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.
