Korey Banks is in wintry Winnipeg these days, a victim of the formula of the Lions’ Wally Buono, who has used fewer players than any CFL team in the salary management era (Twitter)
The perception that the Lions under Wally Buono are a place where players are comparatively acting like buskers on the street rattling a tin cup has just taken a big hit. Free agents take note: Less actually just might be best.
A study released to teams last week before the CFL’s annual evaluation camp revealed that in five of the eight years since the league introduced its salary management system, the Lions have dressed the fewest number of players each year for at least one game during the regular season. Add Buono’s years with the Calgary Stampeders, and it’s 13 of the last 22 seasons.
It means that if the Lions have spent to salary cap, and when pressed this week Buono swore on a stack of old media guides that has been the case, it is fair to suggest players who come here fare better financially on the whole than elsewhere.
It’s hardly a foolproof formula, given that Buono has only won five Grey Cups, not 13, and the only other time another team has won the league title during this stretch using the fewest players were the 2003 Eskimos. Last year, for example, the Lions used a league-low 60 players and didn’t make past the first playoff game. Hamilton used the most players in league history (88) and played in the Grey Cup.
It is a formula nonetheless. Rare is the year when Buono is first in line making huge offers during the initial stages of free agency. Perform as an underpaid import during your rookie contract and there’s a good chance you’ll cash in down the road.
“I guarantee our roster has had the most six-figure players in the league,” Buono said.
The formula also includes forcing some veterans to take option-year pay cuts and dumping others when they ask for a chunk of their salary up front. That’s why Korey Banks ultimately wound up taking less from the Winnipeg Blue Bombers on his new extension after being traded when Buono wouldn’t guarantee his pay this year.
For the most part though, it works. The rarely-seen roster study numbers given to the league by lead statistician Steve Daniel provide proof.
New golden rules
The rules committee meeting that preceded last weekend’s evaluation camp, which we’ll discuss later, was another example of the shifting landscape of thought around the CFL.
Where there was once skepticism about change, there was instant and universal buy-in, Daniel was saying this week from his home in Richmond while discussing the proposed rule and scoring amendments. Proof, he said, was not just in approving the change to make blocked field goals a miss, henceforth known as the Rene Parades rule, but everything else he proposed which will go a long way to streamline scoring, plus give players the stats they deserve.
Not a week goes by during the season without teams asking the league’s numbers man to review things like sacks, punt blocks and intentional grounding. To this point, few changes could be awarded because of the rulebook. But the CFL has given Daniel more leeway in the future, in a manner familiar to an official scorer in baseball.
Also at play, league sources say, is more conference call debate in the first off-season under new director of officiating Glen Johnson, which made the scoring changes a breeze to pass. If only the CFL would take the same approach when it came to publishing salaries and the negotiation list.
It’s another sign the league has become more transparent, not to mention accurate, since Daniel stopped crunching numbers for the Vancouver Grizzlies and started repairing countless record-book errors and omissions which tugged at the league’s credibility.
“This is all about common sense,” Daniel said. Players whose contracts contain statistical bonus clauses will also agree.
Still not for sale
They weren’t on sale before. They aren’t for sale now. But everything is for sale at the right price.
It was just another day earlier this week with respect to the one story that never seems to go away with the Lions, which is when David Braley plans to sell one or both of his CFL teams.
One sentence in a Toronto Sun column on the weekend was all it took to light the match for another 24 hours on talk radio, with the suggestion being made that the Lions would sell for $60 million. Actually, that was the news nugget. The last time the story appeared a month ago, it was $40 million; before that it was $30 mil. Talk about inflation.
The latest reported asking price is three times the value placed on Braley’s other team, the Toronto Argonauts, which could get sold if a planned renovation of BMO Field is completed to the satisfaction of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which is currently negotiating with three levels of government for loan assistance.
However, just as he did when the price was $40 million, Braley said the Lions are not for sale at $60 million. If the club is sold, and there’s no reason to think it will be soon, first in line will be a group involving president Dennis Skulsky. But you’ve heard that before too. At the moment, there’s a better chance Chad Johnson suits up for this team.
A winter vacuum
The football fan who was prepared to spend time in front of a computer was perfectly satiated with the amount of content produced by the CFL at its annual scouting combine last weekend in Toronto.
If you were particularly starved for material during the long, dark winter and happened to be around the University of Toronto, you were not dissuaded from attending the event by the league either.
But from a distance, the league has to start doing a better job moving around more of the events it controls to places that still need help growing the game. Yes, that means Vancouver, which operates in a football vacuum after the Lions are done.
We get our fair share of Grey Cup games of course because of B.C. Place Stadium and Braley, though surely that is going to change once this year has come and gone. But none of the other so-called signature events ever seem to make their way here.
All three regional scouting combines last week were held east of the Rockies. The coach of the year banquet and Hall of Fame game always goes somewhere else. The league’s off-season Congress, a gathering of support personnel, was supposed to come to Vancouver by tradition as the city hosting the Grey Cup that season, but even that went to Ottawa this year.
Certainly some events, like the combine, are better off in more populated locations. But all of them? Every year?
It’s not a huge deal, but important enough to keep football discussion in the mainstream 12 months a year, which isn’t happening in the Lower Mainland right now. Next week’s Orange Helmet Awards used to be an automatic sellout. Not any more.
Endless amounts of information from the league mean nothing without the context that comes from occasionally having these guys work out up close in the case of the e-camp. It’s covered well elsewhere. It’s a non-event here.
And though all of this presupposes the notion the Lions actually want to be involved in staging more league gatherings, nobody also needs to tell them they lost an average 2,000 fans per game last season and aren’t automatically supported simply on the strength of a six-decade old brand, even if they did make money. Just sayin’.
Around the league
You could have seen this coming a mile away: One day after Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson passed this week, the first piece about the chances of the NFL team coming to Toronto hit GTA newsstands. Amazing. Wonder if anyone noticed the Bills in Toronto series has been such a bomb they’ve short-circuited the game for the upcoming season. And as this piece notes, it would cost someone $2 billion to get the team into Toronto… With the CFL Players Association set to hold its annual meeting in Las Vegas this weekend amid suggestions of a possible change at the top, the Winnipeg Free Press has an excellent primer on the positions of both sides in the current round of collective bargaining talks, which wasn’t exactly the perfect backdrop for this week’s announcement that the Blue Bombers will play host to the 2015 Grey Cup game that should have gone there this year. It’s a topic which is off-limits to teams and subject to fines if anyone talks about the stalled negotiations, unless you are commissioner Mark Cohon, who points out in the Winnipeg Sun the league isn’t in quite as rosy a position as is believed by the CFLPA in this piece…
ICYMI: How do you know the Riders have become an outrageous financial success? How often does a team ask government to have their property tax exemption removed, as this report in the Regina Leader-Post outlined … Doug Brown looks at both sides of the pass interference video review here… Finally, here’s yet another reason why you should often take the web with a grain of salt when it comes to creditable info, a report about a proposed new stadium in Calgary that is, well, completely bogus.
Top Tweets
Mark Cohon @canadiancommish, no doubt attracting the curiosity of a Vancouver barkeep or two at Grey Cup this year, with this invitation to Winnipeg fans after awarding the 2015 game this week: In the Peg? Let’s do a #tweetup at Earls Main from 5-6:30, 1st drink is on me!
Uproar is a weekly look at all things Lions and the CFL which appears during the off-season most Fridays. Questions? Complaints? Write us. Our address: lullrich@theprovince.com
