Latest News and Commentary

With great excitement, we introduce Head to The Net’s newest contributor, James Scarfone.  James lives in Hamilton, Ontario. and will provide an Eastern viewpoint to this West Coast sports blog.

Hamilton Can’t Catch a Break: by James Scarfone

I thought my first entry should really focus on my hometown so that you immediately get to know me and my (many) gripes.

It’s both a blessing and curse to live in this part of Southern Ontario. Fantastic history and identity built around a solid community, but forever in the shadow of Toronto. During the great year of 2003, we were proud as hell to host the tremendously successful World Road Cycling Championships and the Bell Canadian Open in the same year Mike Weir won The Masters.

We were also in the running to stage the Commonwealth Games in 2010, which later went to New Delhi. The Games would have created a legacy of sports infrastructure so badly needed in this part of Canada, including swimming and cycling facilities and, of course, a world-class stadium for track and field and soccer.

Hamilton’s Proposed Stadium

The stadium would have later been used by the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, a team so adored and deeply woven into the fabric of our community that to lose them would cause certain devastation. Think Winnipeg without their Jets.

The Ticats currently play out of the unique but aging Ivor Wynne Stadium, a glorified grandstand, however beloved. Though the Commonwealth bid was lost, the city moved on, hoping for other chances to win a similar bid down the road.

Aging Ivor Wynn Stadium

Later in the decade, Hamilton was presented as the site for a new stadium as part of Toronto’s 2015 Pan Am Games bid (cue laughter from Vancouver). Not exactly an A-list sports event, but Hamiltonians were ecstatic because the stadium would finally be built and thus perhaps we’d see a profitable Ticat franchise. But as many of us quietly predicted, it ain’t that easy.

We’ve lived with some serious incompetence by way of city hall for many years. It’s probably the reason our fair city has not reached its incredible potential. Our economy is good but not great. We have successfully moved from steel to healthcare and innovation as primary industries.

Our quality of life is the envy of many communities in North America (believe it), but definitely does not meet expectations of other mid-size cities including Victoria, Kelowna and Halifax. The problem could be because we think we’re bigger than we are—always trying to match Toronto’s stature or Calgary’s ambition and forgetting the little things that make a city great.

So, with that in mind, we sort of knew our municipal officials would somehow bungle this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of getting free money from the upper levels of government. And bungle they have.

The City and the Tiger-Cats are in the midst of a bitter feud over where to put the new stadium. The City wants to put it in a part of town that will revitalize the downtown and waterfront. Conversely, the Ticats want parking lots, highway accessibility and visibility to secure naming rights, new revenue streams the team has never before seen. There has been little in the way of civilized debate, each side saying “we don’t need you, so sod off.” Essentially acting like children.

Don’t be fooled, they absolutely need each other.

As a resident, it’s a struggle to watch it all play out and feeling you have little say. All you can do to divert your mind is support your team, and Kevin Glenn, and Marcus Thigpen, and Dave Stala, and Otis Floyd.

Unfortunately, the team everyone in the CFL had high hopes for is a dreadful 1-3. I think they are better than their record. The worst part is that the hated—oh so hated—Argos are a surprising 3-1, and, most definitely worse than that record indicates. How did it come to this?

Right now, the Ticats are last in the East, a familiar spot in the 2000s. And the city of Hamilton patiently waits to reach its potential, destined not to become an afterthought.

-follow James Scarfone on twitter: @jamesscarfone