Lions back together in camp ... but for how long?
Things are back to normal for the B.C. Lions, who kicked off their training camp with rookies reporting to Kamloops on Wednesday.
And this year at Hillside Stadium, there's scant few face masks, and none of the wildfire smoke that blanketed the region during last year's camp.
“It's been good,” said head coach Rick Campbell.
“It's been nice to not deal with the protocol. It's nice to deal with no smoke. It's got a normal feeling to it. The rookies have done a good job. We've been pretty efficient and they've been paying attention and doing all the right things, which is good. So it's been pretty productive.” Yes, it's business as usual. But that's also the problem, precisely because it is 'business as usual.'
Right on cue, the Canadian Football League and its players' association have embroiled themselves back in the usual contentious, mudslinging, money-grabbing negotiations as they try to hammer out a new collective bargaining agreement.
The current deal expired at midnight on Saturday.
In 2019, the players voted 97 per cent in favour of a strike before agreeing on a deal and averting such action.
Four years before that, more threats of lockouts and player strikes were exchanged before they came to an accord.
At the start of this May, players voted 95 per cent in favour of a strike before negotiations increased in acrimony — again. The league tabled a 10-year deal without any salary cap increases and eliminating the Canadian player ratio, and the PA in turn directed its veteran quarterbacks to not attend any voluntary workouts.
The two sides met Friday after a Thursday bargaining session that meted little gain.
The players' association has pledged to pay for accommodation and food for players who have travelled to camp and may be stranded in the event of a strike.
In the meantime, Campbell and his coaching staff — stacked with former players, including former CFLPA vice-president John Bowman — are stuck in the middle of it all.
The veterans had been trickling in to camp since Friday morning, and all were expected to arrive by Saturday with physicals and equipment fitting scheduled. But after that, all bets are off.
“The CBA doesn't expire till midnight (Saturday). So we'll operate tomorrow, we'll have our physicals, equipment, and we have meetings tomorrow night, and then when the clock strikes midnight, we'll see what happens after that,” Campbell said. "You can get emotional thinking about missing time with all this stuff that's happened over last couple of years.
"It's frustrating, but on the flip side ... we don't have to be worried about it. We just coach and do our jobs.
“So it's been normal so far, tomorrow's even going to be normal. And so the players have been very good. We're not mad at the players, they're not mad at us. We're just going to keep working until people tell us what to do.”
In 1974, the CFL had its first and only strike, although no regular-season games were cancelled as an agreement was reached before the season.
Fun fact: the strike coincided with an NFL work stoppage, and spawned the creation of the border-straddling World Football League, which lasted 11/2 seasons and saw just one single game in Canada
The odds are a deal will have been reached before midnight, as the league can ill afford losing any more time or games. The cancelled 2020 season cost them anywhere from $20 million to 80 million, a figure the low end of which was set by commissioner Randy Ambroise, the high end in several reports by The Canadian Press.
New Lions owner Amar Doman has shown his willingness to write the cheques to help get his storied franchise back on its feet both financially and football-wise, but a work stoppage would sour many fans on the fence about coming back to the stadium.
“I don't think there's anything broken (with the game) here,” Doman said at an event announcing a pre-game concert by One Republic at the regular season opener on June 11.
“Certainly COVID didn't help with a season was missed, but as we look at 2022 and going forward, truncated season last year it didn't really flowing through until the end. ... We've got a clean start. It feels like a reboot, certainly out here in the West.”
Another issue that Doman and the players align on is the proliferation of one-year contracts since the rule change in 2018. It's been a boon for some players who have been able to cash in on the higher salary floor, but it's also flooded the market with free agents at the cost of continuity with teams. And with the ability for teams to cut players or their salaries, there is little incentive for them to sign longer-term deals.
"(We need to) start building up some players like the old days, where you've got some players have been here for a while,” Doman said. "We talk about the CFL being very transient — two years here, one year there — and fans are sort of 'Well, who's our team?'
“Start with a great collective bargaining agreement. That gets done, then we start signing guys long term. Guys like the Lucky (Whiteheads) of the world, right? We want to get personalities here. Kids can relate to them. We can relate to them. And we can get back to having these household names that we love and we hold here as B.C.'s heroes.”