The Baltimore Stallions (known officially as the "Baltimore Football Club" and previously as the "Baltimore CFL Colts" in its inaugural season) were a Canadian Football League team based in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States, which played the 1994 and 1995 seasons. They were the most successful American team in the CFL's southern expansion into the United States, and by at least one account, the most winning expansion team in North American professional sports history at the time.[1] They had winning records in each season, and in both years advanced to the championship game. In 1995, they became the only American franchise to win the Grey Cup.
In the final weeks of the Stallions' second season, it became public knowledge that the Maryland Stadium Authority and City of Baltimore were in serious negotiations with Art Modell, the long-time owner of the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League, (NFL) to move his franchise to Baltimore for the 1996 season. The Stallions ownership group knew they had no reasonable prospect of successfully competing with the overwhelmingly more popular brand in their home country. Even before the agreement with Modell became official within a month of the Stallions' Grey Cup triumph, Stallions owner Jim Speros was actively seeking to re-locate his team elsewhere. Speros ultimately chose to move his football organization to Montreal, reconstituting itself as the third and current iteration of the Montreal Alouettes. The Stallions franchise was dissolved, thus becoming one of three Grey Cup champions in the modern era to subsequently fold (the others being the Ottawa Rough Riders and the original Alouettes). The CFL considers the Stallions to be a separate franchise from the Alouettes.
Soon after the expansion effort failed, entrepreneur and former Washington Redskins assistant Jim Speros was granted a CFL expansion franchise for Baltimore that would play in Memorial Stadium. Attempting to trade on the city's love for its long-lost Baltimore Colts, Speros adopted a color scheme that added silver to the Baltimore Colts' traditional colors of blue and white, as well as a stylized horse's head logo. He also invited the old Baltimore Colts Marching Band, which had stayed together along with the old team's uniformed cheerleaders for over a decade, to play at his games. He recruited the remaining Baltimore Colts football fan clubs ("Colt Corrals") to follow and support the new CFL franchise. He initially called the team the "Baltimore CFL Colts". However, the NFL went to court and successfully obtained a legal injunction against the franchise's use of any version of "Colts" in their name just hours before the team was to play its first game. Speros not only had to discard tons of purchased merchandise and souvenirs along with an advertising campaign, but also had to quickly change the franchise's official name to the "Baltimore Football Club" (which some just called the "Baltimore CFL's") while keeping the team's distinctive horse's head logo.
Local fans tended to continue referring to the team as the "Baltimore Colts" anyway, and team officials tacitly encouraged this. For example, for most of the 1994 season, Memorial Stadium's public address announcer, Jack Taylor, would announce the team as "your Baltimore CFL..." – followed by a pause, during which time the crowd shouted "COLTS!" – after which he would conclude, "...football team."[2]
Number 19 was never issued out of respect to the Baltimore Colts' great Johnny Unitas.
1994 season
Speros's approach to building the team was simple. He knew Canadian football was very different from the American game, so he made a point of hiring personnel and players with CFL experience. In contrast, the other American CFL teams stocked their rosters with former NFL players, former college football players, and locally-known players. Speros hired career CFL assistant Jim Popp as general manager, and named longtime CFL coach Don Matthews as head coach. Popp and Matthews, in turn, brought in experienced CFL players like QB Tracy Ham, RB Mike Pringle, LB O. J. Brigance, DT Jearld Baylis, DE Elfrid Payton. One of the more prominent NFL castoffs was K Donald Igwebuike; the team also offered a tryout to former Super Bowl XXII champion, Timmy Smith, who had been out of football several years by that point, but Smith failed to make the regular season roster. It also helped that Memorial Stadium had been originally built to accommodate baseball as well as football. Using Memorial Stadium's baseball seating configuration gave it a field large enough to accommodate the full 150-yard length and 65-yard width of a regulation CFL field.
Even though they lacked an official name, the team finished second in the CFL East Division, with a 12–6 regular season record – more wins than any CFL expansion team before or since. In addition, the team was ranked third in the entire CFL in team scoring, and second in team defense.
