BY PERRY LEFKO
sportsnet.ca
The Canadian Football League had its annual draft on May 8th and it passed by with all teams acknowledging they couldn't believe the players they wanted were still available.
The real fun will be on Monday, when at least three players who passed through the draft will be eligible.
Receiver Kito Poblah, defensive lineman Alex Ellis and linebacker Stephen Inman will be available through a confidential process in which the team with the highest bid wins the rights to the player. If two teams have a similar bid, the one with the weaker record from the previous year receives priority.
A fourth player, Ted Laurent, a massive defensive tackle from Ole Miss, may factor into the process as well. His status is still being determined. One team source speculated the paperwork may not be resolved in time and Laurent will go into next year's regular draft and likely go in the first round. He is a free agent having gone through the National Football League draft without any team taking him. Laurent is 6-foot-1, 304 pounds.
If an individual has lived for 72 consecutive months in Canada prior to the age of 18 he can be classified as a non-import in the CFL.
One source told sportsnet.ca that the number of players who are eligible this year is more than in most years, but added there are years when the supplemental draft passes by that nobody knows anything about it.
"The fact that (potentially) two blue-chip prospects are available is what is causing the frenzy," said the source, indicating Poblah is a surefire first-rounder while Laurent would be if becomes eligible.
Ellis is deemed to be a potential fourth- or fifth-round prospect. Inman will likely go through undrafted.
Winnipeg, which had the league's worst record at 4-14, has the first pick and general manager Joe Mack said on a media teleconference call on Tuesday that had Poblah been eligible for the recent draft it would have impacted on the Bombers' strategy. They chose linebacker Henoc Muamba of St. Francis Xavier first overall, and Jade Etienne, a receiver from the University of Saskatchewan, with the fourth overall pick. It was considered a surprising selection given that there were players with higher profiles and greater statistical output still available, notably Nathan Coehoorn of the University of Calgary and Marco Iannuzzi of Harvard.
Poblah, who attended Central Michigan University, had 154 career receptions, 1,908 receiving yards and 15 touchdowns. Etienne had 28 catches for 721 yards and six touchdowns last year. His university career was impacted prior to that by a severe back injury. Still, the Bombers considered him a raw prospect.
"Kito has had a really good career," Mack said. "He's a quality individual. We've done a lot of research on it. We'll probably finalize in the next couple days. Sure it would have an impact on our draft to some degree, but any time you get an opportunity, particularly for a non-import player, it's a good thing. We're excited to see where it falls out and we're certainly going to do a significant amount of due diligence on Kito before the draft."
There have been suggestions Poblah has NFL aspirations, so any team taking him now may have to wait on him, hence the Bombers' dilemma. Then again, with the NFL season totally uncertain, it would behoove a player of Poblah's status to sign now and get some professional playing time.
Poblah's situation is interesting, to say the least. He was expected to be eligible for the Canadian draft this year, then deemed ineligible. The Toronto Argonauts put him on their negotiation list giving them exclusive rights to sign him as an American, then it changed when it was determined he had the necessary paperwork to be classified as a Canadian. All Canadian players have to go through the regular or supplemental draft once before they can be claimed via the neg-list or free-agent process.
A story on the Central Michigan website with information from the Winnipeg Free Press said Poblah had been home-schooled prior to moving to the United States, where he attended Pembroke Pines Charter High School in Florida.
A source said potentially four teams may bid on Poblah.
