The Canadian Football League as we know it, as we love it, as tend to ignore it, has not committed suicide.
It has not gone to four downs as many expected would be announced on Monday. It has not gone to 11 players on the field. It has not altered the amount of motion in the game. It has not changed the ratio numbers in the league to eliminate Canadians. It has not limited the width of the field.
It has not even come up with a plan to catch the receivers who are offside on just about every play.
It has not done anything, frankly, to injure its game with its Major announcement on Monday. Major with a capital M, the frightening kind of Major which didn't really turn out to be frightening at all.
The announcements made by first-year commissioner Stewart Johnston were less Major and more logical when it comes to the CFL, which annually fights its own battle for existence, its own place in its individual markets, its own time on sports talk shows.
The CFL has a medium-sized market of aging rabid fans across the nation, not what we see in baseball with the Blue Jays right now or what will happen in NHL markets that share CFL franchises once their season begins.
Johnston isn't talking about American expansion -- that was done badly and failed the previous time it was attempted. He wasn't talking about expansion to Halifax or Quebec City, both of which should have happened years ago and maybe will happen on his watch.
Instead, he made the sound decision that just about every commissioner who came before him has been asked about and ignored: What about The Rouge? What about awarding a single point after a missed field goal?
What about points awarded for failure?
I asked that question to Johnston on the day his hiring was announced and I don't remember what his answer was. But I've asked the question before to just about every commissioner of the past three decades.
Why do you allow this?
Answer: Because that's the way it is, I was told over and over again.
Finally, Johnston stood up and said no. Not on my watch. No points anymore on a missed field goal that runs through the end zone. No singles on kickoffs that touch nobody. No scoring for messing up.
Johnston used the words entertaining, excitement and energy when talking about the forever-troubled CFL. But this season, with all its injuries, with all the quarterbacks going down, and a league that still needs to be better identify its star players, has had a rather remarkable season. The last three minutes of CFL games have become the best three minutes of sport -- not just here, but anywhere.
I love football and have since I was a kid. It was what I did with my dad. I love the NFL. I love the CFL. I love heading down to St. Mike's on a weekend and watching the kids play minor football the way I used to watch mine play. The game, no matter what the rules, is terrific.
Sometimes the people running the game get in the way of the excitement.
Johnston is changing the length of the CFL field from 110 yards to 100 yards -- and that's progressive in my mind. I always had trouble explaining that 55-yard thing to people who didn't know the game.
He's also moving the goal posts from the front of the end zone to the back. And, at the same time, making sure the end zones -- all of them soon to be 15 yards -- are the same size in every stadium.
Football isn't like Fenway Park. You don't want nooks and crannies in football stadiums. Every stadium should have the same length of field, same width, same length of end zone and now same place for goal posts.
Quarterbacks won't have to throw around them next year to find open receivers in the end zone. Pass catchers won't have to worry about running a pattern and cutting into the goal posts. These aren't Major changes. They're just necessary changes.
If Johnston isn't writing a book here, what he's doing is editing one. He's cutting in places that need cutting. He's shortening in areas that require shortening. The best of editors take manuscripts and get rid of what they determine to be excess.
In this case, Johnston and his board of governors have taken some of the sloppy parts of the CFL game to their football tailor for alterations.
Johnston called it a watershed day for the CFL. That sounds good, but it probably wasn't exactly that. Maybe that tells you more about the CFL than you already know.
These aren't watershed changes as Johnston calls them, these aren't the kind that had people fretting the previous 24 hours. They're just smart and necessary and you can understand just how backwards the league has been in the past when an announcement such as this can be considered Major.
"I want urgency on the field," commissioner Johnston said, "And I want urgency in our business."
Just as he told the men who hired him six months ago, the status quo no longer is acceptable.
And that, by itself represents a Major change -- capital letter or not -- with the Canadian Football League.