JuranBoldenRules

They essentially are the scouts. They work their contacts and use scouting services/freelancers, target players for workouts and neg list. We do need someone in football operations.

It's a name hire, so immediately everyone will react. We have the least experienced front office in pro football. That's not slagging ability, but there are a lot of lessons that will likely be learned the hard way, at least they are being handed a team that was more conservative with player contracts so they have loads of flexibility. We are sorely lacking anyone who has experience operating a pro football team at every level other than CFO. I guess we can still hope for another hire at director of football operations to support. Impossible for any of us to know if McManus is a good, bad or great scout, his experience is limited, similar to Walters and whoever we hire as head coach. Just have to wait and see.

Yes, there are only candidates with experience and candidates without experience. Good observation. All humans too. Our recent coaches from that species have been awful.

Mack drafted enough useless players with high picks to offset Muamba's impact on the ratio.

yea cuz that henoc guy and greaves have just been such busts.. When the ratio goes down to 2 NI's we'll be golden.

Kohlert, Watson, Muamba and Greaves are the only NI's that are worth protecting at this point. Hard to see a reason why we wouldn't protect any of them, regardless of their contract status.

Rouse fulfills the Ottawa Dexter Manley requirement for the illiterate ex-con roster spot. It will be harder to fulfill the NI ratio.

I'm pretty confident that getting a good piece or 2 on the o-line will do more to improve the Bombers than an 'impact' import receiver. Those pieces don't hit the market. Name one starting NI OL in the whole league who moved during free agency last off-season. In the last 3 off-seasons, Labatte, Picard, Rottier and O'Neill are the only guys who could be even loosely called starters that moved in free agency. Last NI safety to move in free agency, JR Larose, a guy coming back from a tib-fib fracture who almost had his leg amputated. Free agency is useless when you are building a team. Draft and develop. The Saskatchewan Roughriders, 2013 Grey Cup Champions*, disagree. *barf The core of that team was not built through free agency.

Does Edmonton even have a president right now? Scary that Hervey has total autonomy there. That is a guy who is clearly overwhelmed.

Would be pretty seamless, get rid of Edwards and that would cover most of it.

The fact that he's even in the CFL is a fluke, not so much his cannon arm. If he learns how to play QB he'll be great, but that's been said about him on both sides of the border. Popp and Trestman had Russell Wilson on the neg list. That would have been a fluke too.

More likely that the Bombers had no interest in Higgins, just like every other team in the league.

I'm pretty confident that getting a good piece or 2 on the o-line will do more to improve the Bombers than an 'impact' import receiver. Those pieces don't hit the market. Name one starting NI OL in the whole league who moved during free agency last off-season. In the last 3 off-seasons, Labatte, Picard, Rottier and O'Neill are the only guys who could be even loosely called starters that moved in free agency. Last NI safety to move in free agency, JR Larose, a guy coming back from a tib-fib fracture who almost had his leg amputated. Free agency is useless when you are building a team. Draft and develop.

This is the first deal of its kind in the sports realm. First time a league has given exclusive rights in one country to one partner. That kind of screams CANADA! Umm...the NHL has had the same deal in the states for decades with both ABC/ESPN (Disney) and then NBC/Versus later NBC Sports Network for national rights. Regional rights are completely different, same as Canada. The CFL has also sold it's entire inventory of television broadcasts to CTV/TSN since 2008.

This is all I've found so far "Rogers will make an up-front payment of $150 million, and then annual payments starting at $300 million, which will escalate to $500 million in the final year of the deal. According to CRTC data, TSN and RDS only took in a combined total of $541 million in revenue last year." http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rogers-scoops-nhl-national-tv-rights-in-5-2b-deal-1.2440645 Rogers purchased way more inventory than TSN ever had though.

No doubt the guy has the north side of the border under control and I like that he has run a CIS program, but he has one year in personnel. It is pretty sad that he's been tossed the keys of a CFL team with that little experience. I hope it isn't the cheap way out, but knowing how the Football Club operates, it likely is. I would have preferred someone like John Murphy with Walters being a key assistant. We really need a strong assistant GM or director of personnel now with plenty of experience negotiating contracts, which is something we don't have, and Danny McManus is just as inexperienced. To me it is sort of like tossing a rookie QB out onto the field, it's either going to be a massive success or a massive failure.

Could be bad news for the CFL if TSN gets knocked off basic cable, or if the pick and pay model for cable and satellite that the current federal government is pushing comes to fruition.

As their intro said, "they have sold nearly 1 million albums." Not exactly the resume of most halftime shows at the recent Grey Cups or Super Bowls and it sure feels like the CTV/Bell machine hold stock in the band.

Guys who have played in the league and are free agents? To me, that's about the last thing I'd be thinking about when I'm hiring a coach, although a coach who does a good job will create an attractive team to play for. Free agency (Feb 15th) is nearly worthless in this league, it's like the $2.99 DVD bin at Wal-Mart, good movies don't end up in there unless they are old or otherwise damaged. This team is so far away from being able to actually make good use of free agency to add the supplemental pieces it provides that it isn't even a concern, and really should never be. Free agents are looking for an opportunity to play and sometimes money. You need to build and develop a team with great scouting on both sides of the border. In a coach I'm more interested in a guy who can develop individual players and a team than someone who can attract free agents. You win and trend upward, players will want to play here. I'm not sure if you watched the Grey Cup, but Khari was typically with Durant on the sideline, or with Cortez discussing strategy. TSN had a closeup on a pretty emotional embrace between Khari and Durant immediately after the game. I don't think either of the two guys you mentioned would have significant difficulty with players.

Because everyone in the league assumed Walters would get the interim tag removed. How to kill a personnel search quickly. No one is going to interview for a job that is filled. The league assuming something doesn't mean it was true. "Kyle will be holding interviews for coaching candidates next week," Pretty easy assumption.

I'd be shocked if Hamilton re-signs Burris, and outside of Ottawa I believe his chances of being a starter next season are minuscule.

Because it creates the conditions for a toxic environment. Hire someone to do a job, a job where that person needs to make decisions, and undermine their decision-making by pressuring them to make the decision you want them to make while you are basically holding a gun to their head (employment-wise). That's not necessarily true...there are all sorts of different scenarios of that both in business and sports management. At the moment Miller is running at least two successful businesses, he has hired people to run them, and if he were sticking his nose in and preventing them from operating...they would not be around long..but they have been. There are also different scenarios involving teamwork at the top...so it definitely does not have to be cut and dried as some are indicating. Which is exactly why I said it creates the conditions for a toxic environment. If you have a solid management structure, collaboration can work. If you have the mess of an organization we've have for decades, it probably won't. Collaboration works when there are defined roles and responsibilities in a supportive environment. When you make it well-known that you will be involved with football operations and cut a key for a novice manager, it doesn't look good.

Any of those are tampering. The Bombers would have to get the Argos permission to negotiate with Collaros, which is probably a good idea for Barker if he wants to maximize Collaros' trade value.

Because everyone in the league assumed Walters would get the interim tag removed. How to kill a personnel search quickly. No one is going to interview for a job that is filled.

Why is Glenn to Ottawa such a sure thing? He's a free agent next year so if the Redblacks take him in the expansion draft, all they win is an extra few weeks to "exclusively" negotiate with him. The only QB with starting experience who is signed for 2013 and likely to be exposed is Tate. Everyone else is a free agent. Ottawa's QB1 is going to come through free agency. Anything can happen in free agency. Sometime after the Grey Cup we need to have a QB carousel prediction thread. Glenn signed an extension with Calgary, as did Mitchell.