Bonus money applied to SMS

[TBURGESS]

It's not a matter of being fair just because it applies to each team. The SMS is designed to create a level playing field. This hampers it. Rules need to be cumulative to achieve that goal.

I've suggested that signing bonus's not be allowed. That keeps the playing field level. If they did that would it be " fair " because that's the way it was intended to work?

Teams are allowed to use unused SMS to carry over into the next season as year end bonus money. I'm not against that and it's where some of the saving from 6 game IR get used. OTOH, I could just as easily agree that SMS shouldn't carry over to the next season. Or conversely that bonus money paid to injured players be pro rated would be used.

I wonder when the SMS rule was extended to allow it to be spent at year end?

Every team has the same rules = level playing field. 

It works the way it was always intended to work. Each team decides how much risk they are willing to take with bonuses & offer contracts based on that risk assessment. 

Teams can't carry over SMS savings. They can use the saving up before year end by paying bonuses out of that years SMS. 

[Blue In BC]

Every team has the same rules = level playing field.

It works the way it was always intended to work. Each team decides how much risk they are willing to take with bonuses & offer contracts based on that risk assessment.

Teams can't carry over SMS savings. They can use the saving up before year end by paying bonuses out of that years SMS.

That's what I said about the carry over of the SMS before year end. It's still money used from one season to the next. The season is over after the playoffs. It could be argued that any balance shouldn't be allowed to be used up. It's the current rule, so teams use it. It doesn't mean that this or other rules shouldn't be adjusted. Ratio, roster size, global designations, Nationalized Americans are all changes to the rules.

Yes, every team has the same rules and therefore it's somewhat of a level playing field. There are no absolutes to ensure that with is rule. It would be just as fair if the rule was changed to what I suggested.

It's irrelevant that each team decides their own risk. That's no different than deciding to pay a top player $250K - $600K which results in losing other players. It's all risk assessment trying to fit within the SMS whatever the rules allow or don't allow.

You spoke of " fair ".

I don't remember the exact amount of Chad Kelly's signing bonus but think it was $250K - $300K or about half of his new deal.

Also need to find when he was suspended for a minimum 9 games and possibly the entire season.

So that minimum amount of $250K would be a $125K SMS hit for 9 games. If it's the season, it's $250K+ SMS hit.

Is that fair to the Argos? In signing that deal, they had to not re-sign other top players like Pickett.

[TBURGESS]

Yes it's fair to the Argos. They knew how bonus money worked when they offered it. Kelly could have been injured in TC & it would have worked out the same.

You obviously can't be convinced.  I'm done.

[Blue In BC]

Yes it's fair to the Argos. They knew how bonus money worked when they offered it. Kelly could have been injured in TC & it would have worked out the same.

You obviously can't be convinced.  I'm done.

You can't be either but that's the nature of a discussion forum.  Kelly was not injured in TC so that " risk " was not one that might not have been foreseen BTW.  Other examples Durant retiring after taking a $70K advance. Lawler missing 6 games due to a legal issue. There are all sorts of exceptions.

I'd be interested to hear more from other posters, either for or against. Clearly this is not something everyone is in agreement. It's been something only the 2 of us are debating our position.

Need more votes to support either position.

[TecnoGenius]

You know how many of the Bonused players will be injured? Of course not, so you can't know the amount.

Lets try this another way. Say there are 10 players with $100K bonuses on the team. All of them get injured. You now have to come up an extra million dollars for your SMS. If only one gets injured, you have to come up with $100K.

You're saying "because you can't know" the injuries ahead of time, it opens up a "poor" team to massive extra cost.

But your argument also could be used against any 6GIR SMS relief at all!  Are you suggesting that?

You're caught up on bonus money, which is often only 0%, 25%, or 50% of a player salary.  You're really adamant teams can't afford SMS relief on bonus money.  But you ignore that teams have massive additional expenditures by getting any SMS relief at all! 

If a team were to pay no bonuses at all, and it was all salary, the end result would be exactly the same as what BinBC (and I) are proposing!  Would it be ok then?  In that case they'd still have massive outside-the-cap "real world" OOP expenditures that cannot be predicted.  "Poor" teams may still suffer.

So it's really only a matter of degree.  And we're actually arguing over very small amounts, usually, because only the great players get sizable bonuses.  And random chance says that just as many no-bonus ELCs will get injured as high-bonus superstars.  And who are you (or I) to pick the degree that is acceptable vs unaffordable?

