The 2025 CFL Draft could soon see a significant shakeup depending on the league’s auditing of salary cap spending for 2024.
It has long-since been known that CFL salary cap violations over $100,000 result in the forfeiture of a first-round draft pick. According to the CFL’s constitution, however, any draft picks forfeited due to a salary cap violation don’t merely disappear — instead, they are redistributed to another squad.
The team with the highest waiver priority — in other words, the team with the worst record from the previous year — is awarded the forfeited draft picks, provided they didn’t also violate the salary cap. The selection also falls to the end of the round from which it was forfeited.
This means that the first-round 2025 CFL Draft selection currently held by the B.C. Lions, who are expected to lose it due to a salary cap violation, would end up with the Calgary Stampeders, who finished a league-worst 5-12-1 last year.
As there are only eight selections currently in the first round — the Edmonton Elks used their first-round pick to claim receiver Zach Mathis in a supplemental draft in June — this would mean the Stampeders making the selection at eighth overall.
B.C. has already acknowledged that they will be over the salary cap as the club tried desperately to win the Grey Cup at home last year, adding high-priced Canadian stars Nathan Rourke and Mathieu Betts midseason after they were cut by the NFL. Some in CFL circles believe the team will lose not only its first-round pick but also its second-round pick, meaning the violation will be over $300,000, though this remains unconfirmed.
As per the CFL’s constitution, the league office fines any team penalized for a salary cap violation in the form of withheld monthly equity payments. In other words, if the Lions are found to have steamrolled the salary cap in 2024, they won’t need to cut a massive cheque to the league office. Instead, they’ll simply receive less money from the league until the amount of the fine has been withheld.
It should also be noted that the league office doesn’t keep the money it withholds from salary cap violations. Instead, the money is evenly distributed to the teams that were salary cap compliant the previous year.
The league, which confirmed its draft pick redistribution rules in an email to 3DownNation, said it remains unclear when salary cap violations from last season will be determined. According to the league’s constitution, the commissioner must distribute an official salary cap audit to all nine teams by the end of March. After that, clubs have one week to file any disputes before violations are publicly announced.
Last year, the league announced salary cap violations during the third week of April. B.C. went $85,979 over the cap, followed by Winnipeg at $25,947 and Hamilton at $2,654. As none of the violations were over $100,000, no draft picks were forfeited.
This year’s draft is set for April 29. Presumably, if a salary cap violation leads to any draft picks being forfeited, the league will want to announce penalties as soon as possible in order to provide sufficient time for teams to adapt to the new official draft order.
Only once has a CFL team previously been awarded a draft pick that was forfeited by another club due to a salary cap violation.
The Montreal Alouettes lost their first-round pick in the 2008 CFL Draft after going $108,285 over the salary cap in 2007, which was then $4.05 million. The selection, which would have been fourth overall, reverted to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, who selected receiver Samuel Giguère out of the Université de Sherbrooke eighth overall.
If the Lions lose their top pick, the selection order for the first round of the 2025 CFL Draft would now be as follows.
1 (1) Calgary Stampeders
1 (2) Hamilton Tiger-Cats
1 (-) Edmonton Elks (supplemental)
1 (3) Ottawa Redblacks
1 (4) Saskatchewan Roughriders
1 (5) Montreal Alouettes
1 (6) Winnipeg Blue Bombers
1 (7) Toronto Argonauts
1 (8) Calgary Stampeders
