CFL makes critical mid-virus correction
League is finally inviting players into discussions on possible 2020 season and collective bargaining is a big, but overdue, step toward salvation of campaign
Yes, it is vastly different than any other professional league on the continent, and these are unprecedented times, but the CFL has just not conducted itself well in public.
And we don’t exempt the players’ association from this criticism either. Far from it. Get together everybody, or go down together.
Even baseball, which makes the Hatfields and McCoys seem like kissin’ cousins, at last got both the players pushing the same panic button this week and it’s got dough. The CFL doesn’t and needs the same kind of merged action, despite their very obvious differences.
On Thursday, the CFL finally did the correct out-in-the-open thing with commissioner Randy Ambrosie inviting the union to meet with the Players Relation Committee (PRC) to discuss the viability of rescuing a 2020 season and what that means for ’21 and beyond. And, to begin work on the revised collective bargaining agreement required to shorten a season.
“There’s actually been plenty of communication, perhaps not enough for some people, but now we’ve invited the players’ association to work with the PRC,” Hamilton Tiger-Cats CEO Scott Mitchell, who sits on the PRC, told The Spectator. “Everyone knows how special our players are as athletes and men and we’re looking forward to collaborative discussions.”
That’s among the things the union had been demanding in its vocal anger with the league’s lack of backand-forth communication around an abbreviated season.
Last week, Brian Ramsay, executive director of the players’ association tweeted that the players hadn’t received any concrete ideas about 2020 and an altered collective bargaining agreement. In a Tuesday letter, the players’ association told its members it was awaiting “guiding principles” and referred to the CFL’s “arrogance.” The association had also filed a grievance that players were not being paid certain bonuses and complained it hadn’t been consulted in advance before Ontario teams were permitted to return to club facilities.
“Until you have enough information of value that can lead to valuable discussions, it wouldn’t have been helpful to have discussions,” Mitchell told The Spectator. “There’s been tremendous work done in the background and now we need to have a discussion with the players about whether 2020 is viable and what that means.”
Indeed, the CFL has chosen to confront the pandemic problem mostly in private — it revealed yesterday the commissioner and executives took a 20 per cent pay cut two months ago — and that difference in style between the two sides has created its own problems. Not wishing to engage in what it viewed as a nonprofitable war of words, the CFL has allowed some public perception to build that it was cavalier and dictatorial with the players, and that with operation budget cuts across the league Ambrosie had lost support of many within the game, including off the field where salaries are to be cut by 20 per cent.
Ambrosie’s appearance in front of a parliamentary committee last month didn’t help gain public empathy for the league — and that can eventually affect the use of the public purse — partly because in a pitch meant to reflect shared desperate times there was not a single player in sight. The reverberations were acidic and continue to colour public perception.
The players’ association openly blasted the CFL for going solo on the aid package. Understandable to a degree, but it had to know that provides ammunition for anti-help forces within the government, and that help is critically needed. And, while the players’ association is justifiably protective of and concerned for its members, much of its criticism of the league has been in the personal language typical of a power play. In the larger context of a pandemic, there is no power for either the players or the owners to play.
Mitchell says the board of directors, clubs and staff fully back Ambrosie and he’s doing “an incredible job” in a difficult situation involving a different cost structure than other leagues, must accommodate private and publicly owned teams and work around a gate-driven economy facing absolutely no gate.
Others say there is widespread discontent. And that’s just another area where the players and owners have to grab the same oar, at least in public, or this boat might just row itself into oblivion.