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Canadia Football League   The Canadian Football League (CFL) (Ligue canadienne de football (LCF) in French), is a professional sports league located in Canada that plays Canadian football.   Its eight teams, located in eight cities, are divided into two divisions (East and West), with each division containing four teams. During the league's nineteen-week regular season, which runs from the Canada Day weekend to early November, each team plays eighteen games, and rests during one bye week.   In November, following the regular season, six of the eight teams compete in the league's three-week playoffs, which culminate in the Grey Cup championship (first contested in 1909), the country's largest annual sports and television event.   The CFL, officially founded in 1958, yet tracing its origins to the 1860s, is the highest level of play in Canadian football, the most popular football league in Canada, and most popular sports league in Canada after the NHL.

History

 

Early history

Rugby football had its origins in Canada in the 1860s, and many of the first Canadian football teams played under the auspices of the Canadian Rugby Football Union (CRFU), founded in 1884. The CRFU was reorganized as the Canadian Rugby Union (CRU) in 1892, and served as an umbrella organization that several leagues were part of.

 

The Grey Cup was donated by Governor General Earl Grey in 1909 to the team winning the Senior Amateur Football Championship of Canada. By that time, the sport as played in Canada had diverged markedly different from its rugby origins. From the 1930s to the 1950s the two senior leagues of the CRU, the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union (IRFU) and Western Interprovincial Football Union (WIFU) gradually evolved from amateur to professional leagues, and amateur teams such as those in the Ontario Rugby Football Union (ORFU) were no longer competitive in their challenges for the Cup.

 

The ORFU withdrew from Grey Cup competition in 1954, heralding the the start of the modern era of professional Canadian football, in which the Grey Cup has been exclusively contested by professional teams (Since 1965, Canada's top amateur teams, competing in Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS), have contested the Vanier Cup).

 

In 1956, the IRFU and WIFU formed a new umbrella organization, the Canadian Football Council (CFC), and in 1958, the CFC left the CRU, becoming the Canadian Football League (The CRU remained the governing body for amateur play in Canada, eventually adopting the name Football Canada). Initially, there was no inter-divisional play between eastern (IRFU) and western (WIFU) teams except at the Grey Cup final.

 

Limited interlocking play was introduced in 1961 and by 1981 there was a full interlocking schedule of 16 games per season. The separate histories of the IRFU and the WIFU accounted for the fact that two teams had basically the same nickname: the IRFU's Ottawa Rough Riders were often called the "Eastern Riders", while the WIFU's Saskatchewan Roughriders were called the "Western Riders" or "Green Riders".

 

Other team nicknames had unusual yet traditional origins: with rowing a national craze in the late 1800s, the Argonaut Rowing Club of Toronto formed a rugby team for its members' off-season participation; the club nickname Toronto Argonauts remains to this day, and after World War II, the two teams in Hamilton—the Tigers and the Wildcats—merged both their organizations and their nicknames, forming the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

 

After the admission of the expansion British Columbia Lions in 1954, the league remained stable with nine franchises (BC Lions, Calgary Stampeders, Edmonton Eskimos, Saskatchewan Roughriders, Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Toronto Argonauts, Ottawa Rough Riders, Montreal Alouettes) from its 1958 inception until 1982, when the Alouettes folded and were replaced the same year by a new franchise named the Concordes.

 

In 1986 the Concordes were renamed the Alouettes to attract more fan support, but the team folded the next year. The demise of the Alouettes, leaving only three teams in the East Division compared to five teams in the West Division, forced the League to balance its playoff structure by moving the easternmost Western team, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, into the East Division, upsetting the long-standing tradition of "East vs. West", as Winnipeg isn't typically seen as part of Eastern Canada.

 

 

United States expansion

 

In 1993, the league admitted its first United States franchise, the Sacramento Gold Miners, in an attempt to broaden Canadian football's popular appeal and boost league revenues. The ultimate plan was to have a league of ten Canadian and ten American teams. Spearheading the efforts were two former World League of American Football owners, Fred Anderson and Larry J. Benson, who would each receive a franchise. While the first incarnation of Benson's team, the San Antonio Texans, would not play a single down, the Gold Miners would see action, finishing with a record of 6 wins and 12 losses, placing last in the West Division. The following year saw the addition of the Las Vegas Posse, the Shreveport Pirates, and the Baltimore CFL Colts (who were forced to change their name to the Stallions after a long legal battle). Baltimore was the most successful of the American CFL teams, finishing second in the East and becoming the first American team to play for the Grey Cup.

