I would say that income vs expenses is only one part of the equation, although an important one. To me competitive integrity is just as important.
Teams that have poor management need to suffer some consequences more than just feeling sorry for them. They also receive higher draft picks and likely equalization payments as I have posted above. And as I have also posted and Hitemhard just did, not guaranteeing a coaches salary is impossible if the CFL want to compete in the marketplace for quality coaches. Basic supply and demand and a complete non starter.
We all seem to agree that there should be some reduction to the draconian penalties in existence whether that be a limit of say one year and/or a pro rating over several years or something else.
What is perplexing me is that I don’t even know what the rules are. Tweets by Dave Naylor were recently posted stating that the penalty for firing Jones would be maximum one year. I think he is wrong and never heard that before. Others have posted stories about how Jones has 4 one year contracts so that there will essentially be no penalty that carries over to the next year. I think that is wrong as well and certainly nothing resembling evidence has been provided for this theory and if this could occur there would be little sense in having a cap in the first place. Other stories and supposedly trusted sources say that the dead cap hit can be amortized for up to 5 years, which is a direct contradiction to Naylor’s theory that the cap only penalizes for one year but seems more plausible to me. I also have the impression that the CFL is not being completely forthright about these rules.
Maybe I am wrong and they are publicly available to read although if they were I would be concerned as to why professionals such as Naylor could be so wrong. Does anyone know the definitive rules on coaches cap penalties?
No. That’s not what I was trying to say. My point is that mollycoddling non competitive teams messes with competitive integrity. It takes away from the success of teams that do it better and takes away the incentive of the poor teams to do better. After all this is a sports league and it is supposed to be competitive.
If the goalposts are moved too often or too far when one organization screws up, no matter how much money is being made, that takes away from the competitive integrity of the game in my opinion. It should be similar to real life. No one gave Sony advantages over their competitors or gave them a do over when they messed up the marketing of Beta and lost out to VHS.
Not the point at all. Beta/VHS… well, you realize that Sony learned from its mistake and made the DVD, right? And Blueray…
Bad teams learn from mistakes and IF they had the ability to fire mistakes and replace them, maybe they could remain competitive.
We can’t just recycle every coach, and we can’t be assured every coach will fit every team. And with the trend now to giving guys multiple hats, it multiplies the problem.
Bad teams get stuck with underperforming coaches (for whatever reason) and are stuck with them, making the team worse, and killing cashflow. So teams that need it most suffer.
We want a competitive league, through competent front offices who can make appropriate moves. Hamstringing them with the SMS idea that was developed for rosters which had no guarantees, and applying it to front office, where contracts are guaranteed was stupid in the first place.
An “Active staff SMS” makes all the sense in the world. No one has a competitive advantage of spending more than another at any one time. You can’t buy a coach away without cutting elsewhere. You can never overspend, because you have the SMS there. But you CAN make changes, if you are willing to pay out of your general funds for fired front office staff. But you can never have more than the SMS level worth of staff at any one time. So it is a level playing field, with the ability for teams to correct course rather than sink until the bad contract plays out.
Sidebar: It wasn’t marketing that lost Beta to VHS as much as it was releasing licensing rights. And, of all things, it was Porn that made VHS king. The licensing costs of using the Beta format were prohibitive, whereas VHS wasn’t, and by the time Beta realized getting some royalties off a few tapes was not working, VHS won.
I’m not disagreeing that there shouldn’t be adjustments to how the penalty system under the coaches cap works and have previously advocated for same. One of the problems is the conflicting information out there, even from supposedly trusted media sources, as to how it works. It’s hard to take an informative or firm stand and suggest specific improvements if we don’t know the current rules. I was operating initially under a certain understanding and now am not sure what the exact rules are.
In principle, however, I am of the view that the coaches cap is necessary given the current structure of the league, but that the penalties shouldn’t be so draconian as to completely hog tie teams for their mistakes for too long or too severely. If I understand your proposal correctly there would essentially be no penalty under the coaches cap and I don’t agree with that in principle from a competitive integrity standpoint.
