One Canadian Football League has squatted on the rights to three of football’s highest-profile unemployed quarterbacks.
The Hamilton Tiger-Cats have the CFL rights to Colin Kaepernick, Johnny Manziel and Robert Griffin III, according to Kevin Seifert of ESPN. Tiger-Cats CEO Scott Mitchell (no relation to the former NFL quarterback of the same name) indicated that acquiring the rights to those players is mostly about showing their fans that they’re serious about uncovering talent anywhere they can find it, rather than thinking there’s a real chance of any of those quarterbacks going to the CFL.
“We see it as a way to spur fan dialogue both in Canada and in the United States,” Mitchell said. “To us, it is just a matter of being transparent.”
So while none of those players is likely to play in Hamilton, the team has the opportunity if any of them should decide heading north is the best way to continue his career. And the CFL does take those rights seriously: Saskatchewan Roughriders head coach/G.M. Chris Jones was recently fined $5,000 for meeting with Manziel’s publicist, which the CFL considered tampering with Hamilton’s contractual rights.