The Canadian Football League (CFL) briefly expanded to the United States from the 1993 CFL season through the 1995 CFL season. Canadian football, a form of gridiron football, differs from American football played in the United States, primarily due to its three-down structure and larger playing area.

The first American team, the Sacramento Gold Miners, joined in 1993. The league added three more American teams in 1994, after which two more teams joined, one relocated, and one folded to bring the total to five in 1995. That year, the teams were aligned into a new South Division. The three years saw numerous ownership debacles on both sides of the U.S.–Canada border. The Baltimore Stallions became the only American-based team to win the Grey Cup championship, in 1995. With the exception of Baltimore, the American teams consistently lost money.

Tension also arose between the American and Canadian contingents over rule changes, scheduling, import rules, and marketing. Accommodating the wider and longer Canadian field proved difficult, a problem at most non-Canadian sites. The league returned to being exclusively Canadian beginning with the 1996 season. Although expansion was the most notable CFL effort in the United States, the league had also made previous inroads. Eleven neutral-site CFL games (including exhibition games) have been held in the United States. In earlier decades, when the CFL season started much later than it does today (i.e., around the same time as that of the National Football League), NFL teams were occasionally invited northward for exhibition interleague play.

Pre-expansion era

The CFL had attempted to find a television audience in the United States during the NFL players' strike in 1982. Until 1993, the Canadian Football League, and its predecessor associations, had always operated solely within Canada, despite most other professional sports leagues in North America being cross-border enterprises.

A proposal by Bill Tatham to have his Arizona Outlaws and possibly other teams of the moribund United States Football League enter the CFL after the league suspended operations saw little interest in both leagues.

Six exhibition games held in Canada between 1950 and 1961 pitted NFL teams against CFL teams prior to the CFL moving toward a summer schedule.

Neutral site games

Eleven neutral-site IRFU/WIFU/CFL games have been played on American soil. The earliest of these dates to 1909, while the bulk occurred between 1951 and 1967. The 1909 game, featuring the Ottawa Rough Riders and Hamilton Tigers of the IRFU, was sponsored by the New York Herald and played at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx; this in the era when the Canadian game was more similar to rugby football and did not feature modern rules such as the forward pass like the American game.

The next game, a 1951 match-up between the IRFU's Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Toronto Argonauts in Buffalo, was billed as the first true all-Canadian game played in the United States. Played in a city that at the time was embittered with the National Football League after its All-America Football Conference team was controversially excluded from a merger with the NFL, the Buffalo game drew more than 18,000 fans – a decent crowd for the era. In 1958, the first season officially played under the CFL moniker, Hamilton defeated Ottawa in a regular-season contest in front of about 15,000 in Philadelphia's cavernous Municipal Stadium, 24–18. It remains the only CFL game played outside Canada, involving two Canadian teams, that actually counted in the standings.

Prior to and after the formation of the CFL, teams of the IRFU (a precursor to the CFL's Eastern Football Conference) were regarded as superior to the Western Canadian teams. Starting in the 1930s, Western Canadian teams began aggressively scouting for and recruiting players from the rich American talent pool, largely in an effort to achieve parity with the East. The American Pacific Northwest became a frequent site for WIFU and later CFL preseason games in the 1950s and 1960s with Western teams, particularly the BC Lions, entertaining their regional neighbours. News reports from the time suggest a hybrid game of three down Canadian ball played on the more restricted 100-yard American field.

One BC–Winnipeg matchup in 1960 was held in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, presumably because both teams had a number of former University of Iowa stars. Willie Mitchell, who scored the Lions' only touchdown in a 13–7 loss in front of 12,583, was an Iowan. Western teams were mostly ignored by U.S. clubs as potential opposition for preseason interleague contests, in part due to the more onerous travel requirements to Western Canada. Rail travel was the norm. The WIFU moved up the start of its regular season long before the Eastern section followed suit. It was not until 2019 that NFL teams would play contests in Western Canada.

Most exhibition games involving Canadian teams in the U.S. tended to be characterized by low scores and frequent punting, with crowds between 10,000 and 20,000. These numbers dropped off in the last two games of the era. A low-scoring BC–Edmonton game in Everett, Washington, in 1967 drew just over 6,000. There would not be another CFL game in the United States until the cusp of US expansion in 1992.

