National Post (National Edition)
Cap rules ensure parity within CFL
Shuffling talent integral to balance on field
In the closing moments of the fourth quarter of last year’s Grey Cup, with the Calgary Stampeders on the goal-line and the whole of BMO Field expecting a dive up the middle into the end zone, Calgary’s Andrew Buckley instead went wide right into open space for what looked to be an easy goahead touchdown.
Ottawa’s Abdul Kanneh, with a lunging dive, got a hand on Buckley’s foot, tripping him before the goal-line.
It was a microcosm of the 104th Grey Cup, and the season that preceded it: the Calgary juggernaut, on an inexorable march to the championship. And then, whoops. Tripped up by the shoelaces.
But that tackle from Kanneh, which allowed the Redblacks to win the game in overtime, also saved something else: the CFL’s remarkable run of parity. The 2016 season looked like anything but, when Calgary rolled to a near-record 15-2-1 mark, but parity rallied late.
The victory for Ottawa, a team that lost more games than it won in the regular season and was only in its third year of existence, marked the seventh-straight season in which a different team won the Grey Cup. And over that stretch, the two teams that didn’t win — Hamilton and Winnipeg — made it to the title game at least once.
As the campaign for the 105th Grey Cup gets underway, the only certainty is that weird stuff will happen. Other pro leagues talk about the importance of parity. (OK, not the NBA.) But the CFL has taken it to previously unforeseen levels.
Part of the league’s balance is a math issue. The Redblacks made the CFL a nineleague team, and when six of those advance to the playoffs, only the bottom third of the league has no shot at a title. With Las Vegas joining the NHL next season, barely half of its 31 teams will advance to the playoffs.
But far more integral to the CFL’s balance has been its collective bargaining agreement and salary cap. Those have functioned as intended, forcing teams to shed talent instead of hoarding it. Whatever one thinks of the fairness of a league that artificially depresses the salaries of its players, especially a league where long-term injury is an obvious risk, there’s no denying that the cap makes it significantly harder for great teams to stay great.
The Toronto Argonauts have done a fine job developing young quarterbacks while Ricky Ray has — when healthy — been the unquestioned starter, but all that has done is showcase those quarterbacks to their rivals.
Hamilton signed Zach Collaros as a free agent in 2014, and last winter Ottawa did the same with Trevor Harris, after he led the league in passing touchdowns with Toronto the previous year in relief of an injured Ray. Rather than keeping them for important depth, the Argonauts essentially supplied polished, young quarterbacks to two of their division rivals. (And then scrambled to trade for Drew Willy when Ray was hurt during Toronto’s train wreck 2016.)
The league’s quarterback roundabout is hardly limited to Toronto, though. Darian Durant is now in Montreal from Saskatchewan, Matt Nichols is the starter in Winnipeg after several years in Edmonton, where Mike Reilly is the starter after a stint in Vancouver. And then there is Kevin Glenn, who just since the end of the 2013 season has gone from Calgary to Ottawa to B.C. to Saskatchewan to Montreal to Winnipeg to Saskatchewan again. Every team in the league but Edmonton has owned his rights at some point.
Outside the quarterback position, Saskatchewan signed Derek Dennis, the league’s most outstanding lineman with Calgary last year, and the Roughriders also landed Chad Owens, the one-time face of the Argos who went to archrival Hamilton last year. The Alouettes released linebacker Bear Woods, and he soon thereafter signed with Toronto, rejoining ex-Als Jim Popp and Marc Trestman, who are now running the Argos’ football operations.
Every pro league has free agency to varying degrees, but the CFL’s relatively small size, and the smaller pool of players willing to take their career up north, makes the effect of the roster shuffling all the more noticeable. Why wouldn’t the league be shot through with parity when it seems at times like the teams are cycling through the same groups of players?
None of the preceding is intended as criticism. The CFL is a league not without its challenges, but all nine teams enter the season with at least some reason for optimism. That has to be good for business. Guys like Glenn and Durant could well be past their competitive days, but the same was thought of Hank Burris after his first year in Ottawa, and all he did was follow that with an MVP in Year 2 and a Grey Cup in Year 3.
And, if this ends up being the year when parity finally succumbs, and we get an Ottawa-Calgary rematch in the title game, the only certainty will be that the Redblacks won’t be able to rely on Abdul Kanneh for a game-saving tackle.
He signed with Hamilton.