 

The 1995 saw the loss of the Posse and the move of the Gold Miners to San Antonio, while the Birmingham Barracudas and Memphis Mad Dogs were added. However, fan interest in Canadian football, with the possible exception of the Baltimore Stallions, was sparse at best. At the end of the year, which saw the Stallions become the first American team to win the Grey Cup, all United States teams with the exception of the Stallions and the re-launched San Antonio Texans folded because of financial difficulties. When the National Football League announced that a new team was to be added in Baltimore, the Stallions looked at the possibility of relocating to nearby Richmond, Virginia, but later moved to Montreal, becoming the Alouettes. The Texans would later fold with a similar explanation.

 

Recent history

 

After three seasons that included American teams, the CFL returned to an all-Canadian format in 1996 with nine teams; however, the Ottawa Rough Riders, in existence since 1876, folded before the following season. In 2002, the league expanded back to nine teams with the creation of the Ottawa Renegades. After four seasons of financial losses, the Renegades were suspended indefinitely prior to the 2006 season; their players were absorbed by the remaining teams in a dispersal draft.

 

The league had struck a committee in 2003 to examine the feasibility of adding a tenth team, with the leading candidate cities being Quebec City and Halifax. Exhibition games were held in Quebec City in 2003 and in Halifax in 2005. The Halifax event, dubbed Touchdown Atlantic, was scheduled to repeat in 2006 but was cancelled after the suspension of the Ottawa Renegades franchise. Commissioner Tom Wright had indicated that Halifax was the leading candidate for expansion.

 

Although ice hockey is Canada's most popular sport, the CFL is highly popular in Quebec and Western Canada, and along with Canadian football played at amateur levels (ie. youth, high school, CJFL, QJFL, CIS and senior leagues such as the Alberta Football League), has increased in popularity in recent years. In Southern Ontario, the CFL is recovering from the bankruptcy that plagued the Toronto and Hamilton teams in the 2003 season; having come under new ownership, both teams have improved their attendance figures dramatically since then. The BC Lions have also seen a recent resurgence of fan support, which many attribute to improved on-field and off-field management. The Lions now compete with the Edmonton Eskimos for top attendence numbers; the Eskimos average as many as 40,000 people per game (Vancouver's BC Place Stadium, Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium, and Toronto's Rogers Centre are the only stadiums that seat 40,000+). Saskatchewan Roughriders fans are known for their loyalty and for attending Roughriders games at stadiums across the country.

 

In 2005, the league set an all-time attendance record with a total attendance of more than 2.3 million. With the absence of Ottawa in 2006, the league recorded total regular season attendance of 2,112,696, increasing the average per-game attendance to 29,343. This is the third highest per-game attendance of any North American sports league and the sixth highest per-game attendance of any sports league worldwide. A recent survey conducted at the University of Lethbridge confirmed that the CFL is the second most popular sports league in Canada, with the following of 19% of the total adult Canadian population compared to 30% for the NHL. The NFL had 13% following, with a total of 24% following at least one of the pro football leagues. This could be interpreted to mean that approximately 80% of Canadian football fans follow the CFL and about 55% follow the NFL.

 

Season structure

 

As of 2007, The CFL season includes:

• A 2-game, 3-week exhibition season (or pre-season) in mid-June
• An 18-game, 19-week regular season running from late June to early November
• A 6-team, 3-week single elimination playoff tournament beginning in November and culminating in the Grey Cup championship in late November. Championship teams will play either 2 or 3 playoff games, including the Grey Cup game, depending on their standing at the end of the regular season.

Exhibition season

 

Team training camps open in May, with pre-season exhibition games beginning in early June. The pre-season schedule is three weeks long with each team playing two games against a team in its own division.

