Roughriders future cloudy with more uncertainty

Now that the Canadian Football League finally has some clarity, the Saskatchewan Roughriders' future is more cloudy than ever.

Roughriders' general manager Jeremy O'Day has had barely more than a day since hearing the first definitive answer he has had in months. 

There will be no CFL season in 2020.

Now O'Day faces even more uncertainties as he sets his focus on what he hopes will be a return to the field in 2021.

With talk of a new business model for the CFL, the Riders GM may have to deal with a smaller football operations department, fewer coaches and less money to pay players.

Meanwhile, there are even more questions surrounding the players themselves. Which ones will be back? Do they even want to come back?

"Will guys choose to retire that were maybe trying to play for another year, or will guys really have that drive?" asked O'Day during Tuesday's media call.

These are just a small sample of questions from a list that could fill a book.

O'Day said the vibe he has been getting from the players he has spoken with since Monday's news is generally positive.

"Their bodies feel better than they have in a long time. Some of those guys that played in a number of years, they are taking this year as a year for their bodies to recover and they're also learning how much they love the game of football and how much they miss it."
    
But they are missing paycheques even more. This may force some to walk away from the game they love and face reality.

Some players across the CFL have taken to social media, upset with how the last few months have been handled.

"I think it's important we don't try to point fingers." said O'Day.

"We don't have a lot of experience with making mistakes of how to handle a pandemic and what should have happened."

Monday's chat with Riders' team president Craig Reynolds confirmed what was speculated from the day COVID-19 started eating away the season. The club —  which has been operating with zero revenues for weeks — expects to lose around $10 million in 2020. The rainy day piggy bank, otherwise known as the stabilization fund, will be empty.

Keep in mind this is a team in better shape than most in the CFL.

Even if football can be played in the summer of 2021, and mass gatherings of fans in stadiums are allowed, the CFL will have to change its ways. Exactly how is still months away from being answered.

Football general managers are used to dealing with unknowns and what ifs.

O'Day said this really is no different than any off-season. It's just that this one will be a little big longer.

"It's obviously a little more dramatic than normal off-seasons, but lets face it, every off-season we have guys that have NFL opportunities, we have guys that retire, guys that decide to move on with their careers, we hope we don't lose a lot of guys through this process but it happens every off-season."

As O'Day said, just because you don't know what you have to work with is no excuse not to do your job.

He will sit down with head coach Craig Dickenson and assemble a preliminary roster for training camp of 2021.

The most frustrating part of a cancelled season, he said, is that they really felt good about the camp roster they had for 2020.

"Coach Dicky and I have talked about how excited we were. It's tough, we really felt we had a real good team put together."

There's no reason to believe they can't reassemble that same unit, it's just that all players will be nearly two years older.

That leaves big question marks around players in their 30s like Charleston Hughes, Brendon Labatte, Solomon Elimimian and Jon Ryan who just may figure, what's the point?

It's easy to get motivated and train for a season a few months away.

A totally different matter when it's been a year and a half between games, at the very least.