Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: How many professional football teams are there in Canada?
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. Its nine teams, which are located in nine separate cities throughout Canada, are divided into two divisions: the East Division, with four teams, and the West Division with five teams.
The Canadian Football League (CFL) is the highest professional level of Canadian football, with teams across Canada. Teams from Canadian universities compete in U Sports football. The Canadian Junior Football League and Quebec Junior Football League field teams with players aged 18–22.
The Canadian Junior Football League (CJFL) is a national amateur Canadian football league consisting of 18 teams playing in six provinces across Canada. The teams compete annually for the Canadian Bowl. Many CJFL players moved on to professional football careers in the Canadian Football League (CFL) and elsewhere.
Only attendances in MLS and the traditional major professional sports leagues of the U.S. and Canada are listed here. Many college football teams in MLS markets routinely outdraw MLS teams and even some or all other major professional teams.
Bob Howes (born January 4, 1943) is a former professional Canadian football offensive lineman who played fourteen seasons in the Canadian Football League, mainly for the Edmonton Eskimos. He was a part of five Grey Cup championship teams with the Eskimos. Howes played college football and basketball at Queen's University, and has coached the Queen's Golden Gaels football team for many years, both as an assistant and as head coach. His son Beau Howes played quarterback for the Gaels during the 1990s.
The National Football League, the dominant professional football league in the United States, also has a large following in Canada due in part to significant media exposure. The NFL has occasionally played games in Toronto (as well as, more sporadically, other Canadian cities) over the course of its history but has never attempted to permanently place a team there. The Bills Toronto Series was the NFL's most direct presence in Canada; in that series, which ran from 2008 to 2013, the Buffalo Bills played one of their regular season home games in Toronto's Rogers Centre.
During the 1960s there was a concerted effort to push professional soccer in Canada. The Eastern Canada Professional Soccer League was formed in 1961 and featured teams in Toronto, Montreal, Hamilton, and (for one season) Buffalo, New York. One club, Toronto City, even featured some very prominent British soccer stars during its inaugural season, including Northern Ireland international Danny Blanchflower, England internationals Stanley Matthews and Johnny Haynes and Scottish internationals Jackie Mudie and Tommy Younger. This is also notable as the last time that the England, Scotland and Northern Ireland captains all played on the same side together. Despite this, the league proved unsuccessful and folded within 5 years. In western Canada, in 1963 a regional league, the Western Canada Soccer League was formed and consisted of between four and ten teams that by 1971, when it folded, was semi-professional and included teams from Winnipeg to Victoria in two divisions and included several national team players. Following a rise in the popularity of the game after the global broadcasting of the 1966 World Cup, the North American Soccer League was formed in 1968. The league primarily based in the United States also had clubs in Canada and used many European professionals brought in to supplement domestic talent. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Canada was represented by professional teams playing in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver with short-lived teams in Calgary and Edmonton. The NASL had a stormy relationship with FIFA and the USSF and their clubs did not compete in the CONCACAF Champions' Cup. The league folded prior to the 1985 season.
Ice hockey, referred to as simply "hockey", is Canada's most prevalent winter sport, its most popular spectator sport, and its most successful sport in international competition. Lacrosse, a sport with Indigenous origins, is Canada's oldest sport. Canadian football is Canada's second most popular spectator sport, being the most popular in the prairie provinces. The Canadian Football League's annual championship, the Grey Cup, is one of the country's largest annual sports events. While other sports have a larger spectator base, Association football, known in Canada as "soccer" in both English and French, has the most registered players of any team sport in Canada. Professional teams exist in many cities in Canada. Statistics Canada reports that the top ten sports that Canadians participate in are golf, ice hockey, swimming, soccer, basketball, baseball, volleyball, skiing (downhill and alpine), cycling and tennis.
The Pittsburgh area served as a launchpad for the professionalization of both American football and ice hockey in the 1890s and 1900s. The first professional player (William Heffelfinger) played for a Pittsburgh football team in 1892, which was followed by the first open professional (John Brallier), the first all-professional team (the Latrobe Athletic Association), and a participant in the first all-professional league (the Pittsburgh Stars of the first National Football League). In the case of ice hockey, the Western Pennsylvania Hockey League was the first hockey league to pay its players in 1901, eventually merging into the first fully pro league, the International Professional Hockey League, in 1904. Professional hockey in Pennsylvania predated the professionalization of the game in Canada (where it eventually came to dominate in the early 20th century) by four years.
