Could a British player make the CFL?

Article by Duncan Gray

While I was listening to Sky's “Inside the Huddle” podcast last week the subject of Lawrence Okoye being cut from the  San Francisco 49ers roster was discussed. Jeff Reinebold suggested that if Okoye doesn't get a try out with another NFL team then he should try for a place in Canada. As they pointed out, the CFL is the only other full time professional football league. Every hair on Coach Reinebold's head knows more about football and the CFL than I do so I'm sure he's right about Okoye, who is an exceptional athlete. But for other British players, the best playing here in the National Leagues, would it be possible to fulfil the dream of playing football for a living by going to Canada?

 

How much lower is the standard of play in Canada compared to the NFL?

Because all of the big money is in the NFL, that's where all of the best players are. A few of the top CFL players try to use it as a stepping stone to the NFL but the gap between the two leagues is bigger now than it used to be. This year defensive back  Delvin Breaux has moved successfully from Hamilton Tiger-Cats to New Orleans Saints. Offensive lineman Brett Jones, the CFL rookie of the year two years ago, could have made the New York Giants roster if injury hadn't intervened. The days of big name stars like Joe Theisman, Warren Moon or Doug Flutie emerging from the CFL are long gone.

 

Crossing the border the other way, scores of Americans try out for the CFL every year. Some (remember Ricky Williams?) have NFL playing experience. Most discover that they're not good enough or they can't make the transformation to Canadian rules. For a few who've been rejected by the NFL, maybe coaches just didn't like their body type, it turns out that they're talents are better suited to the Canadian rules and they thrive. The standard of player is lower than the NFL, but it's still very high.

 

How much could you earn from playing in Canada?

It' s a living, but you won't get rich. The salary cap for a whole CFL team is only $5million per year, the average yearly salary for players is about $80,000, the minimum for a rookie is $50,000. Obviously a few stars make top dollar but even Jon Cornish, the CFL's most valuable Canadian player for the last three years, works in a bank in Calgary in the off season.

 

So, can it be done?

One British player who tried out for the CFL was Ryan Hunter who retired from playing quarterback for East Kilbride Pirates last year. Ryan was known as one of the best, certainly one of the fastest athletes in the British game. He could have been a success in several sports but he wanted to persevere as a defensive back in American Football. Unfortunately, just as he was ready to try to make the pros the obvious way in closed. The Scottish Claymores folded in 2004, then the whole NFL Europe set up with it's roster places reserved for home grown players was shut down in 2007. Ryan travelled to Canada in 2008 and took part in a CFL Combine in Toronto. After long sessions of sprinting, jumping and swerving he reckons he was the best defensive back there but there was no interest in signing him. He didn't even get an invite to any club's training camp.

 

The reason why there was no interest in Ryan and, sadly, the reason why CFL teams won't be giving chances to British players is that the league has an import ratio. It works like this. CFL teams have an active roster of 44 players. 21 of them must be national players, i.e. Canadians. The remainder are classed as international, meaning from anywhere that's not Canada. So all of those American players who haven't made it in the NFL are chasing only about 200 places on Canadian teams.

 

That sounds a bit unfair.
Maybe, but for Canada it's a no-brainer. The CFL can't compete with the size of it's southern neighbour. For every good Canadian player there are at least twenty Americans available of the same standard or better. The reasoning for the import ratio is that if they don't reserve places for a number of Canadians then their teams would be swamped by American players. If there was little chance for Canadians to progress into a professional game it would have a bad effect on the school and college games in Canada and the whole sport in the country would go downhill.

 

Any British player who wants to try getting into the CFL will be competing directly with all the Americans for a limited number of spots. It's not even a fair competition. Beyond a few of the very best Canadians, like Jon Cornish, Andrew Harris or Andy Fantuz, coaches will assume that the Americans are the better players and choose them first. They generally are best of course. Their value is such that no General Manager will take the risk of using an import spot on a non-American who has less high level playing experience and might fail. Any British hopeful who's an outstanding enough talent to overcome that obstacle might as well be trying out for the NFL anyway.

 

All of the CFL's imports are from the States then?

There's always an exception of course. The one non-American international player currently playing in the CFL that I can think of is Boris Bede, the rookie kicker with the Montreal Alouettes, who's French. He got in through a route that's familiar from British born NFL kickers like Mick Luckhurst and Lawrence Tynes, move to North America when young and play through the high school and college system. Bede is an outstanding player who's been on pace to set a new field goal reliability record in his rookie season.

 

Just to illustrate how dominant the American player is in Canada consider the one position that's exempt from the import ratio rule, the quarterback. While teams have to develop Canadian players at every other position they don't have to for QBs, and generally they don't even try. There are three players nominated as quarterbacks on each team's roster. Out of all those there's currently only one who's Canadian, that's Montreal's rookie Brandon Bridge who earned the nickname “Air Canada” while playing his college football in the US. He started the season as the Alouettes' third string but he found himself playing for most of the second half of the opening game as the two players ahead of him were forced out through injury. This made Bridge the first Canadian to play QB in the CFL since 2010. Canadian fans hoped that he'd start the following week but he was beaten to the starting spot by the American Rakeem Cato. For the last time a Canadian started at quarterback or threw a touchdown pass you have to go all the way back to 1996. Another Canadian QB who at least got onto a roster in the last few years was Brad Sinopoli who was the third string in Calgary. He's starring on the Ottawa Redblacks offence now, but only because he's switched positions and become a wide receiver.

 

Anyway, to get back to the original question, could a player from the British game make it into the CFL?

No, I really don't think so.  Not unless he can find a way to qualify for Canadian passport....