Mike Pringle was the team's offensive standout. Among other accomplishments, he earned the league's leading rushing title with a record 1,972 yards and thirteen touchdowns. Pringle also returned 38 kicks for 814 yards, which made him a CFL All-Star, Eastern All-Star, and a Terry Evanshen Trophy winner.
In the playoffs, Baltimore hosted the Toronto Argonauts in the East semifinals at Memorial Stadium and won the game, 34–15. After the semifinal game, Baltimore ended up defeating the favored Winnipeg Blue Bombers at Winnipeg Stadium 14–12 to become the first (and only) American and expansion team to make it to the Grey Cup.
In the Grey Cup game, Baltimore was up against the B.C. Lions at BC Place Stadium in what amounted to a road game. Baltimore had the upper hand against the Lions, leading 17–10 at halftime and silencing the Lions' faithful; however, the Lions came back in the second half, winning by a score of 26–23 on a last-second Lui Passaglia field goal.
While playing without an official nickname had not happened for decades prior to 1995 in North American professional sports, it has happened on a few occasions since after long-established major professional sports organizations discontinued their established nicknames. The first instance occurred in 2020 in nearby Washington, DC when the city's NFL team, after years of pressure, agreed to drop its increasingly-controversial nickname. They played for two seasons as the Washington Football Team before becoming the Washington Commanders. Soon after, Edmonton's CFL team agreed to stop using its similarly-controversial name, although it never played a game without a nickname. The CFL cancelled its 2020 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic and by the time CFL play resumed Edmonton's team had adopted the moniker Edmonton Elks. Finally, after acquiring the hockey assets but not the intellectual property of the National Hockey League's moribund Arizona Coyotes franchise, in 2024 the new Utah-based NHL team opted to be known as the Utah Hockey Club for one season rather than rush to choose a nickname in time for the 2024-25 NHL season.
1995 season
The Grey Cup on display after the Baltimore Stallions victory with city mayor Kurt Schmoke
After the 1994 season, the CFL announced that the League's five U.S. teams—Baltimore, the San Antonio Texans (the former Sacramento Gold Miners), the Shreveport Pirates and the expansion Memphis Mad Dogs and Birmingham Barracudas—would be placed in a new South Division, while the Canadian teams would reside in the North Division. Just before the start of the 1995 season, a name-the-team fan poll was held to decide a new team name. After the team finished the first week of its second season still calling itself "the Baltimore Football Club", the fan poll ended; Speros publicly announced that Baltimore's team would be known as the "Baltimore Stallions". The name change was a convenient one in that it allowed Baltimore's logo and colors to remain unchanged from the 1994 season. Notably, the Stallions nickname had previously been used by a United States Football League team in Birmingham, nevertheless it was still available for Speros' team. Barracudas owner Art Williams had previously rejected reviving the moniker for his club, apparently because he considered it too timid (Birmingham would later reclaim the nickname for its reconstituted USFL/UFL franchise in the 2020's).
Despite the changes to their name and team re-alignment, the Stallions returned with virtually the same roster for their next season. The exception was the signing of former Posse kicker Carlos Huerta to replace Igwebuike, who moved on to play with Memphis. With essentially the same team from the 1994 season, optimism and Grey Cup expectations were high for the Stallions. Optimism became reality as Baltimore continued their on-field dominance from the previous season. They started the season 2–3, but did not lose another game for the rest of the season. They ultimately finished with a 15–3 regular season record – first place in the South Division, and tying the Calgary Stampeders for the best record in the CFL.
Quarterback Tracy Ham with Mike Pringle and Robert Drummond were the most potent backfield in the CFL. Chris Armstrong became the team's top receiver and the defense continued dominating opponents by allowing only 369 points-against, ranking the squad third in team defense. Mike Pringle had a slight drop-off from his 1994 numbers by rushing for 1,791 yards, being named the CFL's Most Outstanding Player.
