Canadian Football League

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"CFL" redirects here. For other uses, see CFL (disambiguation).

Canadian Football League
Sport	Canadian football
Founded	1958
No. of teams	8
Country	Canada
Current champions	BC Lions
Official website	CFL.ca

The Canadian Football League (CFL), also known by its French name, Ligue canadienne de football (LCF), is a professional sports league located in Canada that plays Canadian football, and is the second most popular sports league in Canada.^[1] Its eight teams, located in eight different cities, are divided into two divisions (East and West), with each division containing four teams. During the league's twenty-week regular season, which runs from June to October, each team plays eighteen games, and rests during two bye weeks. In November, following the regular season, six of the eight teams compete in the league's three-week long playoffs, which culminate in the Grey Cup championship.

The Grey Cup was donated by Governor General Earl Grey in 1909 to the team winning the Senior Amateur Football Championship of Canada. Over time, both the trophy and the championship game have come to be known as the Grey Cup, and since 1954, when the Ontario Rugby Football Union stopped challenging for the Grey Cup, it has been awarded only to professional teams. While 1954 is often referred to as the start of the "modern era" of Canadian professional football, and the year that the Canadian Football League began in substance if not in name, the Canadian Football League itself was not officially founded until 1958.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Early history 1.2 Attempts at expansion into the United States 1.3 Recent history 2 Popularity 3 Season structure 3.1 Exhibition season 3.2 Regular season 3.3 Playoffs 3.4 Grey Cup 4 Television and radio 5 Players and compensation 6 Teams 6.1 Defunct teams 6.2 Notes 7 Commissioners/Presidents 8 Comparisons with the NFL 9 See also 10 Notes and references 11 External links

[edit] History

[edit] Early history

The first Canadian football teams played under the auspices of the Canadian Rugby Football Union (CRFU), founded in 1884. However this union quickly folded and was reorganized as the Canadian Rugby Union in 1892. The CRU was an umbrella organization that several leagues were part of. From the 1930s to the 1950s the two senior leagues of the CRU (the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union and the Western Interprovincial Football Union) gradually evolved from amateur to professional leagues. They found they had less and less in common with the amateur leagues and consequently in 1956 formed a new umbrella organization, called the Canadian Football Council. And in 1958 it left the CRU altogether and was renamed the Canadian Football League. Initially, there was no interdivisional play between eastern and western 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 a season.

The separate histories of the IRFU and the WIFU accounted for the fact that 2 teams had basically the same nickname. To tell the two apart, the IRFU's Ottawa Rough Riders (always 2 separate words) were often called the "Eastern Riders", while the WIFU's Saskatchewan Roughriders (always one word) were called the "Western Riders" or "Green Riders".

Other team nicknames had unusual yet traditional origins. With rowing a national craze in the late 1800's, the Argonaut Rowing Club of Toronto formed a rugby team for its members' off-season participation, and the Club nickname remains with the team. 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 from its 1958 inception until 1982 when the Montreal Alouettes folded and were subsequently 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 3 teams in the Eastern Division compared to 5 teams in the Western Division, forced the League to balance its playoff structure by moving the 'easternmost' Western team, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, into the East--achieving balance, but upsetting the long-standing tradition of 'East vs. West,' as Winnipeg isn't seen as part of eastern Canada.

[edit] Attempts at expansion into the United States

Main article: CFL USA

In 1993 the league admitted its first U.S. 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 10 Canadian and 10 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 Benson's team, the San Antonio Texans, would not play a single down, the Gold Miners would see action, finishing a respectable 6-12 (but remaining at the bottom of the West Division). The following year would see more expansion: 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 any American CFL team, having finished second in the East and making it to the Grey Cup Finals (becoming the first American team to play for the Grey Cup).

The 1995 season 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 (Teams were also considered for Orlando and Miami). However, fan interest in Canadian football, with the possible exception of the 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 but the Stallions and the 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 possibly relocating to nearby Richmond, Virginia, but nothing could be worked out so the team would later move to Montreal (renamed the Alouettes). The Texans would later fold with a similar explanation.

[edit] Recent history

After three seasons of American teams, the CFL returned to an all-Canadian format in 1996 with nine teams; however, the Ottawa Rough Riders folded following the season. In 2002 the league expanded back to nine teams with the expansion Ottawa Renegades. After playing four seasons, the Renegades were suspended for the 2006 season after sustaining millions of dollars in losses in their four seasons, and their players were absorbed by the remaining teams in a dispersal draft.

