If social media had been around on this day 30 years ago, Canadian Football League accounts would’ve been blowing up.
I mean, as far as CFL news days go, February 16, 1995, was epic.
For openers, San Antonio’s arrival as a CFL city was made official when that town’s city council approved an agreement to move the Sacramento Gold Miners to South Texas.
Elsewhere, the sale of the Ottawa Rough Riders remained in limbo, and matters became more complicated when head coach and director of football operations Adam Rita bolted for Memphis to become that expansion franchise’s offensive coordinator.
And the Las Vegas Posse, whose inaugural season was a disaster both on the field (5-13 record) and at the box office (8,953 was the average per game attendance), was pondering a move to either Los Angeles or Jackson, Mississippi.
Yet while all that made for hot conversation topics in the land of rouges and 20-yard deep end zones, it paled in comparison to rumors that the CFL was going to fold within six weeks and rebrand under a new name.
The Toronto Globe and Mail, citing confidential sources, reported that, “ … Owners and lawyers have been secretly examining the idea of folding the league and then reopening a few days later under a new name, in time for the 1995 season.”
Now, if you’re not a CFL fan (and really, you should be because it’s fantastic) you might have either forgotten or didn’t know that the circuit was in the midst of experimenting with U.S.-based franchises.
The Sacramento Gold Miners joined in 1993, and in 1994 the Baltimore CFL Colts (later renamed the Stallions because the NFL has a lot of lawyers), Las Vegas Posse and Shreveport Pirates were added.
In 1995 the league had 13 teams, including five in the United States (the Stallions, Birmingham Barracudas, Memphis Mad Dogs, San Antonio Texans and Pirates).
The CFL’s “ratio rule” stipulated that at least 20 players on a team’s 37-player active roster had to be Canadian. However, labor laws in the United States prohibited such restrictions, so American teams could load up on U.S.-born talent.
Thinking that would tip the power balance heavily in favor of teams south of the Canadian border, a “new” league would end the ratio rule and, thus, level the playing field.
“Yes, it looks like it could be coming to this – the end of the CFL,” a management source told the paper. “It’s unfortunate, but it may be the only way we can get rid of the Canadian quota.”
So, while legacy clubs such as the British Columbia Lions, Calgary Stampeders, Edmonton Eskimos, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Ottawa Rough Riders, Saskatchewan Roughriders, Toronto Argonauts and Winnipeg Blue Bombers would still be around, they’d be in the North American Football League or Can-Am Football League, and be able to fill out their rosters with no restrictions.
Canadian rules (three downs to make a first down, 12-players per side, longer and wider field, etc.) would remain in effect, though.
“If the CFL folds up and then becomes another U.S. Football
League or World Football League, it would do irreparable damage to its reputation,” CFL Players Association rep Dan Ferrone told the Globe and Mail. “It would be taking a major step backwards, in my opinion.”
As you can imagine, reaction to the bombshell was swift, with CFL commissioner Larry Smith calling it “totally preposterous.”
“The author and the source of this story have a vivid imagination and are obviously attempting to undermine our negotiations with the Players Association,” Smith said in a statement. “The league and the Players Association have agreed to negotiate in good faith between the parties and not in the press.”
Well, six weeks passed and by April, the CFL was still the CFL. And when the season started later in the summer, the ratio rule was in place for the Canadian teams and the American sides got to ignore it.
The end result was the Stallions winning the league title with an 18-3 record and establishing themselves as one of the great Canadian Football League teams in history.
But leading up to the 1996 campaign, the only folding being discussed involved sides that called the United States home.
With the NFL returning to Baltimore, the Stallions exited Maryland and morphed into the rebooted Montreal Alouettes. The other American teams simply went out of business. Thus, there was no longer a need to change the CFL’s name because it was – once again – truly the Canadian Football League.
And 30 years later, I’m grateful that it still has its identity, still has the ratio rule, and still proudly reps its nation. It might not employee the world’s best tackle football players, but it might just have the world’s best style of tackle football.
At least I think so.