The CFL board of governors are looking for a successor to Randy Ambrosie as commissioner and Glen Suitor believes he can do the job.
“I would know what I don’t know, in other words, I’d want someone working right beside me with regards to accounting,” Suitor explained on The SportsCage. “From messaging, selling the game and growing the game, I think I could do the job.”
Ambrosie’s tenure as CFL Commissioner started in July 2017 when he succeeded Jeffrey Orridge. In late October 2024, he announced his plan to step down when the CFL board of governors find a replacement.
“To all the listeners that are wondering about it, and all the football fans, I honestly am working on it every day. I wake up, I send a couple of texts: ‘Any word on the commissioner? Any idea?’ As soon as I hear, they will, but nothing yet,” Suitor said.
“I think people — you’re sitting in a bar saying: ‘Hey, if I was commissioner for a day, here’s what I do.’ I’ve had that discussion many times.”
Suitor knows being CFL commissioner would be a hard job. He’s thought about what he would do if he were offered the job. One of the first items for him would be to change the situation with international players. As reported by 3DownNation’s John Hodge, Ambrosie introduced the Global initiative in 2018 to broaden Canadian football’s reach and it was labelled “CFL 2.0.”
“That whole international player thing would have to be revisited immediately, unless there is some income or some revenues coming in that they haven’t told us about. I would definitely be looking to change it, alter it, maybe even get rid of it, and if teams wanted to still sign and recruit from Mexico and Europe, great, all the power to them, but it’s not going to be a mandatory spot,” Suitor said.
“In fact, there would be a growth in the men, the spots for maybe another American and two more Canadians to grow the roster so that from a player safety point of view, you get some of your starters on offence and defence off of special teams and you have strict special teams units. In order to do that, you’ve got to increase the size of the roster.”
Another idea Suitor floated if he were commissioner was for the CFL to focus on its Canadian roots and promote the game to the younger generation.
“Every elementary school and high school in this country should have flag football setups, cones, footballs and flags that have CFL logos on them,” Suitor said. “It should be, like volleyball, basketball, part of their curriculum.”
Recently, the CFL’s communication window opened and closed from February 2 to 9 with free agency opening on February 11. If Suitor had the power, he would ‘tweak’ the system.
“I’d want to tighten the window that teams have to re-sign their own free agents and then open it,” Suitor said. “Christmas happens, and New Year’s happens right after that. A week later, the team’s deadline is 10 days after New Year’s to sign their own free agents and have exclusivity. Don’t let them talk to anybody else. After that date, it’s open — you can sign wherever you want.”
An initiative Suitor would like to roll out for the CFL is to reward the referees with increased salaries and ways to train them.
“Our officials are as good as any in the league and any in the world, I should say, but we need to invest in them more. What if the officials in Canada were making $80,000 a year, $90,000 a year, they could make a really good living during the summer, officiating CFL games. It wouldn’t change what’s happening today, which, again, is a very high standard,” Suitor said.
“But what it would do is create competition. You would see a whole bunch of kids coming out of college football programs that don’t get to continue their football career and say: ‘You know what, I could ref.’ We would see referee schools that would have 100, 150 kids in them, men and women, and it would increase. Competition is the best for everybody, whether you’re a player, a coach, or whatever. Having 150 people competing for 10 new jobs as officials is better than having 20 competing for 10.”
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