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Posts: 29498
Feb 5 07 10:21 PM
Big Board Kahuna
Quote:The first Canadian football teams played under the auspices of the Canadian Rugby Football Union (CRFU), founded in 1884. However this union quickly folded and was reorganized as the Canadian Rugby Union in 1892. The CRU was an umbrella organization that several leagues were part of. 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. They found they had less and less in common with the amateur leagues and consequently in 1956 formed a new umbrella organization, called the Canadian Football Council. And in 1958 it left the CRU altogether and was renamed the Canadian Football League. Initially, there was no interdivisional play between eastern and western teams except at the Grey Cup final. Limited interlocking play was introduced in 1961 and by 1981 there was a full interlocking schedule of 16 games a season.The separate histories of the IRFU and the WIFU accounted for the fact that 2 teams had basically the same nickname. To tell the two apart, the IRFU's Ottawa Rough Riders (always 2 separate words) were often called the "Eastern Riders", while the WIFU's Saskatchewan Roughriders (always one word) were called the "Western Riders" or "Green Riders".Other team nicknames had unusual yet traditional origins. With rowing a national craze in the late 1800s, the Argonaut Rowing Club of Toronto formed a rugby team for its members' off-season participation, and the Club nickname remains with the team. After World War II, the two teams in Hamilton--the Tigers and the Wildcats--merged both their organizations and their nicknames, forming the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. CFL logo from 1970-2002.[2]After the admission of the expansion British Columbia Lions in 1954, the league remained stable with nine franchises from its 1958 inception until 1982 when the Montreal Alouettes folded and were subsequently replaced the same year by a new franchise named the Concordes. In 1986 the Concordes were renamed the Alouettes to attract more fan support, but the team folded the next year. The demise of the Alouettes, leaving only 3 teams in the Eastern Division compared to 5 teams in the Western Division, forced the League to balance its playoff structure by moving the 'easternmost' Western team, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, into the East--achieving balance, but upsetting the long-standing tradition of 'East vs. West,' as Winnipeg isn't seen as part of eastern Canada.
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