Salary Cap Thoughts and Recommendations

I totally agree with you. My only counter to that is how do you enforce it? If you are the league and I am one of your team’s owners and I overspend and you fine me, and I say, “screw you I’m just not paying,” what do you do about it? Revoke my franchise? Suspend my team from playing? I’m an owner who is committed to my market and have deep enough pockets to overspend. I’m hard to come by in this country. You need me.

You say that you will simply not register any contract that will put me over the cap. But that only works with base salaries with absolutely no bonuses in them. Do you also want to enforce that in the offseason? That would be impossible.

I do like the idea of partial guarantee of contracts. I have brought it up myself before (and was ridiculed for it - by some guy from Winnipeg who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else) . It will make teams more careful about who they sign and for how much, but it won’t stop a team from going over if they want to.

I don’t claim to have all the answers but there can be a base salary cap and a range for bonuses. I.e. the cap is 5.2m but with bonuses it’s 5.5. similar to the NBA, all things are considered.

I guess that your roster out of training camp needs to fit somewhere within a range, and stay there for the entire season with a hard max that yes, the league enforces with a contract not being registered.

It has to start somewhere, and that’s with disclosure. Simply knowing what teams are spending and how they’re doing it will lead to more educated discussion on how to improve it.

Forfeiture of games. That hits the players in the pocketbook too. The opposing team still gets their game cheques.
Plus the cancelled games would mean no ticket money, so the offending team will have to compensate the “legal” one for lost gate/concession/parking/souvenir revenue…

Can’t do that. Hurts attendance/tv.
Has to be stopped before it happens.

See edited post.

You’re definitely being heavy handed. Lol.
As prairie noted though , you can’t enforce that against someone like MLSE.

Agree with Crash. Can’t cancel games. That’s your prime source of revenue. It pisses off your broadcaster, your advertisers and also your fans. It also totally gives the league the ‘bush’ tag. It’s the worst thing that you can do. That’s why the league did everything in it’s power to make up that Edmonton-Toronto game last year. They had to. Cancelling a game is a disaster all around.

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Taking away wins will hurt them more than the money. Imagine if that happened more than once per season? That’s two guaranteed losses, plus all the penalties they would have to pay to the League and opposing teams. That has playoff implications, players losing their game cheques, etc.

Opponent gets to decide which player(s) to strike from your game-day roster to bring you below the cap.

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This deserves a second mention. What a fantastic idea.

Can’t tell if you’re serious or not but I’m laughing as I read this

It would be effective, wouldn’t it. The league would exempt QBs and then have other rules like no more than one from offence, one from defence.

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Last year the Salary Cap was $5,800,000 (according to cfldb).

If all nine teams got together and agreed to chip in an extra $22,500 each then we crack the $6,000,000 barrier. Either that or we hold a huge bake sale.

Sure but it would also look really bush. It would also come into effect late in the season when expenditures get near the cap and disrupt the playoff races, which would turn away fans.

Why does the cap need to be 6 million? With revenues down, if anything the cap should go down.

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Should have planned your contracts better. Injuries are inevitable - leave a buffer.

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Yes, but they don’t. That’s the problem. Often on purpose. This won’t stop the problem. It will only drive away fans by being bush.

Then properly enforce it before it happens.

Harris , Banks , Ja’Gared Davis , MBT and Muamba aren’t nobodies . QB Chad Kelly however was Mr. Irrelevant . :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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It's to the point where I dislike having money directed to anyone who would treat another person the way the CFL treats the players.

CFL is the players and the fans.

Lately the bureaucracy have decided they are what the CFL is all about with guaranteed contracts and jobs for life. It's a sweet deal. Blame the players and make the fans pay if you mess up.

CFL needs to respect the target market rather than abuse it. Not rocket science.

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