Careful what you wish for...

Glen Suitor first made a name for himself as a fine CFL player.  He's arguably made a bigger name for himself as perhaps the finest and most intelligent commentator on the league.  Myself excepted, of course.  Ahem.

But seriously folks, his most recent column at tsn.ca - which I can't link for some unknown reason - hits the nail on the head. 

CFL fans have started to get what they always wanted: some attention from the bigger, wealthier, better-marketed football league to the south.  Specifically, players who excel in the CFL now attract serious attention from NFL teams.

This sounds obvious now, but wasn't always the case.  I vividly remember reading NFL preview magazines the year Jeff Garcia signed with San Francisco.  The reaction?  Snide disbelief.

"Unbelievably, the Niners are going with CFL refugee Jeff Garcia to back up Steve Young.  He's piled up accolades in the Canadian league, but what does that matter?  Not much." 

No, that's not a direct quote - who keeps magazines that old? - but rest assured, it's close to verbatim. 

As with anything else, language is the surest sign of change.  You won't see Stefan Logan, Cameron Wake or (choke) Sandro DeAngelis referred to as "refugees" of any kind.  Instead, the preferred verbiage is "veteran," or even "star." 

What happened?  It'd be easy to say "Jeff Garcia," and while that's partly true, it's one factor among many.  After all, for the Jeff Garcias and Stefan Logans of today, there were Warren Moons and Manny Fernandezes 20 years ago. 

First, as Glen Suitor points out, the culture of the NFL changed.  That's no small thing, as change happens glacially in US football.  Three yards and a cloud of dust now gets coaches booed and fired, not praised.  As the US game opened up, it naturally started to more resemble its elder, smaller, poorer Canadian sibling.  Players who excelled in Canada suddenly became viable - not just because they were suddenly good enough, but because their skills were more transferrable. 

Second, and Suitor didn't get into this, US college football changed too.  Until extremely recently, NCAA teams playing "pro-style" offences were few and far between.  That didn't mean much for college teams focusing on winning games - the wishbone, option, etc. were effective for decades for a reason - but did retard the development of NFL players. 

Why?  Because you can't take an option quarterback, no matter how talented, and suddenly put him in the shotgun.  It's just not what he's trained to do. 

By contrast, smaller, more mobile quarterbacks who weren't afraid to run prospered in the wide-open CFL.  In fact, successful CFL quarterbacks who couldn't run were and are a very small minority.  (Danny McManus, Anthony Calvillo...um...)

This created a problem in the arch-conservative NFL, where building a team through the draft was exalted beyond all else.  Teams stuck with high draft picks because they looked the part, regardless of performance.  If they *also* happened to perform, fantastic, but it was inconceivable to pull the 6'3" blonde stud from UCLA in favor of the CFL guy who passed for 4,000 "metric yards" five years in a row.

I digress.  The point is: college football changed.  More and more teams play pro-style offences, from the now-standard single back to the spread. 

Suddenly, those 200-plus NCAA programs were producing a lot more pro-ready players.  Even a competent scouting regime couldn't catch all the good prospects - which wasn't the case in the NFL.  (Only baseball draft picks are more of a gamble.) 

The quality of play in both pro leagues improved, almost across the board - there was so much more talent to choose from. 

Now then - back to the CFL and free agency.  CFL teams used to have the luxury of bidding against the other seven (sometimes eight) CFL teams; these players were by definition unwanted by the NFL. 

No matter what insecure Canadian NFL fans may think, the worst CFL team would annihilate the best NCAA team, even with US rules.  To argue otherwise is simply stupid, for the same reason the worst ECHL team could beat the best CHL team - even minor professional sports consist of "college all-stars."  There are simply too many college football teams for this not to be the case; your fourth-string RB at Tulane generally isn't going to sign with a pro team, when more than 150 starters become elligible every single year. 

For this reason alone, the talent levels in the CFL and NFL are extremely close.  The import ratio skews this, and generally the super-special players are in the NFL.  But the core of "day-to-day" players are comparable.

Eventually, NFL teams hungry for talent were going to figure this out. 

And most CFL fans are trying to figure out whether this is a good thing.