 

Regular season

 

The regular season is nineteen weeks long, with games beginning on the Canada Day weekend and finishing by early November. The CFL's eight teams are divided into two divisions: the East Division and West Division, with four teams in each division. Each team plays two games against each team in the opposite division, three games against two teams in its own division, and four games against the other team in its own division. Alternating divisional bye weeks take place in weeks nine and ten, putting the focus on games within the division not resting that week.

 

The most popular featured week in the CFL season is the Labour Day Classic, played over the course of the Labour Day weekend, where the matchups feature the first half of home-and-home series between the traditional geographic rivalries of Toronto–Hamilton (a rivalry which began in 1873), Edmonton–Calgary (see Battle of Alberta), and Winnipeg–Saskatchewan. BC—Montreal, while not considered a "traditional" rivalry, rounds out the week's games. The following week's rematch of these games is a popular event as well, especially in recent years, where the rematch of the Saskatchewan-Winnipeg game has been dubbed the Banjo Bowl. Other features of the regular season schedule are the Hall of Fame Game in Hamilton and the Thanksgiving Classic, where the matchups do not always feature traditional rivalries.

 

Playoffs

 

The playoffs begin in November. After the regular season, the top team from each division has an automatic home berth in the Division Final, and a bye week during the Division Semifinal. The second-place team from each division hosts the third-place team in the Division Semifinal, unless a fourth-place team from one division finishes with a better record than a third place team in the other (this provision is known as the crossover rule, and while it implies that it is possible for two teams in the same division to play for the Grey Cup, no crossover team has ever won the Semifinal game). The winners of each Division's Semifinal game then travel to play the first place teams in the Division Finals. Since 2005, the Division Semifinals and Division Finals have been sponsored by Scotiabank. The two division champions then face each other in the Grey Cup game, which is held on the third or fourth Sunday of November.

 

Grey Cup

 

The Grey Cup is both the name of the championship of the CFL and the name of the trophy awarded to the victorious team. The Grey Cup game is hosted in one of the league's member cities. In recent years, it has been hosted in a different city every year, selected two or more years in advance. The 2006 Grey Cup was held in Winnipeg on November 19, 2006, where the BC Lions defeated the Montreal Alouettes by a score of 25-14. The 2007 Grey Cup will be held in Toronto on November 25, 2007.

 

As the country's largest annual sporting event, the Grey Cup has long served as an unofficial Canadian autumn festival generating national media coverage and a large amount of revenue for the host city. Many fans travel from across the country to attend the game and the week of festivities that lead up to it.

 

Awards

 

Following the Grey Cup game, the Grey Cup Most Valuable Player and Grey Cup Most Valuable Canadian are selected. A number of league individual player awards, such as the Most Outstanding Player and Most Outstanding Defensive Player, are awarded annually at a special ceremony in the host city during the week prior to the Grey Cup game; this ceremony is broadcast nationally on TSN. The Annis Stukus Trophy, also known as the Coach of the Year Award, is awarded separately at a banquet held during the off-season each February. While the CFL has not held an all-star game since 1988, an All-Star Team is selected and honored at the league awards ceremony during Grey Cup week.

 

Past Winners

2006 (Winnipeg, MA)

U19: Quebec 26, Saskatchewan 2
U17: Manitoba (round robin)

2005 (Waterloo, ON)

U19: Manitoba (round robin)
U17: Manitoba 30, Central Ontario 15

2004

U19: (Ottawa, ON) Ontario 21, Alberta 18 (OT)
U17: (Waterloo, ON) Eastern Ontario 47, Nova Scotia 0

2003 (Ottawa, ON)

U19: Ontario 24, Alberta 21

2002 (Ottawa, ON)
U19: Ontario 48, Manitoba 27

2001 (Medicine Hat, AB)
U19: Alberta (round robin)

2000 (Winnipeg, MA)
U19: Alberta (round robin)

1999 (Vancouver, BC)
U19: British Columbia 45, Ontario 25

1998 (Halifax, NS)
U19: Alberta 49, Nova Scotia 28

1997 (Ottawa, ON)
U19: Alberta 56, NCAFA 20

1996 (Red Deer, AB)
U19: Ontario (round robin)

1995 (Montreal, QC)
U19: Alberta 10, Quebec 6

1994 (no competition)

1993 (Calgary, AB)
U19: Quebec 38, British Columbia 32

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