By Duane Forde,
CFL.ca
Since the 1950s, Canadian economists have used the term “Brain Drain” to describe the trend that sees many of the country’s brightest prospects in scientific and technological fields emigrating from Canada to the United States to pursue better opportunities. Over the last 15 years, this phenomenon has gradually expanded into the realm of professional football. So much so that, when National Football League teams opened their 2006 training camps, their rosters included the names of 22 players who are considered non-imports by the Canadian Football League.
While on one hand, it’s a positive step for football in this country to have the Maple Leaf so prominently represented south of the 49th Parallel, on the other hand, the result of that level of representation is that the Canadian talent base required by the CFL is taking a hit. The uneducated fan will suggest that this is occurring because this country is failing to produce enough good football players to adequately fill the available non-import roster spots. On the contrary, the depletion in the homegrown talent pool is being caused by two factors, the first of which is that the quality of players developed in this country has improved to such a degree that scouts south of the border can’t help but notice. The second factor is that American football people are more open-minded than they were in past generations. As a result, much like they learned from the CFL that quarterbacks don’t have to be tall, white pocket passers, they also learned that NFL players don’t have to be American.
Anyone with a sniff recognizes that successful CFL teams are built on the strength of their homegrown talent. Currently, each of the eight clubs is required to dress 20 non-imports for each game. However, even allowing for the fact that some of those Canadians in the NFL are specialists and others aren’t ideally suited to the Canadian game, the truth remains that each CFL club is being depleted by an average of at least two non-imports who would, if available, rate in their Top 20. That is to say, in theory, if the top homegrown prospects all reported to the CFL instead of having some head south, it would enable each team to bump two or three non-imports from the bottom of their depth charts and replace them with performers who grade out higher. In other words, losing top Canadian prospects to the NFL hurts the quality of the CFL game.
Having Canadians try out for or even spend a few years with NFL teams doesn’t necessarily hurt the CFL if those players eventually find their way back to the bigger field. However, when they spend their entire careers in the U.S. like Steve Christie and Tim Biakabatuka, or their NFL opportunities run out and they still elect not to ply their trade here at home, like Richard Mercier, Mark Montreuil, Morgan Kane, and several more, they become the CFL equivalent of non-renewable resources in that their immense value goes down the drain.
Now that everyone understands the problem, the obvious question is, “What’s the solution?”
For years the suggestion has been floating around to allow import players who remain with one team for a prescribed number of years to become non-imports for as long as they remain with that team. Another suggestion would involve going back to the old rules whereby a player was considered a non-import as long as he hadn’t been trained in the U.S. prior to his seventeenth birthday. This would turn all of the “national players” in NFL Europe into CFL non-imports, even though many of them have played at U.S. colleges and attended NFL training camps. This column is about pigskin not politics but, ironically, many of the proponents of these notions are the same people who complain about the government granting Canadian citizenship to immigrants so they can take jobs away from people born here.
More importantly, the quota exists for the purpose of maintaining an appropriate level of Canadian content. Consequently, the implementation of such rule changes would contradict one of the foundations upon which this league is built. The most logical solution is to find more Canadians who are worthy of jobs in professional football.
You might ask where else the league could find more Canadian players when only 27 universities in the entire nation field football teams. A good place to start looking is in the United States.
It’s never discussed outside of the league offices, if even there, but there exists a pool of Canadian born athletes with NCAA programs and NFL training camps on their football résumés and there are enough of them to compensate for the amount of homegrown talent being sucked away by the NFL. The problem is that although these young men qualify as Canadian, they don’t qualify as non-imports.
In the Canadian Football League, a player is considered an import if that individual has played in a football game outside of Canada before his seventeenth birthday or if he has played in a football game outside of Canada after his seventeenth birthday without receiving football training in Canada before turning 17.
However, an individual who meets one of those definitions of an import could still be declared a non-import if he lived in Canada for a total of seven years prior to attaining the age of 15. It is under this condition that prominent CFL players like Ben Cahoon, Noel Prefontaine, and Wayne Smith (among others) qualify as Canadians.