If the main battle cry is "poor teams cannot afford unpredictable OOP costs" then there should be no SMS relief for any injury, because by definition injuries are unpredictable.

Do you really think poor teams will be "smart" enough to try to pay the players with as much bonus money as possible, because then when injuries occur they only have to pay the replacement less?  I'm pretty sure no GM has ever thought this way.  Every last one of them wants to be able to replace an injured Kenny with a Kenny, not an Ambles.  They only cry "poor" when the CFL "profit sharing" cheques come rolling around.

[TecnoGenius]

It does matter if the team is rich or poor. Poor teams will have trouble adding $300-500K to their SMS. Rich teams won't.

Is there any proof of this?  If this was true, then the poorest of poor teams wouldn't even spend to the cap limit.  Have we ever heard of a team spending $500k less than cap?  I haven't.

Teams aren't "people".  We don't have to feel sorry for one because they are "poor".  Many of the "poorest" are owned by millionaires.

[TecnoGenius]

Yes I think it's fair because everyone involved knows the risk of paying out bonuses & every team has to play under the same rules. It's not a flaw. It's the way it's designed to work.

I don't think there is any intelligent design whatsoever to the issue of bonus money on 6GIR.  I think it just happened organically as USA tax laws evolved, and CFL GMs figured out a supposed advantage.

No one @CFL sat down and was like "let's (in effect) penalize bonus money for X or Y reasons".

Yes, everyone knows the risk involved, but until you're bit by it badly, maybe you never thought much about it.

You can probably build actuarial tables on CFL player injuries and effects on costs, and I'm sure the best teams have done so.  It probably stays pretty constant (except for the 2022 mystery achilles).

The problem only gets recognized when a single team has a 3-standard deviation rash of injuries, and a further 5-sigma event in that it's all their highest-paid players.

[TecnoGenius]

Here's my main argument in favor of getting bonus money relief:

We're letting the vagaries of USA tax law dictate the outcome on the field of our CFL game.  Since many of you are USA-haters (not me!), surely that rubs you the wrong way?  Even if you like the USA, it's really lame to support this notion.  We are an independent people and an independent league.

We literally wouldn't be having this conversation if the USA had no favorable tax status for bonus money!  Because then not a single GM would give a signing bonus, or at least not big ones!  We give them one because, from the player's perspective, $100k becomes $80k in their pocket instead of $60k (making numbers up but you get the general idea).  By giving them the bonus we are effectively paying them $20k more without any SMS hit!!

Yes, that's the way it currently works: dems da rulz.  And yes, all GMs know this.  But it doesn't have to be this way and I can see no cogent argument as to why it should be this way other than "we never really thought about it", or "that's the way it's always been".

If you are really that worried about costs, reduce the cap.  Then average 6GIR expenditures can be factored in to team budgets based on actuarial tables, and no one can cry "poor".  Or, for a novel idea, have the entire league run a 6GIR insurance fund that all teams get the "real world" OOP money from to sign other players due to 6GIR.  That would be great because whilst 1 or 2 teams may experience greater than normal injuries, the league as a whole should not, year to year (excluding 2022).  That would solve the "unpredictable extra cost" problem instantly because all teams would pay into the fund a fixed cost every season.  It would actually provide way more protection to "poor" teams than any other proposal.

[TecnoGenius]

I will point out that this whole idea is self-serving because now we're the team that is getting killed by the injury bug.  And that's ok, why would we think about this when it's our rivals SSK getting hosed in 2022, or TOR "getting their just deserts" with Kelly.  Easy to laugh at them.  Hard to laugh at ourselves.

That's human nature, and that's ok.

Maybe we can bring the previously-aggrieved parties (other team fans) to the table since they understand the pain and don't want to get bitten by it in the future either.  Create a value proposition for the whole league.

Remember how completely unreasonable injury rates in SSK basically took them from WDF contenders to basement dwellers?  Yes, they sucked for other reasons too, but it's clear from our current situation that no team can excel when out of SMS and getting down to their last TC cuts as cannon fodder.

[Blue In BC]

Many teams are being hit by the injury bug. Lawler is the only one for us that had any significant amount of bonus money and is injured. So that's not a direct result of our problems. The reality is that even if the bonus money counted against SMS ( pro rated due to injury ), where would we spend it for find a replacement?

That wasn't really the point of my argument. I just see the rule as pointless. The fact we " know the risks " doesn't make it right and I see no benefit in how it's written.

