The CFL's normally been big on keeping its teams' total salaries secret, but they've emerged in a surprising source; a global survey of sports teams' payrolls done by SportingIntelligence.com editor Nick Harris for ESPN The Magazine. We don't typically see CFL teams' salaries; we know where the cap ceiling and floor are, but we only learn of teams that violated the cap (which was only Hamilton last year), and even the teams that do make their financials public (only Edmonton, Saskatchewan and Winnipeg) have line items for "Football Operations" (which includes player salaries, but also coaches, general managers, equipment, travel costs and much more) rather than strictly salaries. Somehow, though, the ESPN survey has managed to pull together 2014 data for the CFL's teams, and there are some interesting results in it. First, consider this graphic that ESPN tweeted about the entire CFL's 2014 payroll and how it compares to that of Major League Soccer and the LA Dodgers:

Dodgers' avg salary is $8 mill/yr, highest among U.S. pro teams. Where does it rank worldwide? http://t.co/yt30foWjss pic.twitter.com/o1MNC8QW0e — ESPN (@espn) May 21, 2015

At first glance, that figure of $41.5 million seems somewhat off. Keep in mind that these are in U.S. dollars, though. It's unclear exactly when the conversion was made, but if we use Thursday's rate of $1 USD = $1.22 CAD, we get a total CFL payroll of $50.63 millon Canadian. Now, that would seem to imply more cap violations than we saw, as the cap was $5 million CAD last year and there are only nine CFL teams (accounting for just $45 million). It's notable that the cap doesn't cover preseason and postseason compensation, travel allowances, salaries paid to players on the nine-game injury list, pension plan contributions and other such things, though, and this survey appears to include at least some of those. What's really interesting is when it gets into the individual CFL teams, though. All the information globally can be found in ESPN's piece, but here's the important information for just the CFL's teams. (There's an interesting question of how ESPN got this info: did teams just turn it over? That seems unlikely given how reluctant they are to talk about finances. Presuming this is accurate, though, here it is:)



View photos The CFL's team salaries in 2014, according to an ESPN/SportingIntelligence survey. More

Why did the Stampeders spend more than the cap-violating Tiger-Cats? That's probably thanks to the postseason bonuses, which don't count against the cap. For winning the Grey Cup alone, the Stampeders' players on their 46-man roster would receive a bonus of $16,000 Canadian each, a total of $736,000 CAD or $603,279 USD; the Tiger-Cats would only receive half of that total for appearing in the Grey Cup, so about $300,000 USD. (The teams' other bonuses for making it that far would be equal.) Thus, Hamilton spent more on cappable salaries, while Calgary's top place in this payroll list came in non-cap bonuses. (Keep in mind that this affects the year-to-year shift in average salaries as well; Calgary's rose at least in part thanks to making it further in the playoffs, while Saskatchewan's fell at least partly because they didn't make it as far in 2014 as they did when they won the 2013 Grey Cup.)

It's the information on the teams at the bottom that's particularly notable, though. Toronto and Ottawa didn't make the playoffs, so they have no postseason bonuses to factor in, but it's curious to see division finalists (which gives a total bonus of $7,000 per player, $322,000 CAD or $263,964 USD) Montreal and Edmonton so far down the list. It seems likely these teams were spending far less than the cap max ($5 million CAD, about $4.1 million USD at Thursday's exchange rate) on salaries. How little could they have been spending, though?

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