It has been five years since Thomas Dimitroff was in charge of an NFL team but the former Atlanta Falcons general manager is starting the campaign for his next job to be in Canada.
“I’m going to tell you guys right now, I’m a huge believer in one day you just need to promote me to be the guy that’s going to help bring a team to Canada,” Dimitroff told Bob ‘The Moj’ Marjanovich during Super Bowl week. “Given my background, yes, I’m American, but having been in this league for many years, the fact that Canada doesn’t have a team right now is always concerning. You might not be saying that because you don’t want it to affect the CFL, but I do believe it.”
The 58-year-old former NFL executive was born in Ohio but spent much of his childhood in Canada while his dad was coaching the Ottawa Rough Riders and Hamilton Tiger-Cats. He later played defensive back at the University of Guelph, where he was a two-time team captain, and joined the Saskatchewan Roughriders as a scout coordinator after graduation.
After leaving the three-down league, Dimitroff spent 28 years in NFL front offices, helping the New England Patriots to a pair of Super Bowl victories as director of college scouting before taking over the Falcons and driving them to a title game appearance in 2017. He still has connections north of the border and has publicly advocated for his former Guelph teammate, Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ head coach Mike O’Shea, to land an NFL job.
With those ties in mind, he doesn’t believe an NFL expansion team in Canada would spell the end of the CFL.
“I do (think it would survive),” Dimitroff said. “The idea of putting the CFL out, I guess I’ve never really thought about that. I think it can survive, personally.”
CFL fans have long believed an NFL team in Canada would be a fatal blow to their homegrown league, particularly with much of the focus being paid to a Toronto market in which the Argonauts already struggle. However, the existence of the NBA’s Raptors and MLB’s Blue Jays has not completely eradicated smaller leagues and teams in those sports, albeit to varying levels of success.
While the Argos would suffer, Canadians with existing NFL fandoms are unlikely to change their allegiances and viewing habits to support a team in the proverbial centre of the universe. That could allow the CFL to persist despite a diminished status in the country’s largest market.
“I’m fascinated by what the Canadian base feels about that, because you’re so protective of the CFL — I get that. There’s some wonderful players and wonderful people who are still involved and always involved,” Dimitroff said. “I didn’t look at it that way as much as I just thought the country itself is just such a thriving country in so many ways and they are so football-driven — and hockey-driven, of course. That’s where I keep thinking that there has to be some sort of a market somewhere.”
The idea of a Canadian NFL team has been floated as far back as the 1950s and was most recently raised at owners’ meetings in 2021, with commissioner Roger Goodell stating that Toronto could be a “great city” for the league. The Buffalo Bills played regular-season games annually in the city from 2008 to 2013 to mixed results, with attendance declining toward the end of the series. A later bid by MLSE chairman Larry Tannenbaum, the Rogers family, and rock star Jon Bon Jovi to buy the franchise and relocate it north of the border was unsuccessful.
The NFL has not been back to Canada since hosting a preseason game in Winnipeg in 2019, with the lack of an appropriate long-term stadium in Toronto providing a barrier to significant talks. The league has instead shifted much of its international focus further afield, with showcase games taking place in England, Germany, Mexico, and Brazil. Ireland and Australia were recently announced as locations for future events.
Nevertheless, Dimitroff, who currently serves as CEO of data analytics firm SumerSports, remains bullish on a team north of the 49th parallel. He would even go to unconventional destinations in order to make it happen.
“I think Toronto is an ideal place. It’s close to Buffalo. I think that would be something that would be of interest,” he said, before later joking. “But maybe you go where there’s not a (CFL) team, in New Brunswick or Newfoundland.”
The CFL has failed for more than 40 years to put an expansion team in the Maritimes. It might just take the NFL to make the Atlantic Schooners a reality.
