Doug Brown talks salary cap
Courtesy Winnipeg Free Press:
We all witnessed first-hand the effects of an enforceable salary cap in the CFL in 2007. The two publicly owned teams that had experience contending with budgets for years found themselves competing against one another for the league’s championship for the first time ever in Toronto (even though the Riders were over the cap in 2007 by $50,000).
Now the teeth of the salary cap are being bared and it appears that not only may the Montreal Alouettes be fined an amount double of what they were over — because the amount exceeds $100,000 — but they may also be subject to losing their first-round draft choice in next week’s CFL draft as part of the penalty.
For the first time in CFL history, roster payrolls are no longer subject to the whims of their private owners and the fluidity of their chequing accounts in Canada. They are an absolute figure that is to be tracked and audited and this process comes as close to guaranteeing a level playing field for all the member clubs as there has ever been in the CFL.
But when it comes to the situation in which the Alouettes find themselves today, you have to wonder whether this rigidity that has been so welcome and sought-after for so long should now be more lenient.
As discovered by reporter David Naylor of the Globe and Mail, the Alouettes were in violation of the cap in large part because of a salary they carried on a player who did not play a single game in 2007: Steve Charbonneau. Apparently Steve, a 10-year CFL veteran, missed last year’s entire season because of an illness unrelated to football, which means that the club had no obligation to pay him his salary for the season. In fact, as Steve’s illness was discovered during training camp, he could have been cut and his salary, most likely in the six-figure range, would not have counted against the cap at all. The Alouettes may still have been over the line in the sand, but odds are, if they were, they would have been like the Riders where the cash penalty would not be at a two-to-one ratio and it would not cost them a first-round draft pick.
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