The American players like the idea of getting more money in their pockets due to the tax rule. It should be a win win for both sides with no additional risk involved.

Football already has enough risk involved as a sport.

[TBURGESS]

I know I said I was out, but I was asked a direct question:

No, I'm not suggesting the 6 game IR SMS relief should be gone. That's a strawman argument.

No, I'm not 'caught up' in bonus money. Bonus money is the whole point of the discussion.

The salary management system is to manage salaries, to give teams a good idea on what they will have to spend on salaries.  Adding an undetermined amount of money to the SMS is the antithesis of what the SMS is.

It's not just Americans who like to get bonus money. Bonus money is guaranteed, the rest of the salary could go away at any time. 

Do you think that teams will even be able to find good to great players to replace their injured players if they have extra more money to pay them? Are there any $500K QB's out there just waiting for a CFL team to call in the off season for instance? I don't think so.

[Blue In BC]

What any player gets is part of his salary. Whether he gets it for reporting to TC or on a weekly basis, it's the total amount.

It's sheltered from the SMS on 6 game IR. It's not unreasonable to pro rate the contract year into an 18 game season.

No, you can't find another $500K QB that was injured that had a 50% advance before TC. At best if that happened you might have more of a balance at year end to use to re-sign players before free agency.

[TBURGESS]

What any player gets is part of his salary. Whether he gets it for reporting to TC or on a weekly basis, it's the total amount.

It's sheltered from the SMS on 6 game IR. It's not unreasonable to pro rate the contract year into an 18 game season.

No, you can't find another $500K QB that was injured that had a 50% advance before TC. At best if that happened you might have more of a balance at year end to use to re-sign players before free agency.

So you're actually suggesting that the CFL makes a change to reward teams with 'bonused' injured players with extra SMS space at the end of the year to increase their SMS space in the next year. 

[Blue In BC]

So you're actually suggesting that the CFL makes a change to reward teams with 'bonused' injured players with extra SMS space at the end of the year to increase their SMS space in the next year.

The league already allows that with the balance of SMS not spent during the season if done before the end of the calendar year.

Normally that's not a huge amount and in some cases teams over spend the season SMS anyway. In 2023 there were 3 or 4 teams including the Bombers.

So as a direct answer to your question: Yes

I wouldn't think the number of players with bonus's spend significant time on the 6 game IR. In that sense I don't think it would be a large amount to take into account in that way.

Again. It's not about the amount, it's about an odd exception which I don't believe was intended.

Maybe someone with the history of the 2023 Bomber injuries measured against the 6 game IR can calculate the number of bonus as the variant. Even if it's a guesstimate.

Noting that any team can over spend the SMS by $99,999 with only a $1 per $1 fine. I seriously doubt any bonus SMS savings would approach that number.

OTOH, you suggest because that is ok because it is how the system works. However you also suggest things like this only benefit the rich teams.

Then why doesn't every team overspend the SMS by that amount? They don't because some teams are already losing money and because it's not in the spirit of fair competition.

As I've pointed out, most teams don't even spend the entire SMS they have at year end. Giving them extra relief potentially just means there is more left.

Using Lawler as an example again. Guesstimate his bonus was $90K. That's $5K per game for 18 games. If he misses 6 games on IR the SMS value is worth $30K. That's just slightly more than the Bombers over spent on the 2023 SMS.

Now I don't know how many games Lawler will actually be gone. He could come off early or he could be gone longer. The rule about coming off 6 game early is confusing with whether the time spent is counted or not counted but that's just another odd rule.

Going back to Lawler in 2023 when he was suspended for 6 games. It was his 1st year back and I assume he might have had a similar bonus. In theory is the salary of a player suspended counted against the SMS. He's not getting paid. Does the team recover some or all of early money due to an ethics clause?

So in effect his suspension bonus penalty was about the same as the Bombers over spent. Odd coincidence

[Blue In BC]

My original thought was never about how this applied to the Bombers specifically.

I didn't expect Lawler and Schoen to be out extended time either. I don't know the exact bonus or contract amounts of either player.

Regardless, we probably gain some SMS relief on the 6 game IR just from the game checks alone.

It's going to be difficult to find talent to step in and replace those players even if there is some extra cash available.

It's going to be rookies on ELC deals. Somewhat ironic that we spent money on two receivers now injured and decided to not re-sign Bailey. He'd be our # 1 target if he was still here.