Courtesy Toronto Sun:

The success or failure of Grey Cup Week should not be considered a referendum on the future of football in Toronto.

This isn’t 1992 anymore. The Canadian Football League is not on trial. And almost 90,000 tickets — many of them at excessively high prices — have been sold for Friday’s Vanier Cup and Sunday’s Grey Cup games.

The football future here is both bright and intriguing.

All this from a city that not so long ago turned its back on the CFL, cared little for the near-bankrupt Argonauts, but somehow wouldn’t allow itself to part with its history.

Now the matter gets more complicated with the focus on football in Toronto getting more intense.

It gets complicated because of the addition of the National Football League to this market and this country.

It gets complicated for those in the CFL to determine and understand how best to work with the giant NFL, how to maintain who they are and what they do, and how not to get trampled on in the process.

Some people honestly feared that this week, especially without the Argos playing, would turn into non-stop talk about the Buffalo Bills’ movement into the market. But out of respect for the institution and the event, not to mention that the Grey Cup is in his building, Paul Godfrey, who is available to be interviewed almost any day and any time, would rather remain silent about now.

And good for him, for that.

This isn’t his show or his time.

This is a week for Canada, even if the coaches are American and the quarterbacks are American and the running backs are American.

An interesting fact about football in Canada:The most watched sporting events in this country last year were the Super Bowl and the Grey Cup. Both did about five million in audience, which is about twice the number that any Stanley Cup final game managed last June.

That made the two football games the second and third most watched programs in Canada all year, just behind the Academy Awards.

Last year, there were more Super Bowl viewers than Grey Cup viewers in this country. The year before, the Grey Cup beat the Super Bowl. The truth is, Canadians happen to love football, Canadian and American.

This year, without the Argos in the Grey Cup, without Montreal in the Grey Cup, the betting here is the television audience will be smaller than most years.

Last year, RDS in Quebec had 850,000 viewers with Montreal representing the East.

A Saskatchewan-Winnipeg Grey Cup will be huge in western Canada, where the Roughriders fan base extends all the way to the coast, but it won’t register much in French Canada or in the English Canadian portion of the East that thinks NFL first.

There are really three different kinds of football fans in southern Ontario. There are those diehard CFL, damn the NFL kind of fans. There are the diehard NFL, never pay a second of attention to the CFL, kind of fans. And then there are that rare hybrid who just happens to love football, who appreciate the nuances and the athletic specialization of the CFL, while admiring the NFL for its strength, size and athleticism, all on a smaller field.

And this week, as with other weeks, there is a fourth kind of fan. The jump on the bandwagon guy, who really doesn’t follow sport regularly but loves events. As events go, the Grey Cup is beyond compare in this country.

It is the most fun, the most human, the most real, the best party event on the annual sporting calendar here. It doesn’t really matter whether Toronto gets into Grey Cup this week: The event, as it has been managed, will be successful.

The future, for this city, is a little trickier.

Finding a way to welcome the NFL, keeping the CFL alive, finding young viewers in a video-age Madden world, supporting the Argos, and still being part of Canadian football will be a test for commissioner Mark Cohon and owners David Cynamon and Howard Sokolowski.

Just not right now. Not this week. Enjoy Grey Cup.

Then we’ll start to figure out the future.