The Canadian Football League (CFL); French: Ligue canadienne de football (LCF) 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 World Football League (WFL) was an American football league that played one full season in 1974 and most of its second in 1975. Although the league's proclaimed ambition was to bring American football onto a worldwide stage, the farthest the WFL reached was placing a team – the Hawaiians – in Honolulu, Hawaii. The league folded midway through its second season, in 1975. A new minor football league began play as the World Football League in 2008 after acquiring the rights to its trademarks and intellectual property; it folded in 2011.
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 Baltimore Stallions 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. 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.
The Memphis Mad Dogs were a Canadian football team that played the 1995 season in the Canadian Football League. The Mad Dogs were part of a failed attempt to expand the CFL into the United States. They played at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium.
The Memphis Showboats were an American football franchise in the United States Football League. They entered the league in its expansion in 1984 and made the 1985 playoffs, losing in the semifinal round to the Oakland Invaders. Perhaps the most prominent players on the Showboats' roster during their two seasons of existence were future Pro Football Hall of Fame member Reggie White and future professional wrestler "The Total Package" Lex Luger.
Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium, originally named Memphis Memorial Stadium, and later Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium, is a football stadium located at the former Mid-South Fairgrounds in the Midtown area of Memphis, Tennessee, United States. The stadium is the site of the annual Liberty Bowl, the annual Southern Heritage Classic, and is the home field of the University of Memphis Tigers football team of the American Athletic Conference. It has also been the host of several attempts at professional sports in the city, as well as other local football games and other gatherings.
The Memphis Southmen, also known as the Memphis Grizzlies, were an American football team based in Memphis, Tennessee. They played in the World Football League (WFL), which operated in 1974 and 1975. They played their home games at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium.
There are 12 United States cities with sports teams competing in each of the four major leagues of the United States and Canada: Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, National Football League, and the National Hockey League. These four leagues are sometimes referred to as the "big four", in reference to their prominent position in North American sports.
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.
Leo Cahill was an American head coach and general manager in the Canadian Football League (CFL), much of it spent with the Toronto Argonauts.
Sports in Memphis, Tennessee are supported in the city by Memphis Park Services, which offers a wide range of public facilities, including 17 swimming pools, 8 public golf courses, 48 athletic fields hosting a range of 510 youth and 269 adult teams, 130 basketball courts, 7 tennis centers and a soccer complex.
The National Football League (NFL) has been playing games in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, since 1959 when an interleague game between the Chicago Cardinals of the NFL and the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League (CFL) took place at Exhibition Stadium. Subsequently, a number of neutral site preseason and regular season games between NFL teams have been staged in the city. Toronto is one of five cities outside the United States, along with London, Mexico City, Frankfurt and Munich, which have hosted regular season NFL games.
In the United States and Canada, the term professional football includes the professional forms of American and Canadian gridiron football. In common usage, it refers to former and existing major football leagues in either country. Currently, there are multiple professional football leagues in North America: the two longest-running leagues are the National Football League (NFL) in the U.S, and the Canadian Football League (CFL) in Canada. American football leagues have existed in Europe since the late 1970s, with competitive leagues all over Europe hiring American imports to strengthen rosters. The Austrian Football League and German Football League top division are known as the best leagues in Europe. The Japan X-League is also a strong league that has a long history since 1971. The NFL has existed continuously since being so named in 1922.
Professional gridiron football is one of the most popular sports in Canada. Unlike most countries, but paralleling its counterpart, the United States, football in Canada refers to the gridiron-based game developed in both countries over the course of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and not to association football.
The 1975 World Football League season was the second and last season of the World Football League. The 1975 season was to be an 18-game season over a twenty-week schedule.
The expansion of major sports leagues in the United States and Canada has occurred throughout the twentieth century for all of the major professional sports leagues in those two countries.
The 1974 WFL pro draft was the first professional draft of the World Football League (WFL). It supplemented its collegiate draft and included players from the NFL and CFL. It consisted of 480 selections in 40 rounds. Although it was expected that most of the NFL players drafted would have no intention of signing with the new league, the WFL still wanted to have the prominent NFL players future rights assigned, preventing WFL teams from competing in the signing for the same players.
