Yep, it's the off season.

After last weeks excitement of expansion drafts, trades and player releases, it's been a fairly slow news week for TFC, one very minor trade that really won't affect things much at all, and a couple of interesting announcements that could potentially have huge ramifications, but probably won't and woudn't be happening for a long time anyway.

The first news item was the trade of Joseph Nane to Colorado for a 3rd round draft pick in 2012, which doesn't really deserve much more than a barely interested meh!  I've got nothing against Nane, so best of luck to him, but he was never going to be a major piece in TFC's plans going forward, so a 3rd round pick is probably about right, and maybe even more than I would have expected his value to be.  Well done to Earl on that one, the cuttting of last season's dead wood is going well, though I'd still like to see someone permanent in charge before we start adding new players.

The 2nd bit of news was that MLSE head honcho Richard Peddie confirmed he will be resigning in December of 2011.  While it did provide a brief "Thank God for that, things have got to get better from here" feeling, nothing's really going to change is it?  I'm sure the shareholders were quite satisfied with the returns over the years from all the various different pies that MLSE has it's fingers in and people within MLSE seemed to be lining up to sing his praises, so I'm not getting my hopes up that there'll be any cultural change there.  Obviously Leafs and Raptors supporters will have their reason to love or hate him, but looking at things strictly from a TFC perspective, well MLSE did stump up the expansion fee when no-one else was doing it, as well as playing a part in getting BMO Field/National Soccer Stadium built and the other ways that TFC has helped grow the game in Canada.  It would be churlish not to acknowledge that, and thank him for whatever role he played in all that, but at the same time, he should take his share of the blame for how things have started to go wrong, especially in the off the pitch side of things where he would have a more direct influence.

This season's "royal screw up" with the 2011 season tickets and all the scrambled apologies and freebies that followed, was the inevitable conclusion to the last few years of aggressive price hikes and exploitation of supporter passion that has so soured the whole "TFC experience".  It takes a special talent and focus to be able to turn people off so quickly, to turn such an enthusiastic supporter base, ready to provide a great atmosphere, buy merchandise in huge quantities and propel TFC to be named brand of the year in 2009, into a grumpy bunch who grudgingly renew their tickets, but only after a "cratering" of sales forced MLS Commissioner Don Garber to come up to Toronto and lend a hand,  and whose views of the front office range from wary suspicion to outright contempt, all in the space of 4 years.  So take a bow, please leave as quickly as you can, I just wish I had even a tiny sliver of confidence that things will improve.

What do you know, that sliver of confidence actually came on Wednesday with the news that Rogers was in negotiations to buy the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan's majority stake in MLSE.  Now this is all at a very preliminary stage, and any deal, whether with Rogers or any other company probably won't take effect for a very long time, but it's fun to think of how it could change things.  Hopefully rather than being seen as first and foremost profit making enterprises for the Pension Plan, MLSE's teams could instead be seen as loss leaders, not necessarily making a profit themselves, but providing content to drive profits in Rogers media empire, TV channnels, smartphones etc.  I'm thinking of how for marketing purposes Red Bull has given the, er, Red Bulls the means to attract Thierry Henry and Rafael Marquez, as well as building them a very nice stadium.  It's very unlikely that would happen, and more than likely it'd be more of the same, maybe we'd be better off as is, in a "better the devil you know" kind of way, but daydreaming of a more fan friendly and successful ownership group is pretty much all TFC, Raptors and Leafs fans have to keep them going at this stage.