CFL needs to clean up, enforce its farcical free-agent rules

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Saskatchewan Roughriders didn’t leak stories, but Edmonton Elks did to give them a recruiting advantage

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The CFL opened its negotiating window and everything blew to smithereens.

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Within minutes of 11 a.m. Sunday, when the nine CFL franchises were officially given one week to negotiate with other teams’ pending free agents, credible reports began surfacing of players agreeing to new contracts. They can’t be confirmed as official signings until the player’s former team has an opportunity to counter-offer, but the unofficial reports basically commit those players to new employers and show which teams are jumping fully into the free-agent pool.

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The desperate Edmonton Elks led the way with six pending signings by Sunday’s end. The cavalcade continued afterwards, with the Saskatchewan Roughriders being one of the few teams that didn’t immediately leak stories about potentially signing another team’s pending free agents.

The Roughriders like to work in secrecy, which is OK. And legal. They did announce signing several free agents who weren’t on expiring contracts, like defensive lineman Mike Rose and defensive back Tevaughn Campbell.

The CFL also likes keeping secrets. It is, after all, the only major professional league that doesn’t disclose player salaries.

With a $5.65-million salary cap expected this season per CFL team, which is less than half of what four members of the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs make annually, the CFL Players’ Association has long kept those numbers private, even though publicizing them would create more interest among fans and could ultimately increase wages. Minimum CFL salaries are $70,000 CDN, ranging up to more than a half-million for some quarterbacks.

Abiding by the cap supposedly limits what CFL teams can offer, ensuring every team should have the same opportunity to sign players.

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The Elks are totally undermining the process. And that’s not new for general manager Ed Hervey.

During his first go-round with Edmonton, before there was a free-agent window and the league supposedly forbade speaking to another team’s pending free agents, in 2013 Hervey signed defensive lineman Odell Willis away from Saskatchewan mere minutes after free agency began.

It was an amazingly quick negotiation conducted by Willis and Hervey. Or it was illegal.

To counteract such blatant tampering, in 2020 the CFL implemented the “Hervey Window” to allow unfettered access to pending free agents. For just one week before the traditional mid-February expiration date for CFL contracts, rival teams could make offers to pending free agents. A player’s former team gets two days afterwards to make a counter-offer or risk losing the player.

Hervey has once again made the CFL look inept with its attempt to formalize free agency. He’s again mocking league rules while strengthening his roster, proclaiming what he’s doing and giving his team a competitive advantage without getting punished.

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Leaking news about the upcoming signings is unconscionable, but Hervey knows that’s a good image for his franchise. It shows he’s spending money and working diligently to assemble a squad that wants to vie for its first Grey Cup since 2015. Hervey was Edmonton’s GM then, too.

These public reports make Edmonton a more appealing destination because every player wants to win a Grey Cup. That’s accomplished with a healthy dose of talented free agents, whose signings inspire the other newcomers, returning veterans and the team’s fans in a rush of optimism. It also attracts more free agents.

A string of dismal seasons convinced Edmonton’s new owner last year to re-hire Hervey as his general manager. In the interim Hervey worked for the B.C. Lions and Hamilton Tiger-Cats, with whom he wasn’t so flagrant about bending the league’s free-agency rules.

Here’s a better way:

Every contract offer made to a pending free agent must first be filed with the CFL office. That’s supposedly the case now, but don’t let a player agree to contractual terms until the window is closed. No public announcements either! Right now it seems so willy-nilly, with teams and players and their agents offering and agreeing and signing anything. End the schmozzle by reducing an offending team’s salary cap by $50,000 per infraction.

Maybe this offseason hype is good for the league, but it would look better if the CFL had enforceable rules preventing some teams from gaining such an unfair advantage.

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