5 PLAYERS OUT OF DRAFT FOR FAILING DRUG TEST

Kain Anzovino (Kent State), Moy McDonald (McGill), Daniel McNicholl (Carleton), and Rashaun Simonise (Calgary) all received anti-doping rule violations for the use of banned substances and will have their draft years deferred as a result.

Michael Stefanovic (Regina) is also removing himself from the 2017 Draft, although a violation of the CFL’s anti-doping rules has not yet been confirmed. Stefanovic intends on exercising his right to a hearing.

[url=http://www.cfl.ca/2017/05/04/draft-eligibility-deferred-5-prospects-following-anti-doping-rule-violations/]http://www.cfl.ca/2017/05/04/draft-elig ... iolations/[/url]

Those are the new rules that puts the CFL more in line with the major leagues, I guess, how most people seemed to want the CFL to be.

Couple clarifications requested if anyone knows.

  1. Was a draft option contemplated? ie. draft the players regardless of suspension and let them work their way into pro ball over the suspension year

  2. If the players w/ chemical issues were suspended from draft and don't have any college eligibility left - that's a fairly steep penalty - missing the draft and then being buried by fresh players on the market in 2018.

  3. If any of these boys have finished their college eligibility - what can they do while waiting for their suspensions to expire?

I guess, sit around and think about why you would do this to yourself, then hope Jones sees it as just another misguided youth and drafts them, and then if that doesn't pan out and things start to gets predictable, check the job ops for whatever they went to school for.

Assumptions here, but:

  1. How do you draft a suspended player? I can’t see how the league could allow that. So what…you draft him and sign him up as a “trainer” for a year so he can be around the team as a loophole? It has trouble written all over it.

  2. Stiff penalty indeed. Good. Send a message to future players. It is a newer rule so there will be a couple years of players trapped in a bubble here living between the time it did not exist and now. They may have gotten into habits when they got into the college ball and the CFL rules were introduced after…that is unfortunate but these rules are in there for protecting the players long term health and if you need to punish them to help force their protection and make a level playing field so be it. At the end of the day these guys are responsible for their own actions.

  3. There are other leagues out there that they can go play in and establish that they are serious about rehabilitation and learning from their past mistakes.

I will say that IMO it DOES make a difference based on what substance the failure was caused from…but I get that you need to make it black and white…pass/fail.

The appeal will be interesting. Don’t know details…perhaps related to medical treatment or something? Hope that whatever that might be it can be reviewed really fast, but that is unlikely. Chances of being complete by the draft…good luck, but maybe the supplemental. I hope they could do it before the draft though.