But has an individual who left Canada for the United States at the age of one actually received any more meaningful American football training than a person who moved south at the age of seven? Not likely, which is why they should be treated the same way by the league’s rules. By expanding the definition of a non-import so that any individual who is already Canadian by virtue of having been born in Canada qualifies as a non-import, regardless of how long he actually resided here, the CFL would open the door to a surprising number of talented football players who are currently out in the cold. Interestingly, many of the individuals who would qualify under this proposal would have an established connection to the Canadian Football League, as they were born here while their fathers were playing for CFL teams. Consequently, those players would likely feel a sense of ownership in the league as opposed to just being guys who are using their birth certificates to collect pay cheques.
Another twist is that the league would probably become more receptive to the idea of roster incentives for Canadian quarterbacks if the CFL’s definition of Canadian were expanded because suddenly Winnipeg-born former Arizona State and UMass star Jeff Krohn (who has NFL and NFL Europe experience), UCLA sophomore Patrick Cowan of Surrey, B.C., and Hofstra senior Anton Clarkson, a Regina native, would fit the bill.
This proposal is also about being fair to our own. The existing definition of a non-import actually makes it possible for an American (or any other non-Canadian) athlete who has never previously so much as set foot in Canada to qualify as a non-import. With that in mind, how can Canadian-born players logically be excluded?
Furthermore, deeming all Canadian-born football players non-imports would allow the CFL to step into a leadership role within the realm of Canadian sport by creating an opportunity that encourages individuals with roots in this country to represent Canada in athletic competition. Far too often, lack of opportunity or support within this country forces athletes born on Canadian soil to go elsewhere to pursue their athletic goals and two of the world’s most visible sporting events of 2006 provide examples of this. No doubt countless Canadian sports fans felt a sense of national pride as Calgary, Alberta native Owen Hargreaves was named Man of the Match in a semi-final game of soccer’s World Cup, or during the Winter Olympics in Turin where Kingston, Ontario’s Tanith Belbin won a silver medal in the ice dance competition and Dale Begg-Smith of Vancouver, B.C. struck gold in mogul skiing, only to have those feelings quickly tempered by the fact that Hargreaves, Belbin, and Begg-Smith were representing England, the United States, and Australia respectively. Each of these elite athletes, like tennis player Greg Rusedski or hockey star Brett Hull before them, was born in Canada but elected to compete for another nation. The common bond is that all of them shunned the Maple Leaf because of a perceived lack of support or opportunity here at home. In the CFL, it’s the wording of the rulebook that limits the opportunity of this unique group of “Canadian-born imports”. Simple economics will still make the NFL the first choice for almost any pro football player but if the Canadian Football League encouraged these players to play in the country of their birth by giving them non-import status, they would be more likely to pursue careers in Canada as Plan B instead of the U.S. (Arena Football League) or Europe (NFL Europe).
Current non-import players shouldn’t be threatened by an expansion of the definition. In fact, they should not only welcome the challenge but also appreciate the legitimacy that comes with maintaining or upgrading the quality of the on-field product.
The CFL increased the size of its rosters in 2006 but the strain on the non-import talent pool went relatively unnoticed because the change in roster size was more than offset when Ottawa suspended operations and the former Renegade players were dispersed among the eight remaining clubs. However, Ottawa is poised to return some day, perhaps as soon as 2008, and it seems inevitable that the league will eventually expand to include a tenth franchise somewhere in Atlantic Canada. With the NFL’s recent appreciation for Canadian talent unlikely to subside any time soon, the CFL will need to do something regarding the ratio to avoid a drop in the quality of play as the league grows and attempts to establish itself in new markets. The options would seem to be either to reduce the quota and have fewer Canadians on each team or adopt the aforementioned proposal and let more Canadians play. The choice seems obvious for a league with the word “Canadian” in its name.
Duane Forde was a CFL fullback for 12 seasons and was a member of the Grey Cup champion Calgary Stampeders in 1992 and 1998. He co-hosts CFL Snap on The Score.
(The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily of the Canadian Football League)
