NO MENTION OF PARTNERS IN AMBROSIE’S BIG DEALS
Players need to be included in CFL’s plans for growth and other initiatives
Canadian Football League commissioner Randy Ambrosie’s globe-trotting, deal-making initiative excluded the people he says he wants to partner with most: CFL players.
There wasn’t an active player in Mexico City for the groundbreaking combine and draft in January, as Ambrosie’s CFL 2.0 project kicked off in earnest. Nor was there a representative from the CFL Players Association on site.
Nobody from the CFLPA accompanied Ambrosie in February on a whirlwind tour through London, Vienna and Helsinki that produced working agreements with football entities in France, Austria, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
It seems an opportunity was missed.
Ambrosie came home and soon set out on the second edition of Randy’s Road Trip, during which he’ll visit all nine current CFL cities and wind up in Atlantic Canada, where the league hopes a 10th franchise will take root.
Pressing the flesh and making media appearances is a good thing for CFL exposure. But there’s no room for the CFLPA built into that initiative either, despite the fact that collective bargaining agreement sessions between the league and the players are sandwiched between the first seven stops on the tour and the final three. You think CFL fans from Vancouver to the Maritimes might have wanted both sides of their questions answered by Ambrosie and CFLPA executive director Brian Ramsay?
Forget Randy’s Road Trip; they could have made this one Randy and Brian’s Excellent Adventure.
Again, it’s an opportunity missed to partner up with the players during what Ambrosie is calling business season, rather than the off-season.
Sure, business partners don’t do everything together, but partners don’t leave partners in the lurch or in the dark. Partners partner up on important initiatives, especially when they’re new and exciting and may well be influential in the long-term financial health of all involved. Partners are inclusive. Partners are teammates.
Thankfully, it’s not too late for the CFL to put actions behind Ambrosie’s words about growing their great game together so they all share in the “mother of all pies,” as he likes to say.
What’s more, at least some of the CFLPA leadership doesn’t sound too frustrated by their exclusion. So CBA negotiations may well get off on the right foot on Monday and Tuesday in Toronto.
You can bet, however, that the players are going to make a strong case for a more fulsome partnership.
“A partnership is being part of conversations, starting with the amount of risk that’s taken on the field,” Ramsay said during a conference call with media on Thursday. “If you look at the risk, and we’ve talked about this, it’s 100 per cent borne by the players, so (it’s about) having an equitable voice in those conversations around player safety and rules, discussing the growth of the game, discussing the future of the game and also discussing the monetary aspects. There are many pieces to that. A true partnership is being accountable to both sides on all these various levels.”
Ramsay and CFLPA senior adviser Ken Georgetti, an experienced labour negotiator, will both be at the table in Toronto.
Georgetti said “guaranteed contracts should be and will be discussed,” and he expressed disdain that, in the past, team player representatives who have spoken up about a lack of job security or other issues of import “find themselves cut from the game.”
And he wanted to make it clear how he felt about a partnership.
“We need to talk about what a real partnership is, and a real partnership is sharing both the risk and the reward. As Brian said, I think the sharing of the risk is disproportionate, and as you can see from the financials, sharing the reward is abysmal, frankly.”
The current minimum salary of $54,000 is inadequate, particularly now that the Alliance of American Football is attracting players with standard threeyear, US$250,000 contracts for 10-game regular seasons. And yes, the average CFL salary is more like CDN$80,000, when typical housing allowances of $18,000 and roster bonuses are included.
Even so, Ambrosie has made it clear he wants to double league revenues in short order. That’s what CFL 2.0 is really about. If he makes headway, the players will be due for a serious bump in pay during the term of the new CBA.
The current deal expires on May 18, giving the CFL and its players plenty of time to negotiate long-term labour peace, to flesh out a playbook for their business partnership, and to draw a road map for the places they will go together.