6 Game CFL Season? Hard Pass

6 Game CFL Season? Hard Pass

Published: Monday, Jul 6th 2020, 2:07pm

By Alex Dormuth (@RealAlexD)

 

TSN’s Farhan Lalji is reporting that the CFL is looking at a potential 6 game season, with an expanded 8 team playoff as one of their options if there were to be a 2020 season. 

Stop it CFL. Just, stop it.

I’m not the one who talks about asterisks in sports because all teams have to deal with what’s going on, but come on. 6 games?? Garbage I would assume that this will be at prorated salaries (players will only get paid one-third of their salaries for only playing one-third of the games), meaning guys on their first contracts would only make around $20,000… before the tax man on both sides of the border comes and gets their share. And this would be Canadian dollars… convert that to American money… that’s $14,769 USD. That alone doesn’t make the risk to one’s health worth it. Sure, there’s playoff salaries, but it’s not like it’s very much.

I could get into travel issues, funding issues, more finance issues, but there is just so many things that go into this return to play situation that I’m not going to bore you with. Simply, it’s way more complicated than we think it is, even if you were to put the league in a bubble city.

With 8 teams making the playoffs in this scenario, you have the potential for a 1-5 team (there is a chance an 0-6 team) will make the playoffs! NONSENSE! You might as well just not have the 6 games and just do a World Cup double elimination tournament with 8 teams at that point. Draw straws and whoever gets the short straw misses the playoffs. Sounds stupid right? EXACTLY.

Commissioner Randy Ambrosie, I know you are under a ton of pressure with this and I’m not sure what anyone else could have done in your position, afterall, we’ve never had anything like this happen before, we have nothing to compare it to. So I don’t envy the position you are in. But you need to make a decision one way or another. I guess we will find out by July 23rd, the supposed cutoff date issued to the players to have a deal set up.

CANCEL the 2020 season and put all your focus with the players into 2021 and beyond. One lost season is devastating, I know… but play the long term game here. FIX the crappy finance models this league has and start fresh in 2021.