Rugby football in Canada had its origins in the early 1860s, and over time, a unique code of football known as Canadian football developed. Both the Canadian Football League (CFL), the sport's top professional league, and Football Canada, the governing body for amateur play, trace their roots to 1882 and the founding of the Canadian Rugby Football Union (later reorganized as the Canadian Rugby Union). In 1909, the Grey Cup was donated by the then Governor General of Canada Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey, to recognize the top amateur rugby football team in Canada. From the 1930s to the 1950s, the two senior leagues of the CRU (the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union and the Western Interprovincial Football Union) gradually evolved from amateur to professional leagues, and found they had less and less in common with the amateur leagues, and consequently in 1956 formed a new umbrella organization, the Canadian Football Council. In 1958, the CFC left the CRU altogether and was renamed the Canadian Football League. By this time, teams from the amateur Ontario Rugby Football Union had stopped challenging for the Grey Cup, and ever since, it has been exclusively awarded to CFL teams. Since 1965, university teams have competed for the Vanier Cup.
Several attempts to place franchises playing American football rules in Canada have occurred over the course of history:The Toronto Phantoms were a franchise of the Arena Football League who played two seasons in 2001 and 2002. Until 2017, they were the only professional indoor American football team to have attempted to take root in Canada; a second attempt, the Niagara Spartans (run by the established semi-pro Steel City Patriots team in the Hamilton area), played in the Can-Am Indoor Football League; the Spartans had their season cut short after four games, all on the road, when international border issues with the league's American teams proved to be unworkable.
Gridiron football, also known as North American football or simply football, is a football sport primarily played in the United States and Canada. American football, which uses 11-player teams, is the form played in the United States and the best known form of gridiron football worldwide, while Canadian football, featuring 12-player teams, predominates in Canada. Other derivative varieties include indoor football, football for smaller teams (most commonly eight players), and informal games such as touch and flag football. Football is played at professional, collegiate, semi-professional, and amateur levels.
The Canadian Football League is the highest level of play in Canadian football. The league was organized in 1956 as a cooperative agreement between two regional leagues, the Big Four (which dated to 1907) and the WIFU (which was founded in 1936), and became independent from Football Canada in 1958. The league now consists of nine teams, all based in Canada. The Grey Cup is awarded annually to the champion every November and is the highest attended sporting event in the nation. The oldest extant teams, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Toronto Argonauts, trace their origins to the late 1860s and early 1870s, which ranks them amongst the oldest professional sports teams of any kind still in existence on the continent. The CFL attempted an expansion into the United States in cities that had no NFL team between 1993 and 1995, though the expansion teams all either folded or relocated to Canadian cities.
The following is an incomplete list of current American football stadiums ranked by capacity. The list contains the home stadiums of all 32 professional teams playing in the NFL as well as the largest stadiums used by college football teams in the NCAA. The largest stadium used by a professional team falls at number 9 on the list. Not included are several large stadiums used by teams in the now-defunct NFL Europa, as these were all built for and used mainly for association football, or Rogers Centre, located in Canada (although it does host occasional American football games). Currently all football stadiums with a capacity of 30,000 or more are included.
The Pittsburgh Lyceum were a professional football team based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1906 until 1910. The team played against many of the top "Ohio League", the most notables being the Canton Bulldogs and the Massillon Tigers. They were regarded as one of the top professional football teams in Pittsburgh from 1907 until the mid-1920s. The Lyceum was also the last pro football championship team Pittsburgh would produce until the 1970s. Many of their victories came against many of the strongest teams in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. Hence, they were given the mythical moniker the "Tri-State Champions" in 1909. The team was finally defeated in 1909, via an upset by the Dayton Oakwoods in their final game of 1909. The Lyceums broke up after a disappointing 1910 season. An unrelated incarnation of the team existed in 1924. Art Rooney, who would go on establish the Pittsburgh Steelers and become enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, played for the Lyceum.
Howard A. "Howe" Welch was a professional football player for the Akron Indians. Around 1916, the Indians were briefly referred to as the Burkhardts, a semi-pro team was organized by Suey around his brothers Howe and Chang, and Carl Cardarelli. After three seasons, Welch performed for and/or coached the Suey Welch-backed and managed Akron Indians playing against many of professional football's early stars including Al Nesser, Ralph Waldsmith and Fred Sefton.
