For the first time this year, the nine Canadian Football League (CFL) teams have unveiled ten players from each of their negotiation lists. Clubs are required to do so on two occasions throughout the year following a measure approved at the 2018 CFL winter meetings.
CFL by-laws state that teams can claim exclusive CFL rights for up to 45 players by placing them on their negotiation lists. Players can be added, removed or traded from the lists at any time.
The ten players announced on the REDBLACKS’ negotiation list are as follows:
Kelly Bryant – QB – Missouri
Kendall Coleman – DL – Syracuse
Jayden Daniels – QB – Arizona St.
Hendon Hooker – QB – Virginia Tech
Sam Howell – QB – North Carolina
Mac Jones – QB – Alabama
Asher O’Hara – QB – Middle Tennessee St.
Ty Storey – QB – Western Kentucky
P.J. Walker – QB – Temple
Brady White – QB – Memphis
Here’s some common questions about Negotiation lists…
Q: Negotiation lists…what’s the deal?
A: Twice each year, CFL teams are required to publicly announce 10 players they have on their respective negotiation lists.
Q: What’s a negotiation list? Glad you ask.
A: In a nutshell, a “neg list” is a roundup of players that each team owns the exclusive CFL rights to. This means, that if these players were ever to come play in the CFL, the team holding their rights would have the exclusive opportunity to sign them. Each team can have up to 45 players on their negotiation lists.
Q: Does that mean the players announced today will all play for the REDBLACKS one day?
A: Nope, but great question. A number of things can happen that can get in that way of that happening. Players coming out of university football may elect to stay south of the border and some will be or are already playing in the NFL. Neg list players can also be traded, added and removed at any time.
In other words…
“If the Canadian draft forms the foundation of a roster in the CFL, general managers use the negotiation list as a wish list of how they’d like to fill in the remaining spots on their rosters with talent,” Chris O’Leary, CFL.ca, 2019.
Why only reveal 10 of 45 names?
The mystery of it all? Our buddy Chris Hofley who manages REDBLACKS Communications offered this: “The great beauty of life is its mystery, the inability to know what course our life will take, and diligently work to transmute into our final form based upon a lifetime of constant discovery and enterprising effort. Accepting the unknown and unknowable eliminates regret.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
