CFL Salary Cap Comes Into Effect Tonight at 11:00 p.m.

Hamilton Tiger-Cats
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According to an article titled "Popp negotiates deals through Cup week" by Kirk Penton in today's edition of the Winnipeg Sun, the enforcement of the CFL Salary Cap begins tonight at 11:00 p.m. and Jim Popp and the other CFL general managers are scrambling to re-negotiate deals with their players before the cap comes into effect. Here is an excerpt from that article:

"The Montreal Alouettes coach/GM will guide his team into the 94th annual Grey Cup tonight at Canad Inns Stadium against the B.C. Lions. He has only seven games of CFL head coaching experience under his belt, so you'd think that would be the only thing on his mind.

However, since the CFL salary cap goes into effect at 11 o'clock tonight -- and he found out about that only recently -- Popp has also been negotiating contracts all week, trying to restructure deals and get signing bonuses to players in an effort to save some cap space.

Popp said he has finalized several deals in Winnipeg, but he wouldn't reveal which players have new contracts."

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That was a very interesting article. And if you would like to read the entire article, you can click here to read it.

Anyway, I should first point out that with this being an article in a Winnipeg newspaper, I'm assuming that the cap comes into effect 11:00 p.m. Central Time. That means that it looks like for most people who visit this site, it comes into effect at midnight local time. It'll be interesting to find out what Jim Popp has done during this Grey Cup week other than prepare the team he's coaching for this game. I have heard that Montreal is about $500,000 over the cap at this time, but I can't be sure of that. In any case, he's apparently had to handle plenty of GM duties in addition to coaching duties.

I was also wondering the same thing was happening in B.C., but after reading the article, it apparently was not.

From the article:

[i] Popp believes Lions head coach/GM Wally Buono hasn't had to deal with such distractions, because he feels the Lions -- along with Calgary and Toronto -- knew well in advance when the salary cap was coming into effect.

"There's five of us that had no clue," Popp said. [/i]

So who else in the league has had to get the team's payroll below the salary cap on such short notice?

Popp said this was not a distraction for him, but it just added to the workload. But it should also be pointed out that Buono has said he has not had enough time to prepare for this game. And here's a quote from Buono:

"I'm going to get in trouble for saying this, but I don't believe that Grey Cup week is fair to the coaches," he said. "The ability to prepare yourself is almost impossible. "... The game is about the celebration, but it's also about the quality of the game."

But I'd say Popp may have found it harder to prepare for this game. Not only is this the first Grey Cup game he has coached in, but there's this one line in the article that said it best: Talk about tricky, having to tell players all week why they don't deserve more money and then hoping they'll play the games of their lives for you tonight.

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why did he not know?...didnt check e-mails?...lol

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Sounds kind of strange that some GM's knew about this before others. It would seem like normal practice that after the B of G's signed off on the salary cap, the CFL head office would send out some paper work out lining the deadline etc. to all the teams.
I imagine teams have been busy signing players they want to keep to big up front bonuses with smaller salaries. So a lot of teams will still be over the salary cap...its just that the bonuses given before the deadline won't count officially I guess. Of course some of these signing probably won't get annouced until the season ticket drives start.