LET'S BE FRANK: THIS ISN'T THE WRIGHT MAN TO SAVE THE CFL IN OTTAWA

The Ottawa Sun has a story today on Frank D'Angelo of "do you Cheetah" fame and his bid to revive the Canadian Football League in the capital.

There's no prejudice here against D'Angelo. Truth is, he's almost impossible to dislike, since he is so honest about who he is: A somewhat small-time huckster who conjures up dusty sepia-toned images of travelling door-to-door salesmen.

Not to get too far off on a tangent, but he would have been perfectly at home roaming the landscape wearing a natty snap-brim fedora and a zoot suit, perhaps seducing lonely housewives.

Even if you try your hardest to take him at his word and accept, at face value, that he's not just here for some cheap publicity (as has been intimated elsewhere), D'Angelo's public persona leaves some lingering questions. Given his past decisions in the name of the almighty buck, such as his crass exploitation of Ben Johnson to plug an energy drink, how is one to believe that he will bring the right sensitivity to this market?

It will be a huge challenge for whatever owner and promoter tries to revive the CFL here to win over a justifiably skeptical public that has been burned too many times. It will take a long time before Ottawa-Gatineau sports fans and whoever ends up running the team will be ready to start doing "trust falls."

This city gets slagged as a poor sports market, but really, tough sports market is more accurate. People in the capital region will come out, but their tastes are a little more discriminating than in other CFL cities. Fewer people will buy tickets out of civic or regional pride, the way they do in Hamilton or Regina.

Making Ottawa CFL Team Version 3.0 a success is going to take someone who brings the right mindset to the table and understands, as Lonie Glieberman failed to in 2005, that the lowest common denominator beers-and-babes equation won't fly.

Don't take this as a perosnal attack on our man Frank. He could probably be a successful CFL promoter in another city. It's just that he comes across like one of the last people you would want trying to revive the CFL in the Ottawa-Gatineau region, unless you were able to get good odds in Vegas on it failing for the third time.

So to sum up, he is not the right man, but it may come to down to who is CFL commissioner Tom Wright's man. Here's hoping Frank D'Angelo isn't that either. No offence, Frank.

Related:
Saving Ottawa Sports: Vote of Confidence For City's Football Future (Aug. 10)
A Canadian ... A Jamaican-Canadian ... A Jamaican Tragedy (March 24)

(This just in: another double for Eric Hinske, although considering he homered off Chien-Ming Wang last month as a Blue Jay, it's no surprise. Nevertheless, they are printing the "Hinske's Horde" t-shirts as we speak.)

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.