If you renovate it, they will come.
All five thousand additional seats at the newly-expanded Percival Molson Stadium were occupied for the Alouettes' 2010 home opener last Thursday, giving the little franchise that could a 96th consecutive sellout.
It's not the most modern or practical facility in professional sports - not by a long shot - but the antiquated stadium perched on the side of Mount Royal is central to the story of the rekindling of Montreal's love affair with football.
Bono probably gets too much of the credit, but the fact remains that it was a U2 concert at the Olympic Stadium in 1997 that forced the Alouettes to move a playoff game to Molson Stadium.
Two seasons into their CFL rebirth the Als had been struggling with attendance at the Big O, but the magic on the mountain was so pronounced and unequivocal that fateful day that what was supposed to be a one-off affair turned into a permanent relationship between the team, the stadium, and a 12-years-and-counting run of capacity crowds.
Ironically, the Als now use the Olympic Stadium to accommodate ticket demand for playoff games, but they've resisted the economic temptation to abandon Molson Stadium in favor of a permanent return to the Big O.
That's a credit to owner Robert Wetenhall and team president Larry Smith, who engineered the move to the mountain in the first place, and who've had the common sense to recognize that bigger isn't always better, and less is sometimes more.
