Riders Exceed Cap… Again

Oh the irony… after years of campaigning for a salary cap to level the playing field with other teams around the league, the Riders have become the only team to exceed the cap in 2 consecutive years and other than the Alouettes last year are the only team to do so since the Salary Management System came into effect. This year we went $87,147 over and will be fined an equivalent amount.

Truth be told this news is about as surprising as the Maple Leafs missing the playoffs given how our 2008 season went. I mean when you break it down that’s only about $10 per injury. Okay maybe that's exaggerating a bit but given that there were times last season when our injury list was almost as long as our active roster it’s not like this is a big shocker. Given that the team is still experiencing record high revenues it’s not like this causes any real harm.

As with last year the important thing is that we didn’t exceed by more than $100K and that we don’t have to forfeit any draft picks… not that we have any to forfeit in the first place. I wonder if the league rules cover what to do if a team exceeds the cap by more than $100K but has already traded away all their picks. Part of me actually wanted us to exceed the cap by $100K just to see what the league would do? I mean seriously what are they going to do? Confiscate Mike Stadnyk?

We can all rest assured that our precious 3rd round pick is safe (at least until we decide to trade it so the coaches can take draft day off).

One thing that does scare me though is the trend I see appearing. In ’07 Tillman went on a massive salary paring mission and we ended up exceeding the cap due to an unprecedented amount of injuries. In ’08 Tillman was even more cap-conscience and built in some room under the cap to handle injuries but we endured an even more unprecedented amount of injuries and exceeded the cap by even more. At this rate the only result I can see is either a natural disaster or the bubonic plague resulting in our entire team being wiped out and us having to start from scratch at mid-season (don’t say I didn’t warn you).