Pétition against new CIS football éligibility rule

In June the CIS adopted a new regulation to limit the age of the football players to 24 years old. Effective from September 2014, this regulation states that every player born before 1 January 1990 will not participate in the 2014 CIS Football season . The impact of this announcement leaves many athletes disappointed and helpless against this new situation. Several reactions of athletes and supporters of the Quebec conference prompt us to take action. You will find enclosed a petition signed by several supporters of Quebec, reflecting dissatisfaction with this new regulation and denouncing this injustice against several active athletes in the CIS football network . This petition goal’s to make you reconsider your position in the application of this regulation for the active student-athletes and revising your position with regard to this new rule for itself.

Among the proposed solutions, we recommend that student-athletes currently active should not be affected by this new regulation and only establish this rule for the 2014 freshmen players. This would eliminate any injustice to the students who planned their studies based on football opportunity and minimize the negative impacts created by this measure.

In addition, knowing that the Quebec education system uses the date of October 1st as cut-off date of a school year, we believe that the choice of the 1st January as the cut-off date for the football season would create prejudice for student- athletes in Quebec and especially for those born between October 1st and January 1st . In order to be as fair as possible for them, we propose to align the cut-off date of the CIS football season with the school year system of each province. We are aware there will be probably a few months difference between the provinces, but we believe that this small difference is negligible in the athletic point of view, and that choice would probably be more equitable to all Canadian provinces.

Thus, as mentioned here above, we’ve mentioned that reviewing this regulation is desirable, even necessary, in order to avoid the penalization of Quebec conference’s students athletes. We are confident that you will consider our proposition, and hope that you will consider our concerns and help us to find a solution that satisfies to all parties.

Best regards,

Supporters of Canadian university football conference Quebec