1 : Canadian Football League
2 : Teams
2.0.1 : East Division
2.0.2 : West Division
2.0.3 : Defunct Teams
3 : External links
The Canadian Football League (CFL) is a professional league located entirely in Canada that plays Canadian football. The league's top trophy, the Grey Cup, was donated by Governor-General Earl Grey in 1909 to the team winning the Senior Amateur Football Championship of Canada. Both the trophy and the championship game have become known as the Grey Cup. Since 1954, when the Ontario Rugby Football Union stopped challenging for the Grey Cup, the trophy has been awarded only to professional teams with the championship generally being an East vs. West competition. This is also the year the British Columbia Lions started play as the ninth professional team, so although the CFL was not technically founded until the late 1950's, 1954 is often referred to as the start of the "modern era" of Canadian professional football. It is also considered to be the year the CFL was founded in substance if not in name.
The first Canadian football teams played under the auspices of the Canadian Rugby Football Union (CRFU), founded in 1884. The CRFU was an umbrella organization that several leagues were part of. From the 1930s to the 1950s the two senior leagues of the CRFU (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 they left the CRFU and formed a new umbrella organization, the Canadian Football Council. It was renamed the Canadian Football League in 1958. In 1993 the league admitted its first U.S. franchise, adding the Sacramento Gold Miners in an attempt to broaden Canadian football's popular appeal and boost league revenues. 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 1996 season. In 2002 the league expanded to nine teams with the Ottawa Renegades.
Although the Canadian Football League is the highest level of competition in Canadian football, the league competes with the American National Football League for the best players. In the days when sports teams were financed almost entirely by ticket sales the two leagues were on equal footing and the CFL could sign top U.S. college football stars such as Rocket Ismail and Heisman Trophy winners Doug Flutie and Johnny Rodgers. However, in recent decades the advent of television revenue has allowed the NFL to far outspend the CFL. The CFL sets a limit on the number of U.S.-born players on Canadian teams.
Teams
East Division
West Division
Defunct Teams
see Canadian Football Hall of Fame
External links
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