Wait and see
With no CBA yet, free agency season could get ‘interesting’, Popp says
MONT-TREMBLANT, Que. — It’s just over a month until free agency opens in the Canadian Football League and it promises to be a season like no other.
About 250 players across the CFL are on contracts that will expire on Feb. 12 and the nine teams have combined on just 29 contract extensions so far this off-season.
With the league and players set to negotiate a new Collective Bargaining Agreement — and with both sides fixing for a fight — there’s somewhat of a state of limbo. While some players — a handful on each team at best — have put their names on new deals, many more are holding off until a new CBA is signed.
The league is not allowing teams to pay signing bonuses until the CBA is ratified and players don’t want to miss out on those kinds of payments on their new deals.
The question is, when a mass of players hit the free agent market, will things change?
“Between that date and the date it gets ratified, it’s going to be interesting,” Toronto Argos general manager Jim Popp said Monday, a day ahead of the league meetings. “It’s going to be interesting to see if there’s very much movement, it’s going to be interesting to see if there’s a big stall.
“On Feb. 12, we’re going to be able to talk to a lot of people. That’s where it becomes interesting.”
Negotiations on the CBA between the CFL Players Association and the league have not yet commenced. CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie said it would be soon but no date has been selected for him to meet with CFLPA executives Brian Ramsay and Jeff Keeping.
It’s entirely possible the negotiations will drag on for a while, possibly threatening the opening of training camps or even the regular season.
But teams are going to have to fill out their rosters somehow and there will be added pressure on players to sign as football season draws nearer.
“There are players who do not want to sign deals,” Popp said. “They want to see what the new collective agreement is going to be. There’s a benefit to some of them to wait because some of them want a signing bonus.
“There are players who would like to get contracts done and in place now because they have no interest in moving from the team they’re currently with. There’s others that want to hold off.”
Winnipeg Blue Bombers general manager Kyle Walters said this week that the off-season hasn’t been all that different from a normal year.
“So far not so much,” said Walters, who signed kicker Justin Medlock to a contract extension on Monday.
“It’s been a little bit more patient this year. We took December (as a quiet period) because there wasn’t the cap space to sign players at the end of this year.
“We’ve been doing more meetings and taking a little bit more of a slow approach to our own free agents. The initial conversation with the agents and our free agents is no different from any other year. You saw a couple of young Canadian guys have signed, and a couple of young Americans want to hold off to explore all options with the NFL … It feels very, very similar to any other year, truth be told at this point.”
Though the league’s GMs have their hands tied somewhat because of the mandate to not pay bonuses, they also don’t seem overly concerned about he situation.
“Filling the roster is not an issue … there’s gonna be plenty of players,” Popp said.
“It all works itself out. We all have the same salary cap, we all only have so much money. Everybody has a similar number of free agents. The average is about 30. Eventually everything will space itself out. One team can’t load up. They can’t all go to one team.”
What could cause the GMs a problem is if top-level players, who command big sala-
ries, are among those refusing to sign until the CBA is ratified.
“Are there some of the heavy hitters on your team that cost a lot and they’re waiting to sign?” Popp said. “That can put you in a lull because you can only spend so much.”
Like the man said, it’s going to be interesting.