Be proud, CFL is truly Canadian game
Players compete, but not for big bucks
As billionaire owners and millionaire players continue their feud during the National Hockey League lockout, the 100th Grey Cup game will provide a breath of fresh air for frustrated Canadian sports fans.
While the average salary in the NHL last season was $2.45 million and the team salary cap was $64.3 million, the CFL team salary cap is $4.35 million. According to NHLPA. com figures, five members of the Canadiens were slated to earn more during the 2012-13 season than an entire CFL team: Andrei Markov ($5.75 million), Scott Gomez ($5.5 million), Carey Price ($5.5 million), Brian Gionta ($5 million) and Tomas Plekanec ($5 million).
Ricky Ray, the quarterback who led the Toronto Argonauts to Sunday’s Grey Cup game against the Calgary Stampeders, earns a reported $450,000 as one of the league’s highest-paid players. The minimum salary in the NHL last season was $500,000. Petteri Nokelainen had the lowest salary for this season on the Canadiens’ roster at $575,000. The New Jersey Devils’ Ilya Kovalchuk was slated to be the highest-paid NHL player this season at $11 million, an average of $134,136 per game.
And get this: New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees will earn more money this year in the Nation- al Football League than every player in the CFL combined. In July, Brees signed a five-year, $100-million contract that pays him $40 million this season. The eight CFL teams, according to the league salary cap, paid their players a combined $34.8 million.
The Argonauts’ Chad Owens, who was named the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player this season, was coming off knee surgery for a torn ACL and earning between $500 and $800 a week two years ago as a member of the Alouettes’ practice roster with a wife and three kids to support before being traded to Toronto on June 24, 2010 in exchange for a fourth-round draft pick.
When a CFL player says he’s playing for the love of the game, you can honestly believe him.
The CFL definitely has its flaws. David Braley owns two teams, the Argonauts and B.C. Lions, that almost met in the Cup final (imagine if he had owned the Ottawa Rough Riders and Saskatchewan Roughriders at the same time) and the awarding of a point for a missed field goal is one of the dumbest rules in sports, along with the NHL awarding a point for an overtime loss.
But the CFL is our game and we should be proud of it and the fact the Grey Cup remains our national party. CFL commissioner Mark Cohon announced Friday that six of the eight teams broke even or made money this year, with the Argonauts and Hamilton Tiger-Cats the only losers. But the Argonauts will get a boost from playing in the 100th Grey Cup at home and the Tiger-Cats will move into a new state-of-the art stadium in 2014.
Meanwhile, if you’re a Canadian sports fan, you might be wondering how two Americans with backgrounds in basketball (Gary Bettman) and baseball (Don Fehr) got to hold hockey fans hostage during the NHL lockout. I’d love to see Bettman and Fehr removed from the negotiating table and replaced by some real hockey people. How about Pittsburgh Penguins owner Mario Lemieux to represent the league and the owners, player agent Bobby Orr to represent the players, and lawyer Ken Dryden as a mediator? Maybe even call in Wayne Gretzky as a special consultant for both sides.
One fan on The Gazette’s hockeyinsideout.com website suggested a hockey skills competition between Bettman and deputy commissioner Bill Daly and Fehr and his brother, NHLPA special counsel Steve Fehr, to settle the labour dispute.
Wrote ABHabsfan: “Bettman and Daly vs. the Fehr Boys: 1st team to manage 1 full lap of the rink gets an extra 1% of HRR. 1st team to raise the puck off the ice into the back of the net from the hash marks gets to choose length of rookie contracts. They really could be at it a while ...”
Here’s how I can see the NHL lockout coming to an end: within the next few weeks, Bettman will put a take-it-or-leave-it offer on the table with a deadline date for the NHLPA to accept. Take the offer and play, don’t take it and the season is wiped out. That would force Fehr into holding an NHLPA membership vote on the offer and we’d find out how many players are in Erik Cole’s camp and how many are in Roman Hamrlik’s.
In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy the Grey Cup.