The Grey Cup is the championship of the Canadian Football League (CFL) and the trophy awarded to the victorious team. The trophy is named after Albert Grey, the Governor General of Canada from 1904 until 1911. He donated the trophy to the Canadian Rugby Union in 1909 to recognize the top amateur rugby football team in Canada. By this time Canadian football had become markedly different from the rugby football from which it developed. Although it was originally intended to be awarded only to amateur teams (like the Stanley Cup), over time, the Grey Cup became the property of the Canadian Football League as it evolved into a professional football league. Amateur teams ceased competing for the Cup by 1954; since 1965, the top amateur teams, playing in U Sports, have competed for the Vanier Cup.
This is a list of professional gridiron football teams in the United States and Canada by metropolitan areas. This list is based on census populations and not TV market size. The table below is up-to-date through the end of 2018. All metropolitan areas with at least 800,000 residents are shown in the table below, as well as any area with a professional team.
The major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada are the highest professional competitions of team sports in those countries. The four leagues universally included in the definition are Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL), and National Hockey League (NHL). Other prominent leagues include Major League Soccer (MLS) and Canadian Football League (CFL).
Professional leagues emerged from amateur leagues. In 1904, the predominantly U.S.-based International Professional Hockey League (IPHL) hosted the first Canadian professional team, the Canadian Soo. The league hired many amateur players away from Canada, causing the amateur leagues to convert to all-out professionalism or allow professional players in order to compete for the top players. The first Canadian professional league was the Manitoba Professional Hockey League (MPHL), formed in 1905 from member teams of the amateur Manitoba Hockey Association. The Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association (ECAHA), formed from prior amateur hockey leagues, emerged in 1906. The ECAHA allowed teams to have professional players from the start, despite its name. In 1907, the Ontario Professional Hockey League was formed. The competition for players increased salaries, a factor in the demise of the IPHL in 1907 and the temporary end of professional hockey in the United States. In 1908, the ECAHA became fully professional, as the ECAHA's amateur teams separated from the league and competed for the new Allan Cup, a new challenge cup instituted for amateur teams. The ECAHA, now fully professional, renamed itself the ECHA. The MPHL folded in 1909, the OPHL in 1908, leaving the ECHA as the only 'elite' professional league in Canada.
There are professional teams based in Canada in several professional sports leagues. The National Hockey League has seven Canadian franchises and is the most popular professional sports league in Canada. The second most popular sports league in Canada is the Canadian Football League. Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and Major League Soccer are also popular in Canada, more so in Ontario than the rest of the country.
There are several hundred semi-professional football teams at non-League level. The bottom division of The Football League (the fourth tier of the English football league system) has traditionally been the cut-off point between professional ("full-time") and semi-professional ("part-time") in English football. However, many teams in the top non-League competition, the National League have become "full-time" professional clubs in an effort to achieve League status.
The Grey Cup was established in 1909 after being donated by Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey, The Governor General of Canada as the championship of teams under the CRU for the Rugby Football Championship of Canada. Initially an amateur competition, it eventually became dominated by professional teams in the 1940s and early 1950s. The Ontario Rugby Football Union, the last amateur organization to compete for the trophy, withdrew from competition in 1954. The move ushered in the modern era of Canadian professional football, culminating in the formation of the present-day Canadian Football League in 1958.
Australian rules football in Canada is a minor participation sport. The governing body for the sport in the country is AFL Canada. The sport has been played in the country since 1989 when the first league was formed. The sport is quickly becoming popular with the Ontario Australian Football League being the biggest outside of Australia. There are Canadian national teams with the Canada national Australian rules football team the men's team, and a women's national team both who regularly play international matches and play in the Australian Football International Cup which is essentially a World Cup for all countries apart from Australia which is the only place where the sport is played professionally. Mike Pyke, a native of Victoria, British Columbia and a former Canada Rugby International, became the first Canadian to play in the Australian Football League when he was drafted by the Sydney Swans in 2008. Pyke went on to become the first Canadian to play in an AFL premiership (championship-winning) team when the Swans won the 2012 AFL Grand Final.
Canadian Football Act Canadian Football Hall of Fame Canadian Football League attendance Canadian Junior Football League Comparison of American and Canadian football Football Canada List of attendance figures at domestic professional sports leagues List of Canadian Football League mascots List of Canadian Football League records List of Canadian Football League seasons List of Canadian Football League stadiums List of Grey Cup champions List of neutral site Canadian Football League games List of professional sports teams in the United States and Canada Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada Sports in Canada TSN Top 50 CFL Players