Why is DJ Flick not playing in the CFL... Why is Derrick Armstrong not playing in the CFL... Why is Juran Bolden not playing in the CFL.. Why is Tom Canada not playing in the CFL..Why is Tony Tompkins not playing in the CFL...
There are probaly 100 players out there who have recently played in the CFL, who are not washed up and are actually better then current CFL starters.
However ..because they refuse to play for 40K per season, they have moved on in life and are not playing in our league.
Yet at the same time we have Wally Buono making 500K per season...we have Bart Andrus making 450K next season even though he is not coaching...
We have Danny Machocia making 400 K to be retararded...You have Mike Kelly making 300K per season
The leagues highest paid employess are coaches, and management instead of it's biggest assets... it's players.
The players should go to war this off season, and force a management and coaches salary cap ,and get their cap increased to 5.5 million.
It's complete crap that teams like the Riders cryed poor for years ,and yet had to cut over 1 million dollars from it's players salary structure to fit in the new cap..
Meanwhile the league got a boost from 9 million ,to 15 million in TV revenues...
All of that money went into hiring expensive US coaches from the NCAA and the NFL.
All this has done,is destroyed the quality of play in the CFL.
How many times do we as fans have to watch games that are 10-1 at halftime, because players are dropping balls and players are taking stupid penalties.
Meanwhile our new coaches from the states, think they are coaching NFL football and call running plays constantly....
Wow...we had 7, 1000 yard rushers this year..
Chances are we also set a record for most pass attempts under 30 yards./..
Cut the coaches salaries...forcing dinasours like Wally Buono to the HOF, and forcing clowns like Kelly and Andrus back to the NCAA....Lets bring in Some CIS coaches who will work for cheap, and will actually know the CFL game... and lets bring back the best players possible.
Ed Berry said it best when he told his whole team... We did not bring in the best players.... We signed you guys because you were the cheapest.
That's the players fight. I support them but it is up to them to put down the Xbox or Playstation controllers and get off the couch and talk to each other instead of being on the first flight out of town...
Ed Berry ?
Doug Berry
I have no problem with the coaches making more than the players. In many sports, that's the way it used to be before player salaries went nuts.
I do agree that the SMS is responsible for the cutting of many veteran players who still can play, but this the way it goes with salary caps. There should be some way to keep veteran players under the SMS...not sure what the answer is.
It is a bit of a joke in the CFL that player salaries total only $4.2M per team, while most teams are generating $15M to $30M in revenues. But you could raise the SMS and pay every player $10,000 more, but what have you gained? If players are willing to work for small salaries, why rock the boat??
Although I agree with you in principal, I have to say I can't because we can't support it (NFL style salary caps). I'm all for bumping SMS upwards $6,000,000 though (only to account for C.O.L.A. increases, not ego increases).
NFL salary caps somewhere around $100 mill (someone with insight please correct). The biggest reason why they can afford it is because of television revenues. Canada will never have the TV market the U.S. has, for one thing the population differences. Of course the other reason they can afford it is stadium capacity.
So, in order to pay the players, the money has to come from you and me, and I can't afford $500 ticket prices game after game. Instead of season tickets, I would be buying two tickets for 1 game. It would be the death of the league, unless the CBC and TSN want to pay the league a billion dollars annually. Not going to happen.
And of course, players will go where the money is. The players that play here, do so for the love of the game. Not the money (in most cases). I mean face it, A typical CFL player works 10 times harder during any given week than you or I. When they aren't on the field, they're in the film room, team meetings, or the weight room. When they aren't in those, they are in the community doing PR. When they are on downtime, it's usually 1000 plus miles away from family. All for the same bucks you and I make digging ditches 8-5, mon-fri.
It boils down to demographics, and unless our population in Canada increases ten-fold, and our stadiums triple in size, we will always remain the go-to league when it's a no-go for the NFL for players.
Aren't coaches salaries included in the SMS?
And, DJ Flick suffered a spiral fracture in 08, and never got back to 100%, and Armstrong went to Toronto and failed a physical (knee).
As for Tony Tompkins.....I didn't know he was any good when he was playing.
As for the argument itself, there is no doubt that the SMS forces teams to consider younger, cheaper players. The NFL cap has the same result, just involving bigger numbers. All kinds of veteran, all-star players get shaken loose every off-sesason for that very reason. It doesn't make it right, it's just a natural byproduct of a cap.
I would suggest the harms of an uncapped league vastly outweight those of operating in a SMS environment.
This I totally agree with. :thup:
As it was said, the Rider were dirt poor for years. After a few great revenue years, could anyone imagine what would happen in a uncapped league? In this example the Riders could possibly sign up anyone and everyone at the top of the game and have the cash to pay them, whereas Hamilton would end up with a short end of the stick. It would create such an inbalance, it would be boring to watch. At least in an SMS, everyone has the same advantages when it comes to roster building, that having a crap roster due to lack of money is simply not an excuse.