I will defer to your better knowledge upon this subject. I am no expert. I always heard and read that marketing played a huge role in the failure of the superior beta product and that is what I based my statement on.
To your other reference I do know that porn was about the only thing that made money on the internet for many years. Ironically now it’s all free.
I do not disagree with the need for an SMS front office cap. Each team should have the exact same amount of available $ for coaches at any time.
My disagreement is with having fired coaches pay be part of that SMS budget. If the coach is no longer working for you, he is not an asset, and any money given to him through guarantees has no benefit to the team, so those monies should NOT count against the cap. Only active coaches salaries should be applied towards the cap.
No team has any advantage in spending like a drunken sailor, because they all have the exact same budget for active coaches.
Decision to fire any coaches/GM’s or other executives and pay out guaranteed money would be more of a beancounter decision, whether the team is better off without them and can afford to pay them off, or needs to keep them to save money.
I understand your position and we’re close but still have a slight disagreement. The only penalty for poor management/coaching choices under your scenario is money. I think there should be more penalty than that.
Do you want the best product possible on the field at all times?
Do you want to develop coaches / execs as well as players?
Having the ability to freely change front office staff (if you can afford it) allows teams to give young coaches a chance, and put the best product on the field.
If a team drafts a rookie player and he doesn’t work out, they can cut him. Not all new players can live up to the expectations of scouts’ projections. But teams still scout and develop new players constantly.
Likewise, some new coaches don’t work our, for any of a number of reasons. But they can’t be fired (cut) because the team is stuck with their salary. Non-guaranteed contracts for coaches won’t fly. So what are the options? Stop developing coaches and take no risks hiring young guys? Or be stuck with a guy who can’t win and kill the team’s competitiveness for years? Or kill an SMS system (that was designed for on-guaranteed contracts, and was not properly adapted).
I’m a huge advocate of putting the best product on the field. I take it you’re also an advocate of ditching the ratio, clearly the biggest factor in lessening the product on the field.
The coaches cap is no different in concept than the salary cap for players. The league would be worse without these caps, it just needs to adjust the penalties.
You pointed out one huge difference in that coaches have guaranteed contracts. I think you have agreed in the past that there is no choice in that regard.
If you allow teams to spend freely on coaches/management then you bugger up the revenue sharing system as well. You can’t have the Argos for example receive an equalization payment when they have more coaches and/or pay them more than the teams paying them money to lose to them. Rich teams could also stock up on coaching talent and attract better coaches with money in theory if there was no cap. This type of free for all has never ended well for the CFL.
In principle I don’t have a problem with teams suffering for poor management decisions, whether that is on players or on coaches. It’s not a totally communist league where everyone is equal and there are no consequences for poor decisions. As I have also said the punishment shouldn’t be draconian though.
If there must be revenue sharing, have it allocated. X amount must go to marketing, Y amount must go to ops, etc… After all, if teams are spending money to keep other teams afloat, then those actually providing the funds should have some say in how those funds are spent.
If a team goes over the ops cap because of firing a coach, then simply deduct their revenue share amount dollar for dollar.
My third hand info suggests that the hit to the SMS depends entirely on the coaches contract. If there is no buy out for an early termination then no cap hit for example. Clearly Jones’s last year isn’t guarantied so no cap hit.
So i’m assuming it only applies to money paid out.
And as i said earlier, I am in favour of some extra cap exempt development spots for coaches. I think they could find a way to keep this from being misused.
You have a good point there. Would there be any chance of an exchange deal with the CJFL or U football? I don’t know what kind of pro/am boundry there might be in Canada. What do you think?
I didn’t explain myself well.
I was trying to say that the dollar for dollar deduction would come out of the revenue sharing amount they received from other teams. Once that is hit, the fine is maxxed out. But they can’t pull money from other allocations to cover ops. If they get x amount to spend on marketing, they still get that money, but it MUST be spent on marketing.
Teams that run their business well enough that they don’t need to receive revenue sharing benefit by not having a cap. This prevents the “have nots” from wasting money they receive from the “haves”, and gives them incentive to run their business better instead of relying on handouts.