Let Me Enjoy the AAF Damn It!
Published: Monday, Feb 11th 2019, 6:02pm
By Alex Dormuth (@RealAlexD)
First, let me be the first to say that I LOVE football. I want more of it. February – May SUCKS. I got bored with the NHL and I can only watch so much MLB. I NEED my football fix. This is why I love the idea of the AAF.
The Alliance of American Football started this past weekend with mixed reviews. Look, people that are going to hate the league, were going to hate it regardless. You’re expecting it to be something that it isn’t.
One thing that really pisses me off is the CFL elitists that are comparing it to our game. Uh, news flash, it’s a different game. Same with the NFL… different. I get it, you love the CFL and despise everything about American football. Cool. Good for you. Why bother watching it if all you are going to do is bitch and complain about it? You know who you are and you do the same with the NFL. Don’t like it, don’t watch. Simple.
Were the games this weekend the greatest? Nope. Will they be the best we’ll ever see? Probably not. BUT this gives us a legitimate league to pass time between the Super Bowl and when the CFL gets underway. And that’s all I want. The league will never have that huge name star power (duh, all those guys are in the NFL or CFL), but it WILL have name recognition. Everyone knows who Trent Richardson is. We know who Christian Hackenberg is (well, you do if you follow the NFL too). Plus the competition is good for business. If the AAF turns out to be legit and sticks around for the long term, it will force the CFL to do better and not get complacent.
Should the CFL be worried about the AAF? No… at least not yet. The star players in the CFL will continue to make more money up north than they will in the AAF. Where you should be worried is that the next big CFL star is in the AAF because they offer better money. How long that will last is anyone’s guess, but if I’m an American player looking to continue my career, right now I’m looking at the Alliance WAY before I look to Canada.
The CFL CBA negotiations will be starting up in March and I don’t see the salary cap going up much, if at all. With the rumours going around that Mike Reilly and Bo Levi Mitchell are going to get $700k per year and no raise to the cap… well that just means more players will have to take cuts and make minimum… which is considerably less than what the AAF is paying (after the exchange rate).
Anyways, back to my point. I don’t have huge expectations for the AAF. I just want something to kill some time between the NFL and CFL seasons. It looks like we may have that now and I’m pretty happy about it. Just do me a favour, if you are going into it already hating it because it isn’t the CFL, just let me enjoy it. Stop being so negative about everything that isn’t 100% pro-CFL. You can hate it, that’s perfectly fine, but let some of us enjoy it for what it is… a league that provides a bridge from the NFL to the CFL season.
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