On a cold Monday morning in downtown Montreal, the first snow of the season is falling, and the commuters file out of metro stations to a slap of cold hitting their uncovered faces. The afternoon before, their Montreal Alouettes came out victorious 50-17 in the East semi-final at home against the B.C. Lions, but unfortunately not many among the shivering populous is aware of this.
About three kilometres west, at Molson Stadium, the site of the victory, I am just finishing up studying in the old Montreal Forum – which has been transformed from hockey’s cathedral to a mostly-vacant “mall” with a quiet area for students to study. My easiest route back to school is from the renamed Pepsi Forum and the easiest way is through the Atwater Metro station. As I begin to descend the steps into the station, I notice a familiar face riding up the escalator to exit onto de Maisonneuve Street: Alouettes linebacker Bear Woods.
I chased him down and talked with the East Division all-star for a while; he was as cool and fun to talk to as he seems on TV. And once I made it to my class, I told people that I had just met Woods at the metro. One person replied, “What are Alouettes players doing on the metro?”
Woods and team mate Bryn Roy were on the metro because they live like any other average worker in Montreal. The average Canadian salary, according to statistics Canada, is $48,250. cfldb.com puts the minimum CFL salary at $50,000, and the average salary of a CFL player at about $80,000. The maximum salary of $400,000 goes to veteran quarterbacks, like Ricky Ray and Anthony Calvillo prior to his retirement.
These are nifty salaries for the quarterbacks, but they’re just one player on 46-man roster and about two players in the whole league earn that much. Dentists and physicians make about that same amount of money. While some people disagree that athletes should make more than the “more important” jobs in society, but as an uncle of mine once said “people pay to go watch sports and not pay to see a surgery, that’s why athletes get paid so much”.
CFL players, however, are among the lowest-paid athletes in all of North America. Just in the city of Montreal, the city’s highest-ever paid athlete is P.K. Subban, who will rake in about $11 million in two years, after he signed an 8-year, $72 million contract this past summer. That’s a 2650% increase on Calvillo’s 2013 salary. Calvillo won three Grey Cups, leads pro football in all-time passing yards, leads the CFL in all-time touchdowns and completions, and was playing his 20th season in the league when he was earning that salary. Subban had just completed his fourth season when he received the hefty raise.
According to Forbes, the highest paid athlete celebrities (just their contracts) were Floyd Mayweather (105 million), Cristiano Ronaldo (52 million), Matt Ryan (42 million), Lionel Messi (41.7 million) and Manny Pacquiao (41 million). This is just a small portion of their total earnings, as many of those players have huge endorsement deals as well.
CFL players earn minimum wage compared to those world stars, but no one is complaining. They don’t have to live the celebrity lifestyle, as they are far from being athlete celebrities; most of them can casually walk down the street without being noticed. Other than myself, Woods went practically unnoticed on the Metro.
I also see former Alouettes Sylvain Girard and Scott Flory around the neighbourhood on the western tip of Montreal. Girard was a receiver for the Alouettes from 1999-2006 won the Grey Cup in 2002, while Flory played in Montreal from 1999-2013, winning three Grey Cups as an all-star guard. Both men are family men and have jobs that they studied for while attending Concordia and University of Saskatchewan, respectively.
At the Alouettes’ East Semi-final game on Sunday, as I sat in the blistering cold, the CFL commissioner casually walked up the aisle next to my section. Just like that, the commish of the CFL is amid the league’s fans in the Canadian cold. If the commissioner is casually living the fan experience in the stadium, it’s easy to say every player in the CFL should be living a fairly normal life, not much different from a normal fan’s.
Most Canadian Football League players can casually walk down the streets of their cities without being noticed. Every day, they live almost the average life of a normal Canadian, except that people cheer them on at their jobs. While many athletes around the world are celebrities, these athletes in the Great White North are far from being famous. It’s another thing that makes this league unique: the average fan can relate to the average player on many levels.
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