After defeating Winnipeg 36–21 in the divisional semifinals, the Stallions defeated the Texans 21–11 in the South final in what is (as of the 2024 season) the last meaningful CFL game played in the United States. This vaulted them to the Grey Cup final for the second straight season. They traveled to Regina's Taylor Field to face the 15–3 North Division champion Stampeders, who were led by coach Wally Buono, QB Doug Flutie, and his two top receivers, Allen Pitts and Dave Sapunjis. During the game, the winds at Taylor Field were particularly strong and gusted up to 85km/h (52.8mph). That did not slow down the Stallions, as they defeated the Stampeders, 37–20 to become the first American team to win the Grey Cup, with Tracy Ham becoming the Grey Cup's Most Valuable Player. Counting the playoffs, the Stallions ended the season on a 16-game winning streak.
Fan support
In addition to being the most successful of the U.S. CFL teams on the field, Baltimore was far and away the most successful of the CFL's American teams at the box office. It had significant fan support and strong attendance – averaging 37,347 in 1994 (best in the CFL), and 30,112 in 1995 (second best).
Fan support in Baltimore was driven by a number of factors not present in the CFL's other U.S. markets. Their success on the field was one obvious factor. However many fans were motivated to support the CFL out of antipathy towards the NFL, which had not only backed the re-location of the NFL Colts to Indianapolis, but had subsequently spurned several attempts to return an NFL franchise to the city. Another major factor in Baltimore's success at the gate was the 1994–95 Major League Baseball strike, which wiped out the last two months of the Orioles' season. Baltimore was also a significantly more heavily populated market than the other CFL American markets and the only one to have previously hosted an NFL team, giving the Stallions a larger base from which to draw fans. Finally, the Stallions did not have to compete with college football for an audience to nearly the same extent as the other U.S. CFL franchises.
After the 1995 season, the CFL decided to disband three of its five American franchises and return to its traditional East–West divisional alignment for the 1996 season. The two remaining American teams, Baltimore and San Antonio, were to be placed in the CFL's East Division.
However, this strategy collapsed on the week of the South Division final, when longtime Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell announced he would be moving his team to Baltimore. Speros had initially not believed the rumors of Modell courting Baltimore when they cropped up in September. However, when it emerged that Modell was in talks with state and local officials, Speros began scouting out cities for a possible move.
This proved prescient; as soon as the move was announced, local support for the Stallions dried up almost overnight, with fans switching virtually en masse to the NFL. It quickly became apparent that most Stallions fans had only supported the CFL out of resentment towards the NFL, or even just as a means of pressuring the NFL to return. Whatever the case, the loss of support was so dramatic that the Stallions were forced to basically give away tickets for the South Division final. Even the Grey Cup victory celebration at Inner Harbor went almost unnoticed in the local media and the press, despite a few local dignitaries such as MayorKurt Schmoke attending.[3]
Even after the NFL's return to Baltimore became certain, Schmoke and other city leaders claimed that the Stallions could coexist with Modell's team, which was eventually reconstituted as the Baltimore Ravens. However, Speros and CFL officials soon realized that no matter how successful the Stallions had been, they had no realistic prospect of competing head-to-head with an NFL team. As the team's successful Grey Cup run was still underway, it became apparent that there would not be enough advertising revenue or fan support to go around. Even without that to consider, using Memorial Stadium would have posed a logistical nightmare once the NFL season began in September. The conditions set by the NFL to permit the Ravens to temporarily play at Memorial Stadium pending completion of a new stadium would have made it all but impossible for the venue to convert its grass field back and forth between the two leagues' specifications when the two leagues' seasons overlapped. In any case, the Stallions would have likely been evicted from Memorial Stadium anyways to make way for the Ravens. No other stadium in the Baltimore area was suitable or large enough even for temporary CFL use.
