Jamie Nye: I’m not picking sides in CFL/CFLPA spat; both look bad

The Canadian Football League and its players’ association have taken what turned into a pretty sour labour negotiation right into the start of the season.

Both parties have taken shots at each other in separate news releases that claim the other party isn’t doing what is necessary to make player safety a top priority.

And it’s a bad look.

Simoni Lawrence took a cheap shot at Zach Collaros, but he does have the right to appeal.

Collaros remains on the six-game injured list and is seeing specialists on what might be a concussion, or maybe a neck injury with possibly his career in jeopardy.

This all parties agree on: These hits need to be taken out of the game.

Now, the CFLPA hasn’t come out and said that directly, but maybe we’ll hear it from Brian Ramsay of the players’ association when he appears on the Green Zone later today.

Either way, they have both come away looking poor. They’ve both used Collaros’ injury to try to score points in a P.R. campaign on who can care more about player safety.

Which, you can guess, doesn’t make the game any safer.