Courtesy Vancouver Province:

For the next five years, anyway, the spectre of the Buffalo Bills will be hanging over the CFL. That’s reality, and the sooner folks get back to enjoying the delights of the Canadian Football League brand and forget about the NFL, the better.

Still, it would have been nice if TSN had launched its expensive and exclusive relationship with the CFL with a dedicated pregame show instead of just plunging directly into the regular season.

While fans in the cities where there is a team will be fully versed in their squad’s strengths and weaknesses and new players, those fans outside the circulation areas of the local newspapers could have used a television refresher.

In the good old days, but since face guards were invented, didn’t the CBC do a 90-minute or two-hour preseason show?

Newspaper readers, however, were well served. Between two Calgary and two Vancouver newspapers, there were 23 stories Thursday leading up to the evening’s regular-season opener for the homestanding Stampeders and the B.C. Lions.

The Province and Vancouver Sun produced special sections the previous day too.

Surely, TSN could have used the show to introduce Duane Ford and any new and innovative gizmos it will use to televise all 72 games including the Grey Cup game.

It isn’t as if it doesn’t have a considerable investment in the CFL.

It’s committed to pay the league $15 million per season for the next five years.

A fairly healthy dose of self-congratulation could have been nicely hidden by the cable network with all the preseason information and story lines it could have provided its viewers.

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