In 2003, the league struck a committee to examine the feasibility of adding a tenth team, with the leading candidate cities being Quebec City and Halifax.^[3] Exhibition games were held in Quebec City in 2003^[4] 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.^[5] Commissioner Tom Wright had indicated that Halifax was the leading candidate for expansion.^[6]

[edit] Popularity

Although ice hockey is currently Canada's most popular sport, the CFL is highly popular in Quebec and west of Ontario, and western franchises generally enjoy a greater level of support than Ontario teams. However, since the 2004 season, both Toronto and Hamilton have seen a resurgence in attendance, with Toronto drawing upwards of 32,000 people a game. The BC Lions franchise has also seen a recent resurgence of fan support, going from 14,000 people per game to over 30,000 in just a couple of years, which many attribute to proper on-field and off-field management. The Edmonton Eskimos regularly boast the league's highest average attendance, drawing around 40,000 people per game (Vancouver's BC Place Stadium, Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium, and Toronto's Rogers Centre being 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.

Football has been gaining in popularity in Quebec with the recent success of the Alouettes, and Quebec university football teams now lead the country in attendance and on the field, with Laval University, the University of Montreal and Concordia University consistently in the top ten in the country. In Southern Ontario, the CFL is recovering from the bankruptcy that plagued the Toronto and Hamilton teams in the 2003 season. Both teams have improved their attendance figures dramatically since the 2003 season.

A recent survey conducted at the University of Lethbridge confirmed that the CFL is the second most popular 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.^[7]

In 2005, the league set an all-time attendance record with a total attendance of more than 2.3 million.^[8] With the absence of Ottawa in 2006, the league recorded total regular season attendance of 2,083,894 - enough to increase the average per-game attendance to 28,943. This is the third-highest per-game attendance of any North American sports league and the seventh-highest per-game attendance of any sports league worldwide.

[edit] Season structure

As of 2006, The CFL season includes:

• A 2-game, 2-week exhibition season (or preseason) in early June
• An 18-game, 20-week regular season running from late June to early November
• A 6-team, 3-week single elimination playoff tournament beginning in early 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.

[edit] Exhibition season

Team training camps open in May, with pre-season exhibition games beginning in early June. The pre-season schedule is two weeks long with each team paired with another in its division for one home game and one away game.

[edit] Regular season

The regular season is twenty weeks long, with games beginning by late June and finishing by early November. With 9 teams, the season format had each team playing 18 games over this 20 week span, thus giving each team at least 2 bye weeks, while one team played 2 games in one week at some point during the schedule because of the odd number of teams. With short notice after the suspension of the Ottawa Renegades prior to the 2006 season, the CFL kept the 20 week, 18 game schedule by playing eight three-game weekends during the 2006 season, thus mainting two bye weeks for all eight teams. Teams are divided into two divisions: the East Division and West Division, with four teams in each division. Each team plays one home game and one away game against each team in the opposite division, three games (2 home/1 road or 1 home/2 road) against two division rivals, and a double home-and-home (four games) against one division rival. For 2006, the double home-and-home pairings are BC–Saskatchewan, Calgary–Edmonton, Montreal–Winnipeg, and Toronto–Hamilton.

A featured week in the CFL season is the Labour Day Classic, played over the course of the Labour Day weekend (typically Week 10 in the regular season), where the matchups feature the first half of home-and-home series between the traditional geographic rivalries of Toronto–Hamilton, Edmonton–Calgary (see Battle of Alberta), and Winnipeg–Saskatchewan. 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 featured weekends in the CFL season are the Canada Day Bash (weekend of July 1) and the Thanksgiving Day Classic. Unlike the Labour Day games, however, the matchups do not always feature traditional rivalries and the games are not usually as popular.

[edit] Playoffs

The playoffs begin in November. After the regular season, the top team from each division has an automatic home game 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 the fourth-place team from the opposite division finishes with a better record (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 and are branded as the "Scotiabank East Championship" and "Scotiabank West Championship".^[9] The two division champions then face each other in the Grey Cup game, which is held on the third or fourth Sunday of November.

[edit] Grey Cup

Main article: 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 ever year, selected two or more years in advance. The 2006 Grey Cup game 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 game will be held in Toronto on November 25, 2007.

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.

