CBA CFL 2014

This week has been, for many fans, players, and team owners, the one they all likely want to forget.

With all the drama fitting for a soap opera, the cflpa and the cfl owners waged a disastrous exchange after their most critical meeting to date this past Wednesday came without a major push to end the ordeal.

This is my take of this. For the players, I understand greatly on how they got underpaid for what they love to do, and with the new broadcasting agreement going at $40 million, I get the fact that they want their piece of the pie. However, when they mentioned about them willing to accept for less, and acknowledging their relations with their prospective bosses as very good, seems to me that they are closing in at an agreement that they all want to play under the soon to expired cba they and the owners agreed in 2010, for this season and they can negotiate in the offseason without pulling the stuff like the mlb did in 1994, and the nhl with the entire season wiped out in 2004.

For the owners, I understand that they would like to preserve their teams stability based on the growth of fanfare and stable revenue increase, despite the fact that hamilton and Toronto, the area in which it should be the center of pro football in Canada, is still lacking stability. It is a good sign that cities like Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Regina are all thriving with great profits. But what they did to the cflpa on Wednesday by disclosing info to the public without proper consent or acknowledgement from the players union is down right wrong.

Hearing from both sides, I still hope that we, the great fans of cfl, can get the season over with. Ottawa needs this season to come on as well as hamilton with the new stadium set to open and would like to break even. As well as Toronto goes, the better the season commences, the better the flexibility that they will get revenue to cover the possible additional costs of expanding BMO field as their new home. May god helps us all.

Final note… Visit the new tigers den page on soundcloud as myself and fellow ticat fan/blogger extraordinaire Claudio Raposo have successfully recorded and downloaded our inaugural show. Check us out and also get a chance to see Claudio’s blog as he has wrote terrific amount of ticat content as well as his latest blog on the cba. Trust me, he is that damn good.

https://soundcloud.com/tigers-den-podcast

CFL DRAFT

Earlier this week, the Canadian football league Canadian draft commenced. Hundreds of hopefuls were hoping for their name to be drafted to any of the nine cfl teams, but after 4 hours of watching, only 63 players from their respective colleges/universities were drafted, including a record 58 players from the CIS.

For the hamilton tiger-cats, it became evidently clear that they need to build Canadian talent, even though the team does not have an overwhelming weakness to get in the draft. What I was not expected, but still not surprised, is the club drafted every pick on defence.

Come training camp, it will be interesting to see the rookies in action and wish them all the best.

REMEMBER — Starting early next week, myself and Claudio raposo will conduct the inaugural episode of “tigers den” podcast on soundcloud. Hope you take your time and consideration upon listening to the podcast. Trust me, it will be worth the listen.

Ticket delivery review

Tonight was the night that the tiger-cats made it big. Hundreds of passionate, dedicated fans flocked to the historic warplane heritage museum to see the unveiling of the 2014 hamilton tiger cats.

Ticats president Glenn Gibson announced this evening that he went to the stadium and discussed the stadium matters to the contractor and the contractor said that the stadium will be completed to standards on time for July 26 home opener against Ottawa. I for one was pleased at the announcement, but also cautiously excited.

For what I mean cautiously excited, I mean that the stadium could be pushed back significantly if in event of excessive amounts of rain while doing stuff outside, or even the developer goes to out of the blue receivership. I went down to the stadium a few days ago, and I would say that the stadium has great lengths to go before completion. Furthermore, with the way the manpower down at the site going to triple time soon, it is not only that it won’t reach June 30 deadline, but it will be over budget due to that and the delays earlier this year due to developer receivership, and bad winter weather.

It was nice to see the great turnout this evening at the museum and this does reminds the football league that the city of hamilton is a great fan base.