THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 3, 1995 TAG: 9512030223
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY HARRY MINIUM, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: TORONTO LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
Call it just another day in the CFL.
For three hours on Friday, more than a dozen journalists waited outside a room where Canadian Football League owners and executives were meeting. The reporters wanted a glimpse of Horn Chen, the reclusive owner of the Ottawa Rough Riders.
Chen is a mystery. He has yet to be seen at a Rough Riders game. In fact, he has yet to be seen at all by the Ottawa media since buying the team a year ago. But here he was in Toronto, or so league officials claimed, as the CFL board of governors gathered for their annual meeting.
As meeting time approached, reporters were told that Chen and CFL commissioner Larry Smith indeed had arrived - via the kitchen of The Bristol Place Hotel.
Curses and howls echoed across the lobby. Finally, league chairman John Tory calmed the journalists by promising to bring Chen out for a short photo session. One caveat: no questions allowed.
Two hours later, Chen and Smith emerged as promised. A photographer for the Ottawa Sun busily snapped pictures and stumbled into Chen, who helped him off the floor and asked if the photog was OK. ``Yes, sir,'' said the photographer, sheepishly.
An hour later, nature called for Chen, who worried that he might have to answer questions on the way to the men's room.
No problem.
Smith, a former star for the Montreal Alouettes, put his hands around Chen's waist and led interference for him through the reporters, who were barking questions.
And so it goes in the CFL, an unconventional league whose owners and management are unlike the staid power brokers in U.S. pro football.
Unlike the NFL, the CFL is a rough-and-ready democracy. Asked who rules the CFL, one board member said, ``Sometimes, anarchy rules.''
The three remaining U.S. members - Hampton Roads, Baltimore and San Antonio - have a typical U.S. ownership structure. They're all successful businessmen who own most or all of the team.
In Canada, ownership groups are diverse, and teams change hands frequently. The quick changeover has tended to reduce the development of factions. Larry Ryckman, a stock broker who has owned the Calgary Stampeders for five years, is the veteran among private owners - and his team is up for sale.
Chen, originally from Hong Kong, is a restaurateur in Chicago who also owns the Central Hockey League, as well as Columbus and Jacksonville of the East Coast Hockey League.
The Toronto Argonauts, the league's flagship operation, are owned by a brewery in Belgium. Three Canadian teams - Edmonton, Winnipeg and Saskatchewan - are owned by their communities.
Saskatchewan's community group is led by John Lipp, originally from Germany, who owns some coffee houses in Regina, Saskatchewan. He is considered the leader of the league's small-market teams.
Lipp is also a member of the league's powerful executive committee, which includes Smith, British Columbia's Bill Comrie, Paul Beeston of Toronto, Winnipeg's Reginald Low, Ryckman and the Pirates' Bernie Glieberman.
At times the executive committee sets the agenda for the CFL. At others, it is Smith, Tory and Jeff Giles, the league's chief operating officer.
For now, it appears that trio has the upper hand, given cost-cutting moves they rammed through in three days of meetings, which ended Friday. Smith and Tory pushed through major cuts in salaries, operating budgets and even the league office. Expansion into the U.S. will be put on hold until most of the 11 teams are making money.
``For the first time since I've been in the league, I feel absolutely confident about the future of the Canadian Football League,'' Ryckman said.
Tory, whose position is unpaid, is one of the league's more interesting players. Considered brilliant and eloquent, he is the one who persuaded the owners to accept the cost-cutting moves originally proposed by Giles. At times, Tory, who chairs league meetings and often serves as the board's spokesman, seems more in control of the CFL than Smith.
A member of Canada's Progressive Conservative Party, Tory is a prominent attorney who in the 1980s was the senior political adviser to the prime minister of Canada. The 39-year-old Trinity College graduate is considered a potential prime minister himself.
As befits his conservative credentials, Tory has set an austere course for the CFL. When asked about negotiations with the players union over the cuts, he said: ``We could go to the players and talk to them about sharing our losses. We'd rather go to them and talk about getting rid of the losses.''
Which in the ever-changing world of the CFL means that, for the time being, anarchy might not rule after all. by CNB