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Canadian Football League
Canada
The Canadian Football League (CFL)
Montreal vs Winnipeg
Match scheduled:
Date: 24-10-2009
Time: 18:30 until 22:00
Week 17 - Canadian Football League CFL
The CFL began eyeing an American expansion in 1992. In 1993, the league admitted its first United States-based franchise, the Sacramento Gold Miners. After modest success, the league then expanded further in the U.S. in 1994 with the Las Vegas Posse, Baltimore Stallions, and Shreveport Pirates. The Las Vegas franchise was an abject failure and turned into a road team by the end of the season. Baltimore, however, advanced all the way to the 82nd Grey Cup and was a financial success as well.
For the 1995 campaign, the American teams were split off into their own South Division. Las Vegas was folded, while two new teams, the Birmingham Barracudas and Memphis Mad Dogs, were added. The Sacramento team moved to become the San Antonio Texans — an ironic occurrence, since a San Antonio team was to have been admitted into the CFL along with the Gold Miners for 1993 but folded before taking a single snap. 1995 saw the Stallions become the first non-Canadian team to win the Grey Cup.
The success of the CFL's U.S. expansion was mixed. Baltimore and San Antonio had sustainable operations and were expected to return in 1996. Memphis and Birmingham had reasonable success in 1995 but ran into severe attendance problems during college football season; Shreveport, although it had solid attendance, was run by the Glieberman family, historically one of the worst owners in the CFL, and suffered from poor management as a result. By the end of the 1995 season, Shreveport and Birmingham moved out of their cities and ultimately folded, and Memphis followed suit. When Art Modell, owner of the NFL's Cleveland Browns, announced he would be moving his team to Baltimore to become the Baltimore Ravens, the Stallions moved to Montreal, becoming the revived Montreal Alouettes. San Antonio decided not to continue operations as the only American team and folded shortly thereafter. By the 1996 season, the Canadian Football League was once again based entirely in Canada.
Long before the launch of the CFL USA program, NBC Sports had broadcast three CFL games live during the 1982 season while NFL players were on strike. Future NFL star Warren Moon, then of the Edmonton Eskimos, played in one of those games. Charlie Jones and Len Dawson were the announcers. (For more information on current U.S. rights to broadcast CFL games, see the "Broadcasting" section below.)
[edit] Recent history
After three seasons that included American teams, the CFL American expansion experiment came to a close, as the CFL returned to an all-Canadian format in 1996 with nine teams; however, the Ottawa Rough Riders, in existence since 1876, folded after the 1996 season, due to poor ownership and fan support, in addition to an aging facility which no longer was suitable for providing a profitable location for professional football. 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 before the 2006 season; their players were absorbed by the remaining teams in a dispersal draft
