Rather than worrying about wages I would like to see the league add more Canadians to the rosters for development purposes.

 

For example, add 5 "designated" minimum salary positions to be enjoyed by 1st and 2nd year NI's. Expand the 42/46 to 44/49 or something like that. Could also add a 50th position for a Canadian QB ....

 

I would also like to see the Taxi squad bigger with more yanks learning the Canuck version of 3 down football

 

Add 5 or 6 positions and more Taxi $ ... creating more union jobs .... better quality football over the long haul. 

 

Less injury impact with bigger rosters and over time better quality Canadians

 

Thinking non-mainstream here...

We have enough trouble filling rosters with quality Canadian players as it is. We have stuff where juniors such as Brett Carter could basically be on the team without taking up a roster spot. That's good enough.

2 issues beyond money.

Who coaches all these players?

When do they get meaningful practice reps?

Even with the current roster size, the non-starters get very limited reps outside of positional groups. Having more players who barely practice and never play won't help player development.

I'd like to see the minimum salary get closer to what a player would make on an NFL practice roster, which I believe is around $100k. Minimum CFL salary now is around $60k.

2 issues beyond money.

Who coaches all these players?

When do they get meaningful practice reps?

Even with the current roster size, the non-starters get very limited reps outside of positional groups. Having more players who barely practice and never play won't help player development.

 

I don't think that's a huge concern if we are only talking about adding, say, 4 players to make it 46/50.  One extra linebacker isn't going to kill the LB coach, same for most other position groups.  We're also seeing more teams bringing in extra coaches who serve as defensive or offensive assistants.  For example, last year Saskatchewan had both Barron Miles and Richard Kent coaching their defensive backs.  I don't think coaching would be an issue.

 

Meaningful practice reps are possibly a legitimate concern, but the fact is right now there just isn't room to develop enough players.  Imports come directly off the practice roster and start when there is an injury.  Surely it would be better for them to get into games beforehand and get some rotations on offence/defence and participate on special teams.  I don't buy the argument that "Having more players who barely practice and never play won't help player development."  It is better for a player to be working out with the team and sitting in the film room and learning the team's system than it is for him to be sitting on the couch at home, even if he is only getting a few real reps per practice.

 

I don't think that teams need a huge expansion to the rosters, but I do feel like they are just a bit too small right now.  Expanding to 46 active players (3 QB, 21 Imports, 22 Non-Imports) and 50 total, would give teams a little more latitude in deciding who to keep around and increase their ability to develop their young players.

More money...  CFL should be striving to reach a point where players would rather play football than hangout on an NFL PR

With the knowledge that Ottawa was going to come back into the league the CFL wanted to add more NIP spots to the PR a couple of years ago for development. The old boys in the CFLPA voted it out....wanted to be protective of their own job security I guess.

 

2 issues beyond money.

Who coaches all these players?

When do they get meaningful practice reps?

Even with the current roster size, the non-starters get very limited reps outside of positional groups. Having more players who barely practice and never play won't help player development.

 

I don't think that's a huge concern if we are only talking about adding, say, 4 players to make it 46/50.  One extra linebacker isn't going to kill the LB coach, same for most other position groups.  We're also seeing more teams bringing in extra coaches who serve as defensive or offensive assistants.  For example, last year Saskatchewan had both Barron Miles and Richard Kent coaching their defensive backs.  I don't think coaching would be an issue.

 

Meaningful practice reps are possibly a legitimate concern, but the fact is right now there just isn't room to develop enough players.  Imports come directly off the practice roster and start when there is an injury.  Surely it would be better for them to get into games beforehand and get some rotations on offence/defence and participate on special teams.  I don't buy the argument that "Having more players who barely practice and never play won't help player development."  It is better for a player to be working out with the team and sitting in the film room and learning the team's system than it is for him to be sitting on the couch at home, even if he is only getting a few real reps per practice.

 

I don't think that teams need a huge expansion to the rosters, but I do feel like they are just a bit too small right now.  Expanding to 46 active players (3 QB, 21 Imports, 22 Non-Imports) and 50 total, would give teams a little more latitude in deciding who to keep around and increase their ability to develop their young players.

