{"id":417977,"date":"2026-01-18T20:15:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T20:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/417977\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T20:15:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T20:15:18","slug":"b-c-lions-gm-ryan-rigmaiden-sounds-alarm-about-nils-effect-on-future-of-cfl-quarterbacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/417977\/","title":{"rendered":"B.C. Lions GM Ryan Rigmaiden sounds alarm about NIL’s effect on future of CFL quarterbacks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Photo courtesy: Steven Chang\/B.C. Lions<\/p>\n

Name, image, and likeness (NIL) money has completely changed the landscape of college football and B.C. Lions general manager Ryan Rigmaiden expects it will soon have a big impact on the Canadian Football League.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think our league is gonna have some challenges in the very near future, especially with quarterbacks. You\u2019re looking at what some of these quarterbacks are getting paid via NIL \u2014 and listen, I\u2019m happy they are \u2014 but I don\u2019t know how many quarterbacks are going to come up (to the CFL) for an $80,000 or $90,000 contract when they just made $4 million (in college),\u201d he said from the CFL\u2019s offseason winter meetings in Calgary.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just a few quarterbacks anymore, and it\u2019s not just a few players anymore. Some teams do it as a collective of, \u2018Every one of our players is going to get $50,000 to $100,000, no matter who you are,\u2019 and then some teams are doing it on a case-by-case basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Athletic\u00a0recently reported that the baseline rate for quarterbacks at Power Four schools is $100,000 to $300,000 per year, though earnings can be much higher for five-star recruits. The highest-paid college player in 2025 was University of Texas quarterback Arch Manning, who reportedly made a whopping $6.8 million this season.<\/p>\n

Quarterbacks from top collegiate programs have rarely come up to the CFL, often choosing to pursue careers in coaching or broadcasting once NFL opportunities evaporate. Canadian teams instead relied primarily on recruiting quarterbacks from Group of Five or FCS programs, which produced passers like Dave Dickenson, Ricky Ray, Henry Burris, Michael Reilly, Kevin Glenn, Travis Lulay, Bo Levi Mitchell, and Davis Alexander.<\/p>\n

With collegiate careers growing longer than ever and player transience at an all-time high, however, it\u2019s rare for players to finish their eligibility at lower-level programs if they become a standout, instead garnering massive NIL offers to do a late-career transfer.<\/p>\n

Zach Calzada, whom the Ottawa Redblacks recently added to their negotiations list<\/a>, is a perfect example. The six-foot-four, 230-pound passer started his collegiate career at Texas A&M and Auburn, though he didn\u2019t see much playing time. In 2023, he transferred down to the FCS level, where he became a star at the University of the Incarnate Word.<\/p>\n

Historically, this was a standard collegiate resum\u00e9 for a future CFL quarterback \u2014 someone who may have attended a big-time school, but didn\u2019t stand out until they transferred down. In the modern landscape of collegiate football, however, quarterbacks are now able to cash in on late-career moves to bigger programs.<\/p>\n

Calzada earned over $1 million in 2025 to transfer to the University of Kentucky. He played poorly, throwing zero touchdowns and two interceptions over three games, but still earned more money than he could reasonably stand to earn over many, many years with Ottawa.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s a challenge for us, but also the NFL. You\u2019re seeing players in college stay longer than they ever have. It used to be players would jump to the NFL the quickest they possibly could. Now they\u2019re staying and petitioning the NCAA for a possible sixth and seventh year, so that certainly is changing,\u201d said Rigmaiden.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first started, we had an alert if a player had transferred twice \u2014 usually, there were some things that went on. Now, it\u2019s almost the opposite \u2014 players are nomads. It doesn\u2019t mean that it\u2019s right or wrong. I\u2019m happy these guys are getting compensated, and I truly believe they deserve it, but with the no guardrails, it\u2019s troubling. We\u2019re going to have to get ahead of this problem, and frankly, we\u2019ve talked about it before in the league meetings, and I\u2019m sure that\u2019s going to be more on the agenda in the next couple of years.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear how the CFL plans to deal with the rapidly-developing world of college football, but one thing is for certain: times, they are a-changin\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo courtesy: Steven Chang\/B.C. Lions Name, image, and likeness (NIL) money has completely changed the landscape of college…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[166835,166836,2599,26121,49,48,7028,521,522,520,551,527,4505,6381,1627,7338,82,5934],"class_list":["post-417977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-3down","tag-3downnation","tag-arch-manning","tag-b-c","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-college","tag-football","tag-kentucky","tag-lions","tag-qb","tag-quarterback","tag-sports","tag-zach-calzada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}