2017 CFL season

Salary cap

According to the new collective bargaining agreement, the 2017 salary cap will be set at $5,150,000. As per the agreement, the cap is fixed and will not vary with league revenue performance. The minimum team salary will be set at $4,550,000 with individual minimum salaries set at $53,000.

Free agency

The 2017 free agency period will begin on Tuesday, February 14, 2017 at 12pm EST. All players eligible for free agency are unrestricted free agents, as is customary in the league.

CFL Week

The league announced on November 15, 2016 that Regina, Saskatchewan would be host to the first ever CFL Week (branded as Mark’s CFL Week), which is an event designed to engage fans and the media during the off-season. The event will take place from March 20 to March 26, 2017 at Evraz Place. The week will start with the Western Regional Combine, which was previously hosted by Edmonton for the past four years. The CFL National Combine will take place from March 23 to March 25 and will showcase 2017 CFL Draft-eligible prospects. The 2017 Canadian Football Hall of Fame inductees will also be announced during this week and the CFL and TSN photo shoot will take place here as well. There will also be an interactive Fan Festival, a head coach and general manager media event, and the CFL Rules and Competition Committee meetings, which would normally take place in February. The CFL will also invite football teams from U Sports Canada West Universities Athletic Association in a skeleton football tournament as part of a football showcase. This will be the first time that the CFL Combine is held outside of Toronto.

Season schedule

On February 7, 2017, the CFL released the 2017 season schedule with the Saskatchewan Roughriders visiting the Montreal Alouettes on June 22. The Alouettes most recently hosted the season-opening game in 2015. For the fourth consecutive season, week 1 featured a Grey Cup rematch, with the defending champion Ottawa Redblacks hosting the Calgary Stampeders. Those two teams will also meet in week 2 in Calgary in an extended rematch. Including that home-and-home series, there will be five played this season with Saskatchewan and Calgary playing in two each and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats having none. For the first time since Ottawa rejoined the league in 2014, all pre-season games will be played against divisional opponents. Additionally, for the first time since the league expanded to an 81-game schedule in 2014, a team other than Toronto plays two games in one week, with the Redblacks playing two games in week 5.

There were 19 double headers this year, with nine on Fridays, nine on Saturdays, and one on Labour Day Monday with the Ontario Labour Day game being played in prime time for the second consecutive year. There will four instances of overlap for the Friday games as those nights will feature games with 2.5 hours of start-time difference as opposed to the usual three hour difference. Those numbers are not including the triple header which will be featured for the second consecutive year, although this time it will occur in week 12 on the Saturday before the 2017 NFL season week one Sunday games are played. For the second time in three years, there will be only one game played on Thanksgiving Monday, with Montreal maintaining its customary hosting. This will be the third straight season to showcase Thursday Night Football with the first 11 weeks featuring Thursday night games, although the hosting distribution was not as equal as it was in the previous year. The Montreal Alouettes hosted four Thursday night games, Winnipeg hosted three, while four teams hosted once and two teams (Saskatchewan and BC) did not host any.

Saskatchewan Roughriders new stadium

After spending 95 years at the site of their old stadium, Mosaic Stadium at Taylor Field, the Saskatchewan Roughriders will be moving into a brand new facility, also called Mosaic Stadium, for the 2017 season. The stadium will have a fixed seating capacity of approximately 33,000 that is expandable to 40,000 for special events like the Grey Cup. The design of the stadium was unveiled on May 22, 2014 with the official groundbreaking ceremony being held on June 16, 2014. Mosaic Stadium was declared "substantially completed" on August 31, 2016 and a test event featuring a football game between the Regina Rams and Saskatchewan Huskies was held on October 1, 2016. The stadium was built for approximately $278 million with the city of Regina providing $73 million, the Saskatchewan provincial government providing a grant of $80 million and a loan of $100 million, and the Roughriders paying the rest. Unlike stadium delays in Winnipeg and Hamilton, Saskatchewan will almost certainly meet its planned opening date of June 2017, seeing that test events have already been successfully held.

Front office changes

On November 7, 2016, the Montreal Alouettes released their 21-year general manager and sometime Vice President and head coach Jim Popp after two disappointing seasons in a row. Popp joined the then brand-new Baltimore Stallions organization in 1994, and contributed to the revived Montreal team's current three Grey Cup championships and eight East Division titles over his tenure as general manager (as well as an additional Grey Cup and one South Division title in Baltimore); Popp was the last major legacy contributor from the CFL's American expansion of the 1990s. On December 14, 2016, the Alouettes held a press conference to announce Patrick Boivin as President and CEO and Kavis Reed as general manager. Reed had been the special teams coordinator with the Als for the previous two seasons, and has been coaching in the CFL since 2001.

After six seasons as the general manager of the Argonauts and compiling a 49–59 record in that time span, Jim Barker was fired on January 24, 2017. On February 28, 2017 the Argos announced Jim Popp as their new general manager. Popp had been the GM of the Montreal Alouettes since the mid 1990's and lead the team to three Grey Cup championships

Coaching changes

On December 14, 2016, the Montreal Alouettes announced that Jacques Chapdelaine would stay on as the team's head coach. Chapdelaine had served as the interim head coach for the final six games of the previous season. On January 27, 2017 Scott Milanovich resigned from his position as the head coach of the Toronto Argonauts; and later that day became the quarterbacks coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars of the NFL. Scott Milanovich had been the head coach of the Argos for five seasons starting in 2012, leading the club to a record of 43–47 during his tenure. Milanovich guided the Argos to victory in the 100th Grey Cup, his first season as head coach. On February 28, 2017 the Argos announced Marc Trestman as their new head coach. Trestman was the head coach of the Montreal Alouettes from 2008 through 2012, with a record of 59-31, guiding the Als to back-to-back Grey Cup titles in 2009 and 2010.

Structure

Teams played eighteen regular season games, playing two divisional opponents three times and all of the other teams twice. Teams were awarded two points for a win and one point for a tie. The top three teams in each division qualifed for the playoffs, with the first place team gaining a bye to the divisional finals. A fourth place team in one division may qualify ahead of the third place team in the other division (the "Crossover"), if they earn more points in the season.

If two or more teams in the same division were equal in points, the following tiebreakers applied:

1. If a third-place team finishes in a tie with the fourth place team in the other division, the third place team automatically gets the playoff spot and there is no crossover.
2. Most wins in all games
3. Head to head winning percentage (matches won divided by all matches played)
4. Head to head points difference
5. Head to head points ratio
6. Tiebreakers 3–5 applied sequentially to all divisional games
7. Tiebreakers 4 and 5 applied sequentially to all league games
8. Coin toss

Notes:

Standings

Note: GP = Games Played, W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, PF = Points For, PA = Points Against, Pts = Points

Teams in bold are in playoff positions.
X – clinched playoff berth
Y – clinched first place and bye to division final