Nobody likes what happens on the kill-floor

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/06/2010 (5647 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This is the time of the year that all but the most heartless of men dread. The time when players that have spent anywhere from several years to three weeks with the coaching staff and franchise are asked to go and find employment elsewhere.

In his sarcastic sort of way, one of our front-office types likes to remind us during this cut-down period to not get too bent out of shape about the process because it could have been you, instead, on the cutting-room floor. That being said, it’s still the coldest and ugliest side of the business. When you bring 70-plus players to camp and can only keep 46 plus five or so for the practice roster — assuming the player is willing to go on the practice roster — that is somewhere around 25 players that have to be told that the dream stops here and has to begin somewhere else.

In the mass of cuts there are usually a few surprises like the popular veterans that just aren’t getting it done anymore and are no longer worth their keep. There will be some mid-level players that have played two or three years but have not taken the steps to get their game to the next level to push a starting player, and as in most training camps across Canada, the majority of cuts will come from players who have never been north of the border before and came up here for free to try and fulfil their dream of becoming a professional football player.

The conditions are far from easy or favourable for first-year American players, or Canadians for that matter, trying to make the team for the first time. Most of them will not have signed contracts with notable or significant signing bonuses, which means they receive no guaranteed money. In addition, first-year CFL players do not receive the $725 a week that veterans of three or more years receive while we toil at camp, or even the $525 that one-year pros get. And unlike every other player that has been on the active roster a minimum of nine games in the CFL and thereby considered a veteran, if a first-year player gets injured in the first three weeks of camp, their rehabilitation will be paid for and covered, but if it takes them the entire season to recover from their injury, they still will not receive a single game cheque.

Which is exactly what must make this week so hard for the decision-makers when you have such a good crew of new players with excellent attitudes that they have to choose from. This training camp, unlike so many others I have been through, we did not have a single participant that I am aware of simply walk out and quit on the team. We have had camps where offensive linemen were seemingly coming and going almost every other day, and where Canadian and American rookies alike caught wind of their long shot probabilities and decided they didn’t like their chances and hightailed it out of here.

Yet no matter the odds many of these rookies faced in 2010, no matter who they were competing with for a roster spot and how stacked the deck was against them, they all practised, and competed, and wanted to be Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Which is something that should inspire and motivate those left standing when the smoke eventually clears on the pre-season killing-room floor.

In my estimation, we had 70-some players here that bought into what they were being coached and were working toward achieving a goal of making this roster. While most are deserving of better than what they may end up with here, what should be impressed upon all the players that are asked to leave is that opportunity is not lost simply because things did not work out in this instance.

I remember way back in 2000 when I thought the world had come to an end when I was released, for the first time in my career, by the Washington Redskins. I immediately got another job in the booming telecom industry in the high-tech corridor of Northern Virginia and was all but certain my football days were done.

Fast-forward 10 years to a city I had never set foot in before, and the lesson you hope the young players can learn at this bridge in their careers, is that most times the doors to professional football never really close when you are starting out, they just reappear down the line in different places for those who seek them out.

Doug Brown, always a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears Tuesdays in the Free Press.