Clock is ticking on CFL’S plans for 2020 season
When Canadian Football League executives and their counterparts from the CFL Players Association negotiated the current collective bargaining agreement, they met face to face for about 250 hours.
It was pretty standard labour relations stuff — neither pleasant nor easy. There was some give and some take under mounting deadline pressure before the 2019 season was played as scheduled.
The two sides don’t have anywhere near that kind of time now, and they can’t meet in person, anyway. And those two inconveniences are well down on a list of issues that complicate the staging of a shortened 2020 CFL season.
The COVID-19 pandemic, or more precisely the complexities and significant expense related to government-mandated health and safety protocols required to conduct CFL business in a pandemic, is another.
But the biggest, by far, is the expectation that a third party, namely the federal government, either ponies up “an acceptable level” of financial assistance or CFL governors will vote to cancel the 2020 season.
What’s acceptable? Something well north of the $30 million the league requested to cover cash flow shortfalls, and well south of the $150 million the league wanted from the feds if the entire season was cancelled and a dearth of startup cash threatened the viability of a 2021 campaign.
CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie referred to that middle number as their Phase 2 ask from Ottawa.
“Phase 2 would be based on losses that we would incur as we deal with the possibility of a truncated season,” he said.
That possibility is now a reality. CFL teams will lose big money whether there’s a season or not. Guaranteed. There won’t be CFL action before September, and each team will play at most eight regular season games leading to the playoffs and a mid-december Grey Cup.
The league has focused planning efforts on Winnipeg as a single hub for an abbreviated training camp and all 36 games of the regular season. During that short season, there are plans for up to three practices per day on each of three fields. The league anticipates needing 80,000 room nights at city hotels, where teams would eat meals as cohorts and cleaning staff would leave supplies outside players’ rooms.
Both the CFL and the CFLPA have hired epidemiologists to help them construct detailed health and safety protocols that have to pass muster with provincial and federal government officials before a season can get the go-ahead. Team doctors have also been involved in that process.
And according to a CFLPA memo obtained last weekend by 3downnation, the players believe they’re nearing a complete health and safety document.
But so much more has to happen, and so little time remains. According to that memo, the CFL has imposed a deadline of July 23 for adoption of the health and safety protocols, assurance of acceptable federal funding, and the renegotiation of the CBA beyond its expiration date of 2021.
That last bit is quite likely a bridge too far, given the deadline is less than two weeks away, and there are 15-18 sections of the CBA that have to be amended just to make a shortened 2020 season possible.
What’s more, for negotiations on 2021 and beyond, the league will be focused on changing a business model that according to Ambrosie results in its nine teams routinely losing a combined $10- to $20-million annually. The non-player football operations cap has already been cut by 20 per cent for 2021. Coaches, league and team executives have already taken pay cuts of 20 per cent or more.
There’s no question the league will want the players to make major concessions on salary and/ or benefits for 2021 and beyond. And those won’t be pleasant conversations.
“We have communicated to the League our willingness to listen to their reasons for amending the Collective Agreement for 2021 and beyond,” the CFLPA said in the memo to players. “However, the priority must be to explore the possibility of a shortened 2020 season. We told the League that three weeks to explore a new agreement was unreasonable and we would like to begin discussions to restart the 2020 season.”
Putting a July 23 deadline on the entire package is going to test the resolve of the players, and that’s likely the objective. Do American players really want to head north for eight games at pro-rated salary in Canadian dollars? Are the potential health risks too great? Is it worth the inconvenience for any player to live in the hub, away from his family, for months at a time?
But league officials will also be under deadline pressure, and the players know it. Because league governors may have to decide if they can live with the optics of not attempting even a shortened season, when the National Hockey League, Major League Baseball and National Basketball Association are all returning to play.