Argo cuts?

[ArgoRavi]

I have to admit that one of the reasons I don't like the huge rosters these days is that the excitement and anticipation and worry has largely disappeared from the cut-down process. Between the 46-man active roster, the expanded practice roster and the lack of any limitation on injury lists, teams come out of camp with 60-plus players. In the "good old days" when rosters were 34 men, you had to make some very difficult cuts to get to the limit, and there was often movement from team to team by late-cut players. Now we head into the second ex game knowing that almost everyone on the roster will still be here a week later.

On a related note, it won't come as a surprise to those who have heard me bleat on this issue before, but I'm disappointed (altho not surprised) that the game rosters are expanding to 44 this year. IMO it will lead to the dressing of more specialists whose primary or only role is to stop teams with the ball, either as extra DBs or kick-coverage specialists. I realize that more bodies means less wear and tear, but I would still prefer to see starters forced to play on special teams and staying in the game most of the time on offence and defence.

I have expressed similar concerns to you over the last few years, Paul. I am trying to look at the expanded rosters as a player safety issue now to feel better about it. It is funny though that back in the 1980s, the NFL active roster consisted of 45 players and we used to laugh at that and now CFL rosters consist of only one fewer player.

By way of comparison, look at player participation for the 1978 Edmonton Eskimos: http://stats.cfldb.ca/team/edmonton-...s/roster/1978/

They used only 38 players for the entire season and followed that up by using 40 the next season. Of course, a few of those players had a tough time post-retirement with three of them dying in recent years (David Boone, York Hentschel and Bill Stevenson) and the effects of repeated concussions have been suggested to have played a role in those early deaths.