How many professional football teams are there in Canada?
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Only one professional football league has a permanent presence in Canada: the Canadian Football League (CFL), an organization founded in 1958 to accommodate the ongoing trend of professionalism in the Canadian football ranks since the 1940s. The CFL, like most amateur Canadian football leagues, plays on a larger field using a rulebook with several significant rule differences compared to the game as it is played in the United States. The league is composed of two divisions and nine teams in most of the largest Canadian markets, with at least one team in each province between British Columbia (BC Lions) and Quebec (Montreal Alouettes) inclusive. The only presence in Atlantic Canada is a semi-regular series of games in Moncton (Touchdown Atlantic) and a smattering of earlier preseason contests. The CFL operates a two-week preseason beginning in June, an 18-game season from July to October, and a six-team playoff tournament, culminating in the Grey Cup on the fourth weekend of November.
Professional football in Canada
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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.
Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada
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The Canadian Football League (CFL; ) 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.
Canadian Football League
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The regular season is 21 weeks long, with games beginning in mid-June and finishing by early November. The CFL's nine current teams are divided into two divisions: the East Division with four teams and the West Division, with five teams. Each team plays two games against each of the other eight teams, plus two divisional games with opponents rotating each season. With 18 regular season games being played, each team gets three bye weeks.
Canadian Football League
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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.
Canadian Junior Football League
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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.
List of professional sports
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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.
Sports in Canada
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Canada shares several major professional sports leagues with the United States. Canadian teams in these leagues include seven franchises in the National Hockey League, as well as three Major League Soccer teams and one team in each of Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association. Other popular professional sports in Canada include Canadian football, which is played in the Canadian Football League, National Lacrosse League lacrosse, and curling.
Canada
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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.
Professional sports in Canada
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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.
Professional football in Canada
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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.
Sports in Canada