 

 

The 9 game IR is functioning as a spot for developmental players, particularly QB's and Canadians.  Most teams end up carrying 60+ players in the regular season.  They could change what the roster spots or lists are called, but I don't think teams would want to carry more than that, and if they could that would mean that players who would potentially be able to play as fill-ins on other teams due to injury are not available, unless something drastic changes to make those kinds of players available more easily. 

 

Players just aren't developed into professional talents at the top level of any pro sport, players who are good enough to be on the roster get better and adjust to the CFL and develop in that sense.  They are practicing to win a game at the end of the week, not develop players and IMO it doesn't matter how many guys you let hang around, that's not changing and not a benefit to those guys unless they are ready to play pro football.  If you add 5 NI's onto every team, you are adding guys who aren't, and they won't get the chance to develop, it would just be a waste of money from the team's perspective.

 

If you create some kind of semi-pro league (they already kind of have one in Southern Ontario that CFL teams sometimes pluck guys from), that would be a better development ground for those borderline, bottom of the roster type of NI's.  For imports (other than QB's), teams aren't going to spend a lot of time developing someone, if a guy is that far behind or can't figure it out they'll bring in one of the other 5000 NCAA grads/NFL cuts looking for work.   

I get what you're sayng, and it makes a lot of sense. However I believe that if you asked coaches and GMs around the league, they would unanimously agree that roster sizes in the CFL are too small.

The argument that you can't develop players at the pro level doesn't fly for me. Look at Nick Moore's career trajectory since entering the CFL for an easy example. You can't make the argument that he hasn't developed as a player, even though he hardly saw the field in his first couple seasons.... It's not about taking some schlub and making him a star, it's about giving a talented athlete some seasoning and a little time to get used to the Canadian game.

I'd like to see the minimum salary get closer to what a player would make on an NFL practice roster, which I believe is around $100k. Minimum CFL salary now is around $60k.

 

Minimum salary last season was $45K.

 

The way to develop the players is to expand the working day. If the working day was given an extra 90 minutes and the salaries adjusted to reflect that it would be a win win. The teams would likely be able execute a better developed gameplan and players would see their salaries improve in the meantime while hopefully being able to reach their performance bonuses thanks to better play. 

 

I'd like to see a 10 player practice roster (minimum 4 NI) all season long with a bump to 12-14 players after Labour Day. 

 

One of the biggest reasons why finding NIs is so difficult is that after the training camp season most move onto regular day jobs and are no longer close to game shape. The next year some of those players will work towards getting back to training camp shape so the number of available NIs during the spring goes back up + all the draft year players that are trying for a pro career (roughly 800 to 850 players per year on the draft list - not all are continuing in football and only about 100 of those are pro quality but around 200 will be available for camps).

I think the estimation of 100 of these players being of pro quality is extreme. If you look at how few of the 64 - eight rounds of eight players in the draft actually make it perhaps 20 might even be a stretch on a good year.

It's true that only 20 to 25 players from any given draft go on to CFL careers lasting 3 seasons or more. However part of the reason behind that is that in CIS you need players at all 24 positions but in the CFL if you don't have NI depth you have no need for any NIs at that position. 

 

 

 

That is especially visible on defense. Most teams line up with 5 NI starters on offense (3 OL, 2 R) and then slide in 2 on defense (many cases it's a DL and S). 67% of all the non imports in the 2012 CFL season were OL and receivers. Doesn't leave a lot of room for players in other positions. 

 

Even though there were 27 starting middle linebackers last year in the CIS there's no need for any of them unless they can shift to WLB as primarily all of the MLB and SLBs in the CFL are imports. But there was also 27 starting WLBs and SLB in the CIS so there's 81 starting linebackers looking for spots on 9 teams except there aren't 81 spots available. In the 2012 season there were 4 Non-Imports that made the starting line up as linebackers and 21 others on the 46 man rosters around the league. That made up for 14.37% of the total NIs in the league that season. Moving that forward you've got 25 spots available (albeit most on special teams) with a turnover of approximately 30% a year making it 7.5 spots available each off season.