[edit] Television and radio

The principal television broadcasters are TSN and CBC, while RDS broadcasts Montreal Alouettes games in French for the Quebec television market.^[10] Games are typically scheduled for Thursday to Saturday evenings during June, July and August, but switch to more Saturday and Sunday afternoon games during September and October.^[11] TSN has created a tradition of at least one Friday night game each week, branded as Friday Night Football, while CBC airs at least one game every Saturday. CBC and TSN drew record television audiences for CFL broadcasts in 2005.^[12] The 2006 season was the first season in which every regular season game was televised, as the league implemented an instant replay challenge system.^[13] In 2006, the CFL also began offering pay-per-view webcasts of every game on CFL Broadband.^[14]

CBC and RDS are the exclusive television broadcasters for all playoff games, including the Grey Cup, which regularly draws a Canadian viewing audience in excess of 4 million.^[15] Teams have local broadcast contracts with terrestrial radio stations for regular season and playoff games, while Corus Entertainment owns the rights to the Grey Cup. In 2006 Sirius Satellite Radio Canada gained exclusive rights for North American CFL satellite radio broadcasts and will broadcast 25 CFL games per season including the Grey Cup through 2008.^[16]

In the United States, CFL games are broadcast on America One, which feeds the broadcasts to regional cable outlets, such as NESN and Comcast Sportsnet.^[17] In Europe, games are available on NASN.^[18]

[edit] Players and compensation

The CFL implemented a salary cap for the 2006 season of $3.8 million per team. Enforcement of the cap will begin in 2007, with financial penalties for teams that breach the cap set at $1 to $1 for the first $100,000 over, $2 to $1 for $100,000 to $300,000 over, and $3 to $1 for $300,000 and above. Penalties could also include forfeited draft picks.^[19]

Also in 2006, the active roster limit was increased to 42 from 40. The "import/non-import ratio", which required teams to keep at least 20 non-import (Canadian-born or Canadian-trained) players on their active roster, was increased to 21. Teams may have up to 4 players on their reserve roster, and up to 7 on their practice roster.^[19]

Eligible non-imports (usually, players having played CIS football, or Canadians playing American college football) are drafted by teams in the annual Canadian College Draft. An exceptionally talented non-import player in the locale of a team may be claimed as a "territorial exemption" and sign with that team before beginning collegiate play (one recent example is Mike Maurer, who signed was signed by Saskatchewan as a territorial exemption in 1997^[20]). Teams maintain "negotiation lists" of import players that they wish to sign as free agents.

CFL players are represented by the Canadian Football League Players Association (CFLPA). Each team elects two players to the CFLPA Board of Player Representatives, which meets once per year. Every two years, it elects an executive Board of Directors.^[21]

[edit] Teams

East Division
Team	City	Stadium	Quarterback	Kicker/Punter	Head coach	Founded
Hamilton Tiger-Cats	Hamilton, Ontario	Ivor Wynne Stadium	Jason Maas	Mark Myers/Pat Fleming	Charlie Taaffe	1950[1]
Montreal Alouettes	Montreal, Quebec	Molson Stadium/Olympic Stadium	Anthony Calvillo	Damon Duval	Jim Popp	1946[2]
Toronto Argonauts	Toronto, Ontario	Rogers Centre	Damon Allen	Noel Prefontaine	Pinball Clemons	1873
Winnipeg Blue Bombers	Winnipeg, Manitoba	Canad Inns Stadium	Kevin Glenn	Troy Westwood	Doug Berry	1930
West Division
Team	City	Stadium	Quarterback	Kicker/Punter	Head coach	Founded
British Columbia Lions	Vancouver, BC	BC Place Stadium	Dave Dickenson	Paul McCallum	Wally Buono	1954
Calgary Stampeders	Calgary, Alberta	McMahon Stadium	Henry Burris	Sandro DeAngelis/Burke Dales	Tom Higgins	1935
Edmonton Eskimos	Edmonton, Alberta	Commonwealth Stadium	Ricky Ray	Sean Fleming	Danny Maciocia	1949
Saskatchewan Roughriders	Regina, Saskatchewan	Mosaic Stadium at Taylor Field	Kerry Joseph	Luca Congi	Kent Austin	1910

[edit] Defunct teams

Team	City	Stadium	Years in CFL	Notes
Atlantic Schooners	Halifax, Nova Scotia	n/a	1984	Never played a game
Birmingham Barracudas	Birmingham, Alabama	Legion Field	1995
Las Vegas Posse	Las Vegas, Nevada	Sam Boyd Stadium	1994
Memphis Mad Dogs	Memphis, Tennessee	Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium	1995
Ottawa Rough Riders	Ottawa, Ontario	Frank Clair Stadium	1958-1996	Founded 1876
Sacramento Gold Miners	Sacramento, California	Hornet Stadium	1993-1994	Founded 1990 as Sacramento Surge (played 1990-1992 in the WLAF)
San Antonio Texans	San Antonio, Texas	Alamodome	1995	Formerly the Sacramento Gold Miners[3]
Shreveport Pirates	Shreveport, Louisiana	Independence Stadium	1994-1995

