Facts and information about the CFL

• The Canadian Football League, or CFL, was founded in 1958.

• Though the CFL was founded in 1958, the Grey Cup (Championship Game) was played as early as 1909.

• The CFL traces its origins to the Canadian Rugby Football Union which was formed in 1884. Rugby was played in Canada as early as 1860.

• For many years the CFL had two teams with essentially the same mascot; the Ottawa Rough Riders and the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

• In 1993, the CFL admitted its first team based in the United States; the Sacramento Gold Miners.

• The original plan with the expansion of the CFL into the United States was for there to eventually be a ten team division of American teams and a ten team division of Canadian teams.

• 1994 saw the CFL placing a team in Baltimore, Maryland. The team was originally named the Colts, after Baltimore’s previous NFL team that had left for Indianapolis in 1984, but after legal maneuvering the name had to be changed to the Stallions.

• The Baltimore Stallions became the first CFL team based in the United States to play for the Grey Cup in 1994, and then win it in 1995.

• There were only three seasons in the entire history of the Canadian Football League that teams were located in the United States; 1993, 1994, and 1995.

• Some players who have made the Pro Bowl in the NFL and played part of their career in the CFL are; Jeff Garcia, Doug Flutie, Joe Theismann, and Joe Horn.

• In 1984 a CFL franchise was granted to Halifax, Nova Scotia and was set to compete as the Halifax Schooners. Financing troubles related to operations and the stadium meant that the Schooners would never actually field a team.

• In 1993 the CFL granted a franchise to San Antonio, but the San Antonio Texans folded before ever playing a game. The Sacramento Gold Miners eventually moved to San Antonio a couple years later and became the San Antonio Texans.

• As of 2007, the only two people to be in both the CFL and NFL Hall-of-Fames are Head Coach Bud Grant and Quarterback Warren Moon.

• In 1994, Baltimore Stallions Cornerback Karl Anthony became the first player on the losing team to win the Grey Cup Most Valuable Player Award.

• The Las Vegas Posse defeated the Sacramento Gold Miners in the first ever CFL game pitting two American teams against eachother.

• CFL regulations state that the end zones are to be twenty yards deep. This has been true for all teams and all stadiums, except for 1994 for the Las Vegas Posse. Their stadium wasn’t long enough and the end zones were only fifteen yards deep.

• The lowest attendance ever for a CFL game was 2,350 people when the Las Vegas Posse hosted the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. It is said that 800 of those spectators came from Winnipeg.

• Bernie Glieberman has the distinction of being the owner of two different CFL teams in the same city. He was an owner of the Ottawa Rough Riders and after that team folded and went away he was an owner of the Ottawa Renegades for a short time.

• Ron Lancaster (Saskatchewan Roughriders, Edmonton Eskimos, & Hamilton Tiger-Cats), Eagle Keys (Edmonton Eskimos, Saskatchewan Roughriders, & British Columbia Lions), and Cal Murphy (British Columbia Lions, Winnipeg Blue Bombers, & Saskatchewan Roughriders) have all three been the Head Coach of three different CFL teams and been inducted into the CFL Hall-of-Fame.

• Quarterback Matt Dunigan made it to the CFL Hall-of-Fame while playing for six different CFL teams. Dunigan played from 1983 to 1996 for the Edmonton Eskimos, the British Columbia Lions, the Toronto Argonauts, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, the Birmingham Barracudas, and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

• In the seven seasons from 1991 to 1997, Doug Flutie was named Canadian Football League Most Outstanding Player of the Year six times.

• The short lived Sacramento Gold Miners (who would eventually move to San Antonio and play as the Texans) were originally a World League of American Football (WLAF) team called the Sacramento Surge. When the WLAF folded, the owner kept the team and bought in as an expansion franchise in the CFL.

• The first American team to play in the CFL, host a game in the CFL, record a win in the CFL, and play on Canadian soil was the Sacramento Gold Miners.

• In the 1993 season, the CFL had planned on expanding into America with two new teams. The Sacramento Gold Miners came about, but the San Antonio Texans folded before the season started. Ironically, two years later the Gold Miners would move to San Antonio and play their final year of existence as the San Antonio Texans.

• The Canadian Football Hall-of-Fame is located in Hamilton, Ontario.