Quarterback Cody Fajardo of the Saskatchewan Roughriders has some concerns with the potential partnership between the CFL and XFL. He made his thoughts known in an interview with Nevada Sportsnet.
“You read the XFL-CFL merger news and none of us players even knew anything about it. That kind of just came out of left field. You’re scrambling being asked questions about the XFL-CFL merger, and I don’t even know if we’re going to play a season, let alone a merger.
To have ‘The Rock’ Johnson as one of partners is probably a good place to be. He understands it, he’s gone through it and from what I’ve read about what he’s been saying, he cares a lot about the fans and the players, so I could see him making it a very player-friendly league if that happened.”
When talking about a potential merger with the CFL, Fajardo said that’s not in the best interest of the CFL.
“I think it dilutes the CFL without a doubt,” Fajardo said. “There’s a lot of logistical things that people don’t really think about. You have to think about the rule changes. You have to think about the Canadian ratio. You have to think of the currency the players get paid in. You have to think about going across the border for games and back.”
Some differences between the rules of both leagues include at least 21 of the 44 players on a CFL roster must be Canadian. The field sizes are bigger in the Canadian game. The CFL has 12 players on the field rather than 11.
Then there is the big rule everyone is talking about three downs per possession versus four.
Part of his issue with a full blown merger is that the CFL tried to have US based teams before.
“They did have a USA expansion CFL league,” Fajardo said. “There were some U.S. teams in the CFL. That kind of blew up. It wasn’t very good. But those are a lot of logistical things they didn’t really think about.”
Fajardo does bring a solution about the rules to the table.
“The best-case scenario that I think would work is keeping the CFL game the same, keeping the XFL game the same and now the winner of the CFL and the winner of the XFL play each other in kind of a league versus league championship, and it alternates each year,” Fajardo said. “One year you have to play the CFL rules, one year you have to play the XFL rules. I just think logistically that’s a lot of work to put in to figure out what’s going to stay and what’s going to change to merge a U.S. football league to a Canadian Football League.”
The Saskatchewan Roughriders finished the 2019 season with 13 wins and 5 loses. Fajardo finished the season with 4,302 passing yards, 18 touchdowns, and 8 interceptions. He played is college ball at Nevada.
Kevin
March 25, 2021 at 12:01 pm
with any expansion of teams in a league or a merger with 2 leagues there will always be the dilution of talent take the NHL for example. i dont think i need to explain that one. however i think a merger of the Xfl and Cfl would be fantastic since both games are very similar. so they merge and become a 16 team league. have 4 divisions of 4 teams in each division. the top 3 teams in each division make the playoffs. they keep the 3 downs kill the 1 point convert and kill the missed fg point and point from add in the 2 pts and 3 point converts from the 5 yd and 10 yd lines respectively which would create a higher scoring and much more exciting game.as for the Canadian ratio make it a global ratio of 10 players from anywhere in the world on each team.at least we would be watching some of the worlds best players instead of a watered down talent pool thats been reserved for Canadian content only.
David Tress
March 25, 2021 at 1:54 pm
Cody Fajardo is a good quarterback, but he blew it in the playoffs during the Roughriders last quest for the Grey Cup. He’s just wrong if he thinks XFL teams cant adjust to CFL rules. The Baltimore Stallions proved that American teams can excel at CFL rules football during the 90s. It would be nice to see one or two XFL teams compete in the CFL in 2021.