Sure the Edmonton Elks are getting a new private owner, but will it just be a different standup comic delivering the same old punchline?
The club has become nothing short of a joke since undergoing the name change and dropping the old Eskimos moniker in July 2020, both on the field and off.
Barely winning. Barely anyone showing up anymore. Every decision a bad one that only seemed to compound the problem. Too many old white guys making up its fan base (yes, tragically, they actually complained about that at one point).
The punchline came when the Elks — in a display so far removed from the glory days of the Edmonton Eskimos winning five championships in a row it might as well have happened in another universe — failed to win in front of their home fans in a drought that spanned a nigh-unthinkable 1,415 days between victories at Commonwealth Stadium.
Most everyone who has the gumption to still call themselves Elks fans out in public would like to forget how that set a new North American professional sports record of 22 straight home losses. Twenty of them happened right after the rebranding, leading to talk of a curse that lasted three years.
But the jokes didn’t end there. For the past two seasons, the Elks have stumbled out of the gates to horrendously laughable starts of 0-9 and 0-7, leading to snickers behind the scenes at Commonwealth Stadium that Rick LeLacheur — who joined as interim president and CEO after his predecessor, Victor Cui, mysteriously vanished last summer amid a cloud of secrecy and gag orders — might as well change his name to Rick Loss-Assured.
The only question left aside from how much did the Elks lose by, was have they finally hit rock bottom?
Now with news breaking this week of the community-owned club switching to private ownership for the first time in its 75-year existence, as local construction magnate Larry Thompson stepped forward to buy his long-loved club that is now but a shadow of its former self, his No. 1 priority has to be attracting fans back to the stands.
And that means distancing himself from the mess things have become under the Edmonton Elks banner.
Let’s face it, another losing season stuck spinning their tires at the bottom of the standings and their fight song will have to be changed to a Gordon Lightfoot spinoff called, The Wreck of the Edmonton Fitzgerald.
Joking aside, if there was one thing Thompson could do to make an immediate impact while also offering symbolic restitution to the long-time fans that carried this club through all the thick and thin, it would be undoing the rebranding that was forced upon the franchise four years ago.
Yes, a return of the Edmonton Eskimos.
Whether you agree with it or not, it’s a sure shot to pave the way for a return to respectability in the eyes of plenty of Edmontonians who have since steered clear of Commonwealth Stadium.
Back then, the team’s name got lumped in with all the other sports clubs across the continent that drew their inspiration from Native American life, from the amateur to the pro ranks. It had become a mockery, or “cultural appropriation,” to use a term from the time.
You have to remember, this was the same summer as the murder of George Floyd, rest his soul, at the hands of the police, which led to riots in the streets and sensitivity surrounding minorities and the pursuit of equality.
Fast-forward to today and the socio-political landscape has once again shifted. With Trump Era version 2.0 a potential outcome, there has been a pushback to more traditional views, if you will. Not everything is wrong just because somebody said so on social media. And although there is a segment of the population who will continue to argue the Eskimos name couldn’t have been changed soon enough, this is a clear-cut case of majority rules.
And the majority has spoken. Both with their mouths and their wallets. And while pressure from sponsors is what led the double-E to change the name in the first place, the blowback by the fan base over the seasons to follow has been every bit, if not more severe.
The franchise is in a financial tailspin, having announced losses in each of the past five seasons totalling somewhere in the neighbourhood of $22 million. The emergency fund is nearing depletion. The team barely remembers how to win. And by the time they get things turned around on the field, there might very well be no one left in the stands to witness it.
Of course, an un-rebranding of the name would, at the same time, open up a whole old can of worms that plagued the club over the past two decades. Whenever they found success that placed them in the national spotlight (you’d have to go all the way back to the 2015 Grey Cup year for the last time that happened), it would reopen the debate and invite a who’s who of politicians to gang-tackle the club.
And for good reason. There is no denying the term Eskimos was thrust upon members of the Inuit community in the spirit of imperialism, and will always carry a dark history. But the flipside has seen the football team proudly wave the Eskimos banner on the way to historic runs and 14 Grey Cup championships.
At this point, Thompson & Co. have to weigh both the good and the bad and determine the initial step to take in plotting a course for the dawning of a new era of private ownership, because carrying on business as usual is obviously not the answer.
Once an Eskimo, again an Eskimo?
And maybe Thompson can look into the City of Champions signs next.
E-mail: [email protected]
On Twitter: @GerryModdejonge
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