I shared my thoughts the other day on why it’s time to retire the Kiss Cam, an outdated and inappropriate game day video board presentation.

Teams are always looking for time fillers, so what could you do instead? Here’s an idea.

What if you showed some videos that (humourously) attempted to explain the game?

You need to welcome people who’ve never seen Canadian football before, or who are casual fans that don’t appreciate the nuances of the game. Let’s help them out!
Frankly I’ve been to almost every Argos home game in the past 22 years and there are still a lot of things I don’t understand. Let’s help me out too!

How about showing some fun vignettes that explain …

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Teach me some of the referee hand signals. What's going on here? Are they doing the YMCA or does this mean something? (Note, these are all actual signals from the CFL rule book.)

Here's the thing. Sophisticated fans know all this stuff and will roll their eyes. But if there's one thing we've learned, there aren't enough sophisticated fans to fill the stadium. We need people who are unfamiliar with football to come, and enjoy, and learn, and become rabid fans. Let's help them out.

I bet you could make this fun and engaging and it would be something people would enjoy.

Unlike the Kiss Cam.

Speaking of football game day traditions - retiring the Kiss Cam is long overdue. If you haven’t seen it - this is a stunt found during timeouts at lots of sporting events where the cameras pan the crowd, looking for couples, finding a man and a woman and encouraging them to kiss, all up on the Jumbotron for everyone to see and cheer.

It’s awkward enough assuming that camera operators have some magic ability to spot people in the crowd who might be a couple. We don’t know anything about their situation.
We, the people, demand that they kiss! Kiss for us! Now!

But …

Maybe they’re coworkers, maybe they’re neighbours, maybe they’re brother and sister - maybe they’re strangers. Or maybe they really are a couple and they’re having a bad day, or are embarrassed, or who just don’t want to be on the screen doing something intimate.

Why are we putting randomly selected people on the screen and pressuring them to do something pretty personal like this? You can see the reluctance a lot of the time.

As if that’s not bad enough, it used to be that after four or five rounds of finding couples to kiss, the cameras would then finish off by cutting to two players on the opposing team. Ha ha!, the theory apparently went, isn’t that hilarious, the idea that two men would kiss!

Well, no, it’s not. Come on.

At least they don’t usually end with that shot of two players any more, but it is still cringe-inducing watching the cameras pan the stands, always on the lookout for a man and a woman sitting together because a) obviously they must be romantically involved if they’re sitting beside each other, and b) a man and a woman is apparently the only “safe” combination to select.

It’s time to retire this gimmick - it was never funny in the first place and now it’s just awkward and becoming offensive, especially in light of the great work teams are doing with projects like “You Can Play” that encourage everyone of all types to take part in sports.

Lose the Kiss Cam. Please.

"People with a real love for the symphony, when other people react and clap after a first movement, they should be saying “Wonderful – there are new people in the audience tonight!”

– Former Toronto Symphony Orchestra conductor Peter Oundjian, asked in The Whole Note about audience members clapping between movements of a piece, something long thought by sophisticated concertgoers to be a major etiquette violation.

Yesterday I was at the Argos game at BMO Field, a thrilling 24-23 victory over the BC Lions, and the outcome was in doubt until the final second. It was the largest crowd in a while - 18,000 people and the fans were loud, and engaged, and everybody had a great time.

And, unfortunately, the TV cameras were pointed at the east stands. At the moment, the team doesn’t sell seats in the upper deck, so it looked terrible -

The crowd on the west side, where I sat, was much better. Not full, but a big improvement.

This is the west side’s reaction after the go-ahead touchdown. Isn’t this fun?

And it was great to see lots of new fans at the game! I hope they come back. It seems like it’s easy to get people to come to one argos game, but harder to get them to come to two. An exciting victory on a beautiful day with a loud crowd should definitely help.

Here’s the thing though. The tradition in football is that the home crowd should be quiet when our team has the ball - so that they can hear signals from the quarterback and execute plays to perfection. (Make all the noise you want after the ball is snapped but be quiet while they’re getting ready.)

Conversely, you should be loud, stomp your feet, and scream when the visiting team has the ball. Try to throw them off. Sometimes it works, sometimes the crowd is so loud that the other team will line up in an illegal formation, or make a false start - and they’ll get an “illegal procedure” penalty.

(sidebar: here’s the difference between ‘offside’ (on the defense) and ‘illegal procedure’ (on the offense).)

I have to admit, I never really understood this shushing business. Your natural reaction - as in most other team sports - is to cheer madly on offense to help your team score. And, aren’t they professional athletes? Aren’t you getting paid? What’s the problem with a little noise? What is this, Golf? You can only perform in silence?

Well, whatever. That’s the tradition. They need to hear the signals. Quiet on offense, loud on defense. The players want it that way.

What bugs me more, though, is when fans criticize other fans for making noise on offense. Yesterday there were some “Let’s Go Argos!” cheers and foot stomping when the Argos had the ball. I saw a few tweets from fans complaining about this. You’re not supposed to do that, then! The nerve, that people would cheer at the wrong time!

But … We should be happy about that. It shows that there are new fans at the game. We want that! We need them! We want them to return!

Peter Oundjian has the right attitude. “Inappropriate” crowd reactions really just mean you have new people at the event, and you should celebrate that and welcome them if you want your event to survive and thrive in the modern era.

It’s the same at football. Let people cheer “wrong”. Let’s hope they had fun, and will come back, and will figure out our traditions and become as suave and sophisticated as the rest of us.

So, did any politician take the Basic Questions quiz?

Well, no. Just following up many weeks later - I had the map ready at my door and everything but during the entire election campaign, nobody knocked on the door at all.