Jamie Nye: CFL’s football operations cap is a bad system

The CFL’s football operations cap needs an overhaul.

The cap is leading to a potential marketing nightmare in Edmonton. The leadership of general manager Brock Sunderland and head coach Jaime Elizondo have fans taking a pass on this team.

But those two men may be back next season.

Both have a few years left on their contracts and with the CFL’s football operations cap, the Elks may be stuck. If you fire a football operations employee, you can spread out the contract over five years but it’ll still count and take up a significant chunk of your cap. Both have two years left on their contracts and both get paid good money.

The league reportedly has already reduced the cap for the 2021 season from $2.5 million in 2019 to a flat $2 million. This makes it even more punitive to fire a coach or general manager.

Fans in Edmonton want change. They almost deserve change. The football operations cap had good intentions to stabilize spending, but the league created a system that limits teams from recruiting good people and retaining good people, and then restricts them from making necessary changes.

The system needs a fix, and fast.