It should have put me in a bad mood. It was 2003, the Ottawa Renegades' second year in the CFL, and I'd followed the Argos up the 401 only to watch them blow what should have been an easy win. But unlike in, say, Hamilton -- where my status as a Toronto fan would have made me a target for projectiles -- it was hard not to leave Landsdowne Park with a smile.

It was that sunny period that greets every expansion team, when a regular-season win is still cause for excitement. It was also Dan Crowley Night, which was unfortunate planning on the Renegades' part since the much-maligned quarterback had been released days before. With replacement pivot Kerry Joseph excelling, the posse of young French-Canadian fans in front of us would rise up after each complete pass, point to Crowley's face on their tickets, and commence a round of "Hey, who dis guy?"

At that moment, with the stadium near capacity and the Renegades off to a 2-2 start, their future seemed bright. By the next year, when we returned for the Grey Cup, the Renegades still hadn't made the playoffs, and a bit of the shine was off. But as thousands of Canadians enjoyed the festivities, there was little inkling of just how violently the rug was about to be pulled out from under the team.

Since the beginning, the Renegades' committee of owners had been squabbling with each other and complaining about the league's failure to enforce a salary cap. But what became obvious that off-season was that they'd merely been waiting to recoup some of their losses with revenues from the sold-out championship game (for which they charged record prices) before bailing.

It could have been a blessing in disguise, if more competent owners had taken over. Instead, with no local interests stepping forward, the team wound up in the hands of Bernie and Lonie Glieberman -- the American father-son duo that drove the Riders into the ground, then turned the Shreveport Pirates into the league's most ridiculous franchise during a U.S. expansion period in which there was lots of competition for that title.

The Gliebermans will shoulder most of the blame for what happened subsequently, culminating in this week's announcement that the team's operations have been suspended, and it's well-earned. Lonie's stewardship of the team was what you would expect from a 30-something frat-boy -- the sort of guy who gets way too excited about hanging around cheerleaders. But it wasn't just the Gliebermans who killed the Renegades.

An endless assortment of schemers have tried every gimmick imaginable to woo CFL fans. But it's not elaborate halftime shows or Lonie's Mardi Gras contests that fill the seats. What really gets football fans excited, boring though it may sound, is stable ownership with strong local roots.

Ottawa needn't have gone as far as Edmonton, Winnipeg or Saskatchewan, which have publicly-owned teams. But Toronto and Hamilton present case studies of what it could have hoped for.

Three years ago, both southern Ontario teams had filed for bankruptcy and were on death's doorstep. The Argos, in particular, seemed unsalvagable, with even Garth Drabinsky's bizarre array of high-priced entertainment (from Muhammed Ali to Shaggy) having failed to draw fans. When local businessmen David Cynamon and Howard Sokolowski emerged as ownership successors to New Jersey's Sherwood Schwarz, they were greeted with sports columns that read like sympathy cards.

It turns out that all fans in either city were looking for were professional organizations that weren't perpetually threatening to fold. The Argos and Ticats haven't done anything all that flashy; they've just hired the right people, beefed-up marketing, enhanced game presentations and forged strong community ties. The results? The Ticats are selling out Ivor Wynne Stadium, and the Argos have gone from an average attendance of under 15,000 in 2003 to over 30,000 last year.

The Renegades needed their own version of Cynamon/Sokolowski, or Hamilton's Bob Young. But then, that's what the Rough Riders needed all those years, too. Instead, the best Ottawa could do was a motley collection of outsiders -- the Gliebermans, reclusive U.S. businessman Horn Chen, Torontonian Brad Watters.

As was obvious back when I went to the stadium in '03, the fans were ready to believe again. But then they had the optimism beaten out of them -- not by the Gliebermans, but by a local business community that stood idly by while the Renegades drew their final breaths.