting to open up jobs to CFL-trained officials from south of the border.

Unlike team rosters and coaching staffs, officiating crews are exclusively Canadian.

Are there enough professional-grade officials born within this country to satisfy the CFL, or more importantly, its teams?

A lot of general managers certainly don’t think so, which is why the idea of recruiting and training to bolster the talent pool always comes up when controversy and criticism spike.

 

Year of the streak

The 2017 CFL season should go down as the year of the streak.

Along with the Eskimos, who opened with seven consecutive wins and now lost six in a row:

- The Hamilton Tiger-Cats opened the season by losing eight games in a row.

- The Montreal Alouettes go into this weekend on a seven-game losing streak.

- The Winnipeg Blue Bombers won five games in a row earlier this season. 

- The Calgary Stampeders are in their bye week, riding a 10-game winning streak.

Monday’s Edmonton at Montreal game features two teams that have combined for zero wins since the second week of August.

Is winning or losing more contagious in football than other sports? We’ve all seen teams that get on a roll during the final third of a season and run the table at playoff time.

Perhaps it’s the nature of football with only one game a week that makes the outcome of a win or loss hang over the week and into the next game.

The snowball effect certainly seems be a part of this CFL season. 

 

Medlock is money (usually)

It was strange to see Winnipeg’s Justin Medlock struggle in a game the way he did against Edmonton Friday night, missing three successive field goals from 54, 40 and 32 yards.

It’s hard to overstate how good Medlock has been during his first six-plus seasons in the CFL, outshining some of those considered CFL kicking legends by a wide margin.

Heading into this season, Medlock had the distinction of being the most accurate kicker in CFL history at better than 88 per cent.

What that stat doesn’t tell you is that Medlock has consistently attempted field goals from distances where teams with lesser kickers would be punting.

This season, however, Medlock’s numbers have been down. He’s made 39 of 50 attempts far for a 78 per cent success rate.

Consider these Hall of Fame kickers and how many years in their careers they made as high a percentage of field goals as Medlock has averaged during his career: Dave Ridgway (one), Dave Cutler (zero), and Lui Passaglia (one).

CFL kickers were exclusively Canadian for years because teams didn’t want to spend a coveted American spot on a player who only plays on special teams. But the expansion of designated import spots makes having an American kicker more practical and more common.

So while the list of legendary CFL kickers may always be heavily Canadian, the guy who stands on top is not.

 

Richardson set for Roughrider debut

New Saskatchewan Roughrider running back Trent Richardson sat down with me Wednesday in Ottawa to discuss his road to the CFL.

The soft-spoken Florida native talked about the challenges he had going from the University of Alabama to the NFL, how disillusioned he was at being traded two weeks into his second season and the perception that he was out of shape during his NFL days.

As a running back, Richardson will be hard-pressed to turn his CFL opportunity into another shot at the NFL.

There’s no position more difficult to make that transition, given the premium teams put on youth and the fact there are so many good athletes coming out of college each spring.

It’s hard to think of a CFL running back who earned his way to an NFL payday in recent seasons. John Avery, who went from Edmonton to the Minnesota Vikings, might be the most recent.

Richardson is just 27 and for a player heralded as a sure thing when he came out of Alabama, he had a remarkably short NFL career that lasted just three seasons.

Most players whose stock drops that quickly have an obvious reason why. But Richardson’s fall is mysterious. He suffered some injuries, had to learn three playbooks within his first year-and-a-half and concedes he didn’t deal with distractions as well as he should have.

Now he’s determined to make the most of his opportunity in the CFL.

My sit-down interview with Richardson is avaliable below.