Rather than risk being reduced to "minor league" status in Baltimore, Speros ceded Baltimore to the Ravens and announced plans to move the franchise. He was actually very close to moving the franchise to Houston, Texas, to take advantage of the pending departure of the NFL's recently departed Houston Oilers from the Astrodome, with then-Houston Astros owner Drayton McLane as a minority partner.[3] However, under prodding from CFL officials who believed the American experiment was a lost cause, Speros began talks with officials in Montreal. CFL commissioner Larry Smith believed the defending CFL champions would be a better vehicle for bringing the CFL back to Montreal rather than what would have essentially been an expansion team.[3] At a league meeting on February 2, 1996; Speros was granted permission to move the Stallions to Montreal, effectively ending the American experiment.[4] Although Speros seriously considered whether to keep the Stallions name,[5] he ultimately decided to give up the Stallions franchise and reconstitute his organization as the third and current incarnation of the Montreal Alouettes. Speros kept the Alouettes for only one year before selling the franchise to Robert C. Wetenhall in 1997.
Sixteen former Baltimore Stallions players earned tryouts for NFL teams in 1996.[2]
Historical note
The CFL does not officially consider the Stallions to be part of the Alouettes' history. According to official league records, Speros canceled the Stallions franchise after the 1995 season and reclaimed the dormant Alouettes franchise. Consequently, when Speros moved the team to Montreal, all of the Stallions players were released from their contracts, though Popp managed to re-sign many of them. The current Alouettes claim the history of the 1946–1986 Alouettes as their own, and the CFL has recognized the Alouettes as having suspended operations from 1987 to 1995.
As of the end of the 2016 season, team president Mark Weightman is the only remaining link between the Stallions and Alouettes. General manager Jim Popp followed the team to Montreal as general manager and guided the franchise to 8 Grey Cup Finals, winning 3 of them – giving him a total of 10 Grey Cup Finals appearances and 4 Grey Cups with the Stallions/Alouettes organization. Popp resigned as general manager at the end of the team's 2016 season. Weightman served as an operations intern for the Stallions in 1995 and then joined the Alouettes as an operations staffer in 1996.
The Canadian Football League is a professional sports league in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football. The league consists of nine teams, each located in a city in Canada. They are divided into two divisions: four teams in the East Division and five teams in the West Division. As of 2024, it features a 21-week regular season in which each team plays 18 games with three bye weeks. This season traditionally runs from mid-June to early November. Following the regular season, six teams compete in the league's three-week playoffs, which culminate in the Grey Cup championship game in late November. The Grey Cup is one of Canada's largest annual sports and television events. The CFL was officially named on January 19, 1958, upon the merger between the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union or "Big Four" and the Western Interprovincial Football Union.
The Montreal Alouettes are a professional Canadian football team based in Montreal, Quebec. Founded in 1946, the team has folded and been revived twice. The Alouettes compete in the East Division of the Canadian Football League (CFL) and are the current Grey Cup champions, defeating the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the 110th Grey Cup Game in 2023. Their home field is Percival Molson Memorial Stadium for the regular season and as of 2014 also home of their playoff games.
The San Antonio Texans were a Canadian Football League (CFL) team that played in the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, in the 1995 CFL season. They had relocated from Sacramento, California, where the team had been called the Sacramento Gold Miners. After relocating, the team still had the same ownership in Fred Anderson and the same staff, including President Tom Bass and Head Coach/General Manager Kay Stephenson. The Gold Miners/Texans franchise played three seasons before folding in 1995. They were the southernmost team in CFL history and the only team in CFL history to have ever officially relocated from another market.
Baltimore Memorial Stadium was a multi-purpose stadium in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, that formerly stood on 33rd Street on an oversized block officially called Venable Park, a former city park from the 1920s. The site was bound by Ellerslie Avenue to the west, 36th Street to the north, and Ednor Road to the east.
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Michael A. Pringle is an American former professional football player who was a running back in the Canadian Football League (CFL). He set or tied almost every significant league record for the position. He played college football for the Cal State Fullerton Titans, earning third-team All-American honors. He was twice signed by National Football League (NFL) teams, though he saw very limited playing time.
The 1996 CFL season is considered to be the 43rd season in modern-day Canadian football, although it is officially the 39th Canadian Football League season.
Tracy Ham is an American former professional football quarterback who played in the Canadian Football League (CFL). He played for the Edmonton Eskimos, the Toronto Argonauts, the Baltimore Stallions, and the Montreal Alouettes. He was known for his abilities as a dual-threat quarterback. He played college football for the Georgia Southern Eagles, where he became the first quarterback to rush for 3,000 yards and pass for 5,000 yards in a career. Ham is an inductee of both the College Football Hall of Fame and the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.