[edit] Notes

1. ↑ The Hamilton Tiger-Cats were created in 1950 as a merger of the Hamilton Tigers (founded 1869 as the Hamilton Foot Ball Club) and the Hamilton Flying Wildcats.
2. ↑ The CFL considers the current Montreal Alouettes franchise (founded in 1994 as the Baltimore Stallions, moved to Montreal and renamed the Montreal Alouettes in 1996) to be a continuation of the original Montreal Alouettes (founded 1946, played in the CFL 1958-1981) and Montreal Concordes (founded 1982, renamed the Montreal Alouettes in 1986, folded just prior to the 1987 season).^[22]
3. ↑ Another team named the San Antonio Texans was founded in 1993 but folded before playing a game.
4. The Ottawa Renegades (2002-2005) have been suspended since 2006, although the team could re-launch in a future season.

[edit] Commissioners/Presidents

1. G. Sydney Halter (1958-1966)
2. Keith Davey (1966)
3. Ted Workman (1967) (interim)
4. Allan McEachern (1967-1968)
5. Jake G. Gaudaur (1968-1984)
6. Douglas H. Mitchell (1984-1988)
7. C. William Baker (1989)
8. R. Roy McMurtry (1990) (interim)
9. J. Donald Crump (1990-1991)
10. Phil Kershaw (1992) (interim)
11. Larry W. Smith (1992-1996)
12. John H. Tory (1996-2000)
13. Michael R. Lysko (2000-2002)
14. David Braley (2002) (interim)
15. Tom E.S. Wright (2003-present)

[edit] Comparisons with the NFL

In the days when sports teams were financed almost entirely by ticket sales; the CFL and NFL were, financially speaking, on relatively equal footing, and the CFL could sign top U.S. college football stars such as Johnny Rodgers and Joe Theismann. In fact, during the 1950s and 1960s exhibition games were played between CFL and NFL/AFL teams using a mixture of rules. The last such exhibition game saw the CFL's Hamilton Tiger-Cats defeat the AFL's Buffalo Bills, the only time in which a Canadian team defeated an American team in those series.

As late as the 1970s and early 1980s when high-capacity stadiums were built in Montreal, Edmonton and Vancouver and Toronto's stadiums were expanded, people such as Montreal Alouettes owner Nelson Skalbania continued to believe that relative parity could be sustained so long as the CFL could get larger stadiums built in its other cities and sell them out. However, by the 1980s it became clear that financial parity between the two leagues was not going to be maintained - not so much because of the disparity in attendance figures as due to the NFL's increasingly lucrative television contracts that now bring in a majority of the NFL's revenue. The CFL could not hope to negotiate similar contracts with Canadian networks because the U.S. television market is nearly ten times the size of Canada's. Currently, the difference in average salaries between the CFL and NFL is significant, with only a handful of CFL players making more than the NFL minimum.

Some players have been stars in both leagues, such as Warren Moon, but one must remember that the rule difference make this difficult. The two games are similar but not the same, and they require different skills. For example, quarterbacks are expected to do more running in the CFL than the NFL. This has allowed many agile and talented but physically smaller players like Doug Flutie to have excellent careers in the CFL. Both Moon and Flutie were stars in Canada before moving back to the US to play in the NFL. One recent example of movement the other way is ex-Miami Dolphins star running back Ricky Williams who played the 2006 CFL season with the Toronto Argonauts.^[23]

The signing of Williams by Toronto following his drug-related suspension from the NFL created a degree of controversy. To avoid such controversy in the future, and to maintain good relations with the NFL, the CFL will not allow players suspended by the NFL to play in the league, effective for the 2007 season.^[24]

[edit] See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Canadian Football League

• Canadian football
• Canadian Football Hall of Fame
• Comparison of Canadian and American football
• List of Canadian Football League records
• List of Canadian Football League seasons
• List of Canadian Football League stadiums
• List of sports attendance figures

[edit] Notes and references

[edit] External links

Official Canadian Football League Canadian Football League Players Association Media SLAM! Sports Sportsnet.ca TSN.ca History Canadian Football Resources Soudog's CFL History Fan Site CFL: A Historical Look CFL vs. NFL: Head to Head Game History

Forums 13thman.com 55 Yard Line CFL Zone Blogs CanadianRules.ca