In the early 1970s, Ballard made an application for a second Canadian Football League team to be based in Toronto, to play at Varsity Stadium. At the time, the CFL still consisted of two autonomous conferences. Ballard's application would have required the unanimous consent of the four Eastern Football Conference owners to have been approved under the rules in effect at the time. In the West, CFL teams had come under significant pressure resulting from the introduction of WHA franchises in the four largest Western markets, therefore Western Football Conference teams were generally supportive of Ballard's efforts to become a CFL owner. However, hostility to Ballard's overture from the Toronto Argonauts (then owned by Ballard's former partner John Bassett) ensured it never went anywhere.