The 83rd Grey Cup a.k.a. The Wind Bowl was the 1995 Canadian Football League championship game played between the Baltimore Stallions and the Calgary Stampeders at Taylor Field in Regina, Saskatchewan. The Stallions won the game by a score of 37–20. It marked the only time that an American-based team won the Grey Cup.
The Canadian Football League (CFL), which features teams based in Canada, has made efforts to gain further audience in the United States, most directly through expansion into the country from the 1993 CFL season through the 1995 CFL season. The CFL plays Canadian football, a form of gridiron football which is somewhat different from the more common American football played in the United States and other parts of the world.
James Thomas Popp is an American sports executive and coach. Popp is Vice President, Player Personnel, for the United States Football League (USFL). In 2021, Popp was Chief of Staff, Advisor to the Head Coach for the Charlotte 49ers football and also a running back coach and assistant head coach for the Alabama State Hornets. He worked extensively in the Canadian Football League, and was most recently the general manager of the Toronto Argonauts. Popp spent over two decades as General Manager of the Montreal Alouettes including several stints as Head Coach. Popp served as General Manager for two years for Baltimore Stallions, and the Director of Player Personnel for the Saskatchewan Roughriders. As a CFL general manager, three separate franchises under Popp have won five Grey Cup championship wins out of 11 appearances.
Neal Fort is an American former professional football player. In college, he played for Brigham Young University. He was an offensive lineman in the National Football League (NFL) for the Los Angeles Rams and the Canadian Football League (CFL) for the Baltimore Stallions and Montreal Alouettes for most of his career. He is currently living in The Woodlands, Texas.
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The Cleveland Browns relocation controversy—colloquially called "The Move" by fans—followed the announcement by Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell that his National Football League (NFL) team would move from its longtime home of Cleveland to Baltimore for the 1996 NFL season.
The 1995 Baltimore Stallions season was the second and final season in the history of the Baltimore CFL franchise. The team became the first American-based football team to win the Grey Cup. Despite the Stallions success, attendance dropped. The club only sold 9,000 season tickets. The 1994 and 1995 Stallions radio flagship station was WJFK, 1300AM in Baltimore. Owned by Infinity Broadcasting, Bruce Cunningham of Fox45 TV served as play-by-play announcer, with former NFL Baltimore Colts stars Joe Washington, Bruce Laird, and Tom Matte providing analysis, and Mark Thoner of WLIF-FM as Producer.
The Baltimore Colts relocation to Indianapolis was a successful effort by the then-owner of the Baltimore Colts to relocate the American football team from Baltimore, Maryland, to Indianapolis, Indiana, after the 1983 National Football League (NFL) season. The team began play as the Indianapolis Colts in the 1984 NFL season.
The 1996 Montreal Alouettes finished in second place in the East Division with a 12–6 record in the franchise's first full season in the Canadian Football League since 1986. Unlike the lean years from 1981 to 1986, the revived Alouettes were going to be competitive, especially since most of them had won the Grey Cup in the previous season as the Baltimore Stallions. They had some nice talented offensive players from that team, such as Tracy Ham, Mike Pringle, kick returner Chris Wright, slotback Chris Armstrong, and two great defensive players in Irvin Smith, and Elfrid Payton. After a slow start they rebounded to finish strong and after defeating the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, they traveled to Toronto, where they were defeated in the East Final by the eventual Grey Cup champions, the Toronto Argonauts.
Jim Speros is an American businessman and former American football player and coach from Great Falls, Virginia,, best known for his ownership of teams in the southern American expansion phase of the Canadian Football League and United Football League.
The 2017 CFL season was the 64th season of modern-day Canadian football. Officially, it was the 60th season of the Canadian Football League. The regular season began on June 22 and concluded on November 4. The playoffs commenced on November 12 and concluded on November 26 with the Toronto Argonauts defeating the Calgary Stampeders to win the 105th Grey Cup.
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