Shared Stadium

With the large kerfuffle that is currently going on in Hamilton over where to put the new stadium, people are trying their best to come up with innovative and original ideas on how to fix this dilemma.

Dave Feschuk of the Toronto Star has an outside-the-box idea of his own: a shared stadium between the Tiger-Cats and the Argos.

Ideas come in all shapes and sizes. Some are great, like DVDs and HDTVs, and some are terrible, like New Coke and Atari Jaguar. The idea of the two biggest rivals in the Canadian Football League sharing a stadium makes Pepsi Ice Cucumber (look it up) seem like it was hatched by someone with the combined I.Q. of Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. That's to say that moving the Argos and Tiger-Cats into the same stadium is, perhaps, the stupidest thing I've ever read.

First off, moving the Tiger-Cats out of Hamilton is just a bad idea. Sure, maybe if they played in Burlington it would be alright, but I still wouldn't like it. Moving the team to Oakville or beyond, as Feschuk suggests, is just plain dumb. The Tiger-Cats are Hamilton. It's our one link to major North American sports. It's our team in our city. Leaving Hamilton would take away part of the team's identity.

Second, don't talk to me about the Jets and Giants sharing the Meadowlands in New Jersey. The rivalry between those two teams is almost nonexistent. Sure, they each have different fan bases, but it's not the same as Cats versus Argos. The Giants and Jets play in two different conferences, with one playing in the NFC (Giants) and the other playing in the AFC (Jets). Aside from a Super Bowl matchup – which has never happened – these teams only play each other once every four years. The Cats and Argos sometimes play each other four times per year.

Also, both the Jets and Giants represent the New York metropolitan area. They are each considered "New York's team" by their respective fan bases. You can't find two more different teams' fans than the Cats and the Argos. Toronto and Hamilton are two very different cites, and the football teams represent that difference. Historically, these cities have been rivals for almost 200 years. This is not anywhere close to being the same as the Jets and Giants. If one was from Etobicoke and the other from Mississauga, or if one was from Scarborough and the other from Markham, then I'd say share away. But Hamilton and Toronto? Absolutely not.

I applaud Dave Feschuk for at least coming up with an original idea, but "original" doesn't mean good. The Flowbee was an original idea, and we all remember how that turned out.