SAVING OTTAWA SPORTS, NO. 3

• Stop us if you've heard this before: The CFL apparently wants a $3.5 million franchise fee for the revived Ottawa team. Hate to sound like a parent of a teenager here: "Don't tell me you already spent the $4 million you got for the last Ottawa franchise!" Seriously, if the league is sincere about succeeding in Ottawa, it would levy only a nominal fee since that would help the new ownership group cover the inevitable operating losses over the first couple seasons.
  
  The reason the CFL governors don't want to do that, though, probably has to do with the expansion fee they envision themselves collecting if a team is ever established in Atlantic Canada. Well, there's no chance of that happening until it gets a stable franchise in Ottawa.
• Subject to yesterday's post about the Ottawa Lynx, the Citizen is reporting that Miles Wolff, commissioner of the Can-Am League, views the city as a natural site for an expansion team in the short-season independent league, which has a thriving team in Quebec and has plans to expand to Montreal in 2008. With that in mind, expanding to Ottawa would make almost too much sense. Again, retro-fitting Lynx Stadium's capacity to between 6,000 and 8,000 seats would be a good idea.
  
  By the way, the Can-Am League is where U.S. skier/living punchline Bode Miller played one game to raise money for charity last month. Miller, who went 0-for-5 in winning medals at the Winter Olympics, went 0-for-2 as a member of the Nashua Pride, but apparently made a great catch in left field.

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