2016 Schedule released. Here it is.

[squishy35]

http://www.cfl.ca/schedule/

Lots of Calgary games up front.... will be needing wins early in the season.

[Hambone]

Only quirky thing is 3 straight road games in July but all in all a pretty darned good schedule. Maybe the best we've seen in several years. Final 2 home games in October are Saturday 4:00 starts which also should eliminate the possibility of a direct head to head with the Canucks.......unless the Leafs are visiting.

[B.C.FAN]

At first glance, it looks good.

Five home games after Labour Day.
Five Saturdays, four Fridays and only one Thursday game.
All 7 p.m. starts except for the final two games with 4 p.m. Saturday starts.

“We know our fans prefer weekend games with evening start times and I believe we went a long way to achieve that this year,” said Lions president and CEO Dennis Skulsky. “Five of our home games come after Labour Day and three of those fall on Saturdays which means BC Place is going to provide us with a tremendous home field advantage down the stretch when it matters most.”

Time to start planning my work and vacation schedule.

[David]

It's a good home schedule. Odd front loaded Stamps visits (through 8/29, they are here 3x including the preseason game), but overall looks very good. We haven't seen this many Saturday contests in years.

Some challenges on the 'away' end. They play in Ottawa on 8/25 and Toronto on 8/31. I could see them staying out east for the duration. Then they only play 1 game between 8/31 and 9/23 (that's a home game on 9/9 against Montreal)! Rested or rusted?


DH

[Hambone]

Some challenges on the 'away' end. They play in Ottawa on 8/25 and Toronto on 8/31. I could see them staying out east for the duration.
DH

I could see myself saying ROAD TRIP!!!!

[green road kill]

I like schedule and I like team that Wally is putting together.Say what you want
about him , but there seems to be more direction and purpose about the type of players and the type of team we are going to have,coming from the coaches chair .Than there has been in the last couple years.

I don't fear Calgary and Edmonton as much as I did last year. Some will probably
disagree,but as it stands right now we can beat these guys.The Riders if Jones can
take it apart and rebuild it a year, then he really is the genius of genius coaches (just to many changes ). The Blumpers,some day it might come to them you can't buy a football team.( you can but most times it dos'nt work).

Looking forward to the season,and BC PLACE back to being a very scary place for
other teams to play

[B.C.FAN]

Speaking of the Argos, their home games look like they were selected with a dart board: 2 Mondays, 2 Wednesdays, 1 Thursday, 1 Friday, 3 Saturdays and 1 Sunday, and only 3 home games after Labour Day. I thought things were supposed to get better when they moved out of Rogers Centre.

[sj-roc]

On top of positives already noted, the bye weeks are 5 and 13, not too bad. Not sure the bye week to open last year did us much good. The pair of Sat 4pm starts to close out the home schedule are undoubtedly at the hands of TSN who almost certainly have other programming scheduled to air immediately after our games although I'm not sure offhand what this would be.

I just checked the MLS schedule and see the Caps have a Sun 1pm home start the day after the first of the two Sat 4pm games. Giving an extra 3hrs for the field changeover might be a factor here.

Looking at other proximate Lions/Caps home dates and just thinking out loud here as I type:

Lions Thu Jul 7, 7pm; Caps Sat Jul 9, 7pm -> Friday for the Lions might have been problematic for the Caps here? The Caps also play three further home games on Jul 13 & 16 and Fri Aug 12 (8pm) where a field changeover won't be required as we play three roaders in succession after Jul 7 at home before returning on Sat Aug 13, 7pm.

This is likely not a coincidence as it's been mentioned in the past that the Stadium wishes to limit the number of changeover scenarios. The changeover for Aug 12/13 will be tight but it seems to me the MLS->CFL changeover would be easier than in reverse as it requires erasing less paint from the turf (an entire gridiron plus numbers versus a soccer pitch with much less paint).

We play home on Sat Oct 1, 7pm and the Caps follow on Sun Oct 2, 5pm. Another tight changeover. It seems they have gotten better/faster at getting this done as Skulsky indicated a year or more ago would eventually come to pass. Pretty sure they weren't able to do changeovers in either direction just a year or two ago.

We play home on Sat Oct 22, 4pm with the Caps following on Sun Oct 23, 1pm. This is the one I referenced in the 2nd paragraph above. If they can handle the <24hr changeover for Oct 1/2 then this one should also be workable.

