Quote:
Originally Posted by Cowboy89
I disagree, the coaches and the talent level of import Americans in the CFL are typically top notch and just below NFL level. The two big things hindering the quality of play in the CFL in my mind are:
1) Canadian Ratios - basically creates situations where there are weak spots on the field for teams with better Canadians to exploit as the Canadian talent pool isn't as deep as the non-NFL American talent pool. Teams have to change their offensive and defensive schemes to allow for inferior players sometimes. So this impacts both the talent and the coaching part of the game
2) The simple fact that playing CFL football is typically a job that pays less than most jobs requiring a university education and is much less secure. This means that you lose players for economic reasons (Jeff Pilon as an example left the Stamps to be a supervisor up on the rigs up north), some eligible college players don't even bother going to the CFL because they are getting on with their lives in other professional careers.
Even the players that play require offseason employment and/or additional part-time employment during the season. The players association has a 4.5 hour work day stipulation in their CBA to allow players to pursue these other interests. This severely hampers how much coaching and how complicated defensive and offensive systems are. This leads to more turnovers, and sloppy play because they just don't have the time to be as polished and ready on game-day as NFL teams.
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I think there are a handful of guys that are top notch imports, the rest are good players but they aren't good enough to even be camp fodder in the NFL. They are guys that simply don't have other options besides playing football, or guys that love the game too much to give it up.