Surprise released players

Perhaps he is a spoiled brat.

However after reading the report, I will hang it on the agent.

We have seen this before. Bad advice from an agent.

" They need you , more than you need them. Leave it to me kid - I got this "

Would not surprise me if dad is involved as well.

My outside advice is take what you can get now. Be grateful for the opportunity you now have.
Earn your stripes son, then you can negotiate once you have proven what you can do against the big boys.

Johnathon Hardaway strikes again.
I get that an agent wants to get the best return for his client as possible…but this is several young players he has hurt in the long run with this kind of stuff. He wanted to get #1 money for a #5 pick in this situation. It is coming to a point where him as an agent is going to start pushing players to later in the draft.

Please, Agents don’t pick the players, Behar picked Hardaway knowing full well what he was getting. Now live with it.

...caveat emptor depop....I don't blame the agent, his stripes are well known, I blame the players (or their dads) for signing with an agent that has a bad reputation...

My Latin is a bit rusty, what does the ‘depop’ in caveat emptor depop mean again? :lol:

In a sense I do not disagree…problem being that he is an agent that can open NFL doors better than many who are also permitted to deal in the CFL. That is a part of the appeal for a lot of these guys. As you say ‘his stripes are known’ which is my point…teams are going to be at a point where him as an agent is going to be a factor when they start looking at their draft choices.

If you have 2 guys weighted essentially the same and one is repped by Hardaway and one is not…you might start passing on the player who is. This has become an annual issue for several years now where he is bringing unreal expectations to the table. Players are not necessarily aware of that bad rap…they have a guy sitting there saying “this is my track record of getting guys NFL looks” so they sign on with him…some really not aware of the issue he has created dealing within the CFL. Is that on the players being repped…sure…it falls on them at the end of the day.,doesn’t matter why the player is selecting him as an agent…it matters if GMs start passing on wanting to deal with him for higher picks…which was what I suggested might start occurring.

Once again we see the glaring ineptitude of the PA and how they totally and completely got owned by the owners during the last round of negotiations. In other leagues if players are not signed by a certain date, they are eligible to go back into the draft to be selected by someone else. The fact that this does not appear to be the case in the CFL is disappointing (but I guess shouldn't be surprising at this point).

That literally gives the player zero leverage and the teams can offer whatever they want and the player pretty much has to take it. If the CFL had rules similar to other leagues, teams would not be as likely to lose a player for nothing and would be more motivated to get their players signed.

The fact that first round picks salary has stagnated (or in some cases gone down) in recent years (a virtual impossibility in other leagues) is disappointing to say the very least.
In other leagues, your first round draft pick is someone you market the franchise around (or at least use as a marketing tool). To have that player make as much as a union construction worker does not get the job done in today's modern world.

I would normally blame the agent too, but the fact that he put out the tweet in French that he was “A slave” makes you think that it’s all him.
A couple of years ago when Chris Williams had the contract dispute with Hamilton, I was with him all the way, it was his agent that was calling the shots and at least Williams was the number one KR/PR and receiver and deserved to be paid much more.
The “slave” Behar hasn’t played one down or practiced with ex-NFLers, ex-NCAA and experienced CFL players, he will be in for a rude awakening when he gets covered by a pro and hit by a pro. This ain’t the CIS kid, it’s the pros.

We should all be prepared for more Society Sucks/Sucks of Society in the future. It's only going to get worse.

...agreed, and where is the BLM folks criticizing his use of the term 'slave'...

:thup:

EastVanMark, is the concept of a rookie wage scale via the draft even viable in the CFL?

In the NFL, after so many years of bloated compensation for high draft picks so as to upset the veteran players and given the severe damage to franchises with any given draft bust (sometimes of course unrelated to poor play and rather a situation involving serious injury from which a player never recovered enough to be anywhere near the same), a rookie wage scale for the first round draft picks was imposed in 2011. Certain incentives are still negotiable, but much of the pay is not any more and holdouts are uncommon.

Oh sure the pay is still very high, but the NFL now has a handle on the matter for rookies via the NFL draft:

[url=http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1595987-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-nfls-rookie-wage-scale]http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1595 ... wage-scale[/url]

Well to be fair, he would be making far less than BLM pulls in. Why should Bo’s folks get involved? :slight_smile:

edit…

That would be pretty tough considering that camp starts <3 weeks after draft and before all schools are even out. This isn’t like the NFL where there are months of room.

Start fixed entry contracts and be done with it…anyone drafted that year or the year before.

Start looking at the history of contract disputes over the past several years…you will see one common denominator in almost all of them.

I think that a rookie wage scale could be viable, but the problem as it stands now, teams can pay their players basically whatever they want with no recourse on the part of the player. So in essence a wage scale already exists; its just that owners can pay as low of a salary as possible with absolutely zero consequences.

Leagues like the NFL and NHL saw draft picks getting higher salaries than established sometimes even All-Star callibre veteran players, and rightfully brought in rookie salary limits which make a lot of sense. However, in the CFL’s case, we would just be talking about paying a top draft pick an extra $20,000 or so just to get to the league average. In the NFL for example, even though there is a rookie salary “pool” or cap, the top first rounders still get a much higher salary than average players. In the CFL’s case, even top draft picks barely get over the minimum let alone the average. Those other leagues use their top draft picks to market their respective leagues and member teams. Hard to get excited by a guy who is barely making more than a minimum salary. Sad state of affairs perhaps but all too true.

A rookie salary cap of say $100,000/yr would put a first year draft pick barely over the average player salary, and would only be made available to the top few picks. The rest could be negotiated on a case by case basis. And, if a team does not feel such a high amount is warranted, they would be more than free not sign their draftee. HOWEVER that player should then be allowed to re-enter the draft the following season. Keeps teams honest, and the player runs the risk of being drafted even lower or not being offered as lucrative of a contract. Win-Win for all around.

Yes, but the NFL also isn’t negotiating over an extra $17,000. I don’t need 3 DAYS to negotiate that, let alone 3 weeks. NFL contracts for top draft picks are seriously complicated and have long term implications on individual teams salary management systems. The CFL ones do not.

Thats where an NFL or NHL type rookie cap comes in. Only allow teams to sign draft picks to a max $100K salary. That way a player knows going in he’s not going to sign for any more, and if a team is willing to risk losing the player and have him go back into the next years draft over $15-20,000, then that’s the chance they take .

We’ll agree to disagree on this one. It would be a horrible thing for the CFL as a whole and there would be holdouts every year wanting 120-140k, which you simply can not pay a CFL rookie the way the cap is presently (brutally) structured.

The NFL and NHL have Billion dollar TV contracts and endless advertising dollars.
The CFL is a gate driven league with a small TV contract, to give players more money would mean teams have to raise revenue from ticket prices, concession prices etc.
They won’t be getting any additional revenue from the TV contract, it’s locked in for 4 more years and salary cap is locked in. No more money is coming in for salaries.
The salary cap is $4.6 MILLION and there are 46 players, that’s $100k per player, you can’t pay all your players the same.
The rookie players have a choice, if they don’t like it find another career.