The MLS->CFL changeover on Aug 12/13 means the Lions won't get to have their usual BCP walkthrough the day before the game. Would they simply remain at practice in Surrey on this occasion?

Speaking of the Argos, their home games look like they were selected with a dart board: 2 Mondays, 2 Wednesdays, 1 Thursday, 1 Friday, 3 Saturdays and 1 Sunday, and only 3 home games after Labour Day. I thought things were supposed to get better when they moved out of Rogers Centre.

Might be worth examining TFC's schedule as I've done above for us to see what the Argos' options were.

[Hambone]

Speaking of the Argos, their home games look like they were selected with a dart board: 2 Mondays, 2 Wednesdays, 1 Thursday, 1 Friday, 3 Saturdays and 1 Sunday, and only 3 home games after Labour Day. I thought things were supposed to get better when they moved out of Rogers Centre.

Might be worth examining TFC's schedule as I've done above for us to see what the Argos' options were.

In baseball Mondays and Thursdays (1 or the other every week) are typically travel days. Even though they no longer share Rogers Centre with the Jays they may still be motivated to avoid playing when the Jays are in town as much as possible. All in all they did a not bad job. With baseball playing an average of 3 home games per week totally avoiding them is not possible. They only have 3 direct hits against Jay home games all season long. Hopefully by the time the first one hits Argos @ BMO will already be a hit.

Thu June 23: Ti-Cats @ Argos - travel day for Jays who finished a home stand the night before.
Wed July 13: Ottawa @ Argos - day after All-Star game, lights out in MLB
Mon July 25: Als @ Argos - Padres @ Jays, oops.
Fri Aug 12: Bombers @ Argos - Astros @ Jays, oops again
Sat Aug 20: Esks @ Argos (afternoon game) - Jays on the road in Cleveland (night game)
Wed Aug 31: BC @ Argos - Jays on the road in Baltimore
Sat Sept 11: Ti-Cats @ Argos - Bosox @ Jays, direct hit
Mon Oct 10: Stamps @ Argos - Thanksgiving Monday, Jays hopefully already out of the playoffs if they made it.
Sat Oct 15: Riders @ Argos - Saturday afternoon game. Leafs play most Saturdays but not until 7.

[Qman]

here's the schedule in plain text for the thread discussion:

P1 SAT, JUN 11 6:00 PM BC Saskatchewan
P2 FRI, JUN 17 7:00 PM Calgary BC

1 SAT, JUN 25 7:00 PM Calgary BC
2 FRI, JUL 1 4:00 PM BC Hamilton
3 THU, JUL 7 7:00 PM Toronto BC
4 SAT, JUL 16 4:00 PM BC Saskatchewan
5 BYE WEEK
6 FRI, JUL 29 7:00 PM BC Calgary
7 THU, AUG 4 4:00 PM BC Montreal
8 SAT, AUG 13 7:00 PM Hamilton BC
9 FRI, AUG 19 7:00 PM Calgary BC
10 THU, AUG 25 4:30 PM BC Ottawa
11 WED, AUG 31 4:30 PM BC Toronto
12 FRI, SEP 9 7:00 PM Montreal BC
13 BYE WEEK
14 FRI, SEP 23 7:00 PM BC Edmonton
15 SAT, OCT 1 7:00 PM Ottawa BC
16 SAT, OCT 8 1:00 PM BC Winnipeg
17 FRI, OCT 14 7:00 PM Winnipeg BC
18 SAT, OCT 22 4:00 PM Edmonton BC
19 SAT, OCT 29 4:00 PM BC Saskatchewan
20 SAT, NOV 5 4:00 PM Saskatchewan BC

[TheLionKing]

Agree with others a fan friendly schedule. May have to consider whether to renew.

[Qman]

would have liked more saturday dates (friday traffic is just as horrible as thursday in gregorville).

Like the move to more 4pm saturday starts in fall

Overall good schedule for the fans.

For the lions ... tough early schedule: 2 games vs ticats and 3 vs stamps; lots of road games

[SammyGreene]

Big thumbs up from me. Only downer is pre season games are bad enough never mind the exact same two teams meeting a week later in the same venue. Can it somehow be even more vanilla than usual?

[TheLionKing]

Who came up with the Argo schedule ?

[Qman]

Who came up with the Argo schedule ?

TSN