Agreed
I am fine with the way it is. These guys are getting paid a lot more money than I am to do a job 7 months of the year. I work hard at what I do to. And they get to play a game for a living.
Look, I haven't heard anyone say that the National Lacrosse League is a joke because some players make $25,000 a year I'm sure. Yes, increase the salary cap if it can be done responsibily but we don't have the big TV money from the States as said. Players will play and leave when they want, sports in the first place should never be something you base your entire working life on anyways, it's out of control in other leagues.
Call the CFL professional semi-professional or whatever because of the salaries, I don't care because to me it's about winning the Grey Cup championship each year, they could be strictly amateurs or college players and I'd be fine with this as well. Or they could even mandate all the players must be Canadian citizens as well. I don't care.
I have a master's degree and don't make $60,000 a year and am working in a field related to my master's.
Coaching is highly volatile, if a team doesn't perform, the owner (or board) fires the coach, not the players. I believe that many coaches earn a good portion of their salary. Having said that, coaches do seem to be overpaid, seem to lack innovation (treating the CFL and its unique rules like it was 4 down football), and deserve, with a couple of exceptions, to be rolled back a little. I'd love to see Kelly get his salary rolled back like he did with Sephan LeFors, but that ain't gonna happen. I think that we have to be responsible. when times were good from the late 60s to the early 80s, the payroll for a CFL team was comparable to that of an NFL team. Even into the 80s, when Gaudaur left, we were flush with O'Keefe's money. But when that dried up, we were left with bloated payrolls, and little in the way of revenue. Unlike the other "major" leagues, the CFL remained a gate-driven league. We are still vulnerable to this sort of trend, and I believe that the CFL must partner in good faith with the CFLPA, but can't move too quickly in payroll issues. It almost killed the league in the late 80s, and if TV money dries up again (I doubt it given the strong ratings these past few years, but anythings possible) we'd be back to deficit running teams and the threat of franchises folding once again. The WORST outcome however is a strike by the CFLPA. Any gains that the league has made over the last few years could be wiped out with a prolonged player strike (like what happened in MLB in the mid-90s). That must be avoided at all costs.
LTF
and they make that in six months working 4 hours a day…(min CFL wage)
the SMS is helping the league in the long run.
easier for teams to break even, and potential owners to buy-in and expand the league, thus creating more teams, and more jobs for the tony tompkins of the world.
The SMS is good. At first I thought it was dumb that team's could go over the cap (soft cap). But unlike the NBA, there are severe consequences to going over the cap (loss of picks). I do agree, however, that the cap should go up. And it will because revenues will increase, especially with a new TV deal.
Keep the SMS.
and they make that in six months working 4 hours a day...(min CFL wage)
Not bad, not bad at all. What irks me is when some people say the CFL is semi-pro because they don't make enough money. What does that make me, someone who works 12 months of the year with 3 weeks vacation making less that $60,000 in a job requiring about 5 years of university? What, is sports supposed to be different than regular jobs out there?
Coming out of university to play football and get paid no less than $35,000 (probably the min CFL salary around 1980), man, I'd jump at the chance. I worked as a child care worker with teachers for a couple of years making $12,000 a year when teaching jobs were hard to come by.
I assume your base is like $150K, and then they start deducting for time you spend farting around on here.
Good one Artie, actually I put in a 60 hour work week as I do work at home. I've also been called a super productive worker, you know, able to get things done in 1/4 of the time the ordinary person would take, and with better quality. 
Chances are you can keep working at your job into your '60s, whereas the average career of a football player is 5 years and most players are done with the game by their mid to late '30s. That is a lot of income lost as you enter middle age without any skills that actually put food on the table. Essentially, after you’re done with football, you have to retrain for a new profession, or else acquire training in that field concurrent to your football career (Mathieu Proulx, for instance, has a law degree).
The physical punishment CFL players endure mandates a higher salary than your average job IMO. Yes, some of them make nice salaries, but the quality of life of guys like Dave Dickenson and Buck Pierce in their old age is not going to be terribly good.
Finally, the fact that plenty of non-football jobs are criminally underpaid and devalued does not, to my mind, mean that CFL players don’t have significant challenges of their own to overcome.
Many of CFL players, the smarter ones, got their degree or some trade or some skill even if it's selling cars, and can do that while playing, didn't Rocky DiPietro for the Cats hold down a teaching job while playing? I'm sure he wasn't or isn't the only one.
But I agree with what you're saying, basically CFL players more than the multi-million dollar athletes, earn every penny they get and then some subjecting their bodies to the physical punishment they do without the huge pay of other leagues. No question.
No, they aren’t. Players salaries and some expenses (ie if Team A was playing an important home game and wanted to move all of the players into a hotel the night before that would count towards the cap) but not the salaries of coaches or management.