Game Date Visitor Score Home City Stadium Attendance Ref Exhibition December 11, 1909 Hamilton Tigers 11–6 Ottawa Rough Riders New York City Van Cortlandt Park 15,000 Preseason August 11, 1951 Hamilton Tiger-Cats 17–11 Toronto Argonauts Buffalo, New York Civic Stadium 18,146 Preseason August 2, 1957 BC Lions 8–29 Edmonton Eskimos Portland, Oregon Multnomah Stadium 10,261 Preseason August 11, 1957 BC Lions 6–9 Edmonton Eskimos San Francisco, California Kezar Stadium 16,000 Regular season September 14, 1958 Ottawa Rough Riders 18–24 Hamilton Tiger-Cats Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Municipal Stadium 15,110 Preseason July 29, 1960 BC Lions 7–13 Winnipeg Blue Bombers Cedar Rapids, Iowa Kingston Stadium 12,583 Preseason July 29, 1961 BC Lions 13–3 Saskatchewan Roughriders Seattle, Washington Husky Stadium 28,000 Preseason August 1, 1961 Calgary Stampeders 14–7 Saskatchewan Roughriders Spokane, Washington Memorial Stadium 7,511 Preseason July 9, 1967 BC Lions 7–2 Edmonton Eskimos Everett, Washington Everett Memorial Stadium 6,248 Preseason June 25, 1992 Toronto Argonauts 1–20 Calgary Stampeders Portland, Oregon Civic Stadium 15,362 Preseason June 24, 1995 Baltimore FC 37–0 Birmingham Barracudas Miami, Florida Orange Bowl 20,216

Television The idea of attracting American fans through television has long been a goal of the CFL although the results have been intermittent. As early as 1954, the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union (forerunner of the CFL's East Division) struck a deal with NBC that lasted a year and featured 13 games. The infamous Fog Bowl of 1962 was—at least until play was suspended—broadcast by ABC. Over subsequent years various non-major networks picked up an assortment of games.

The fledgling ESPN cable network signed a deal in 1980 to broadcast 30 CFL regular season games and the playoffs, including the Grey Cup in the United States. CFL games became a fixture of the early years of the network. In 1982, after a September strike by NFL players, the CFL got another chance at major network exposure: NBC bought out the ESPN rights for $100,000 a game to make up for its own lost football programming. NBC aired CFL games on Sunday afternoons with full NFL production values and announcing crews. However, every one of the four games shown was a blowout, and the league and network decided to black out the games on the NBC stations closest to the Canadian border. Ratings were a major disappointment. NBC quickly backed out of the arrangement.

Expansion

Background

The idea of expansion into the United States began to take shape in the early 1990s, prompted by precarious ownership situations and chronic money shortages among the existing Canadian teams. The chief catalyst of the league's struggles was Carling O'Keefe's decision to stop its lucrative television sponsorship in 1987. The arrangement had provided steady income to all of the league's teams, reaching $11 million per season before its withdrawal.

Despite the guaranteed revenues, the league failed to grow. The television money subsidized shoddy financial practices and marketing both at the team and league level. Longtime CFL commissioner Jake Gaudaur, who had negotiated the league's sponsorship deals with Carling retired in 1984. The Montreal Alouettes, having been rescued from failure five years prior, folded during the 1987 preseason. It would take two decades for economic equilibrium to again be reestablished. Concurrently with Carling O'Keefe's withdrawal, CTV Television Network, its television partner for the previous 26 seasons, cancelled its CFL broadcasts prior to the 1987 season. This forced the league to take over syndication of the package itself and divert much of the remaining rights fees from its other television partners to the Canadian Football Network.

With the exception of the Edmonton Eskimos, every team in the league had faced some kind of crisis in the years leading up to 1993. In addition to Montreal's sudden collapse, the Calgary Stampeders and publicly owned Saskatchewan Roughriders had to mount public campaigns to survive.Willes (2013). End Zones. pg. 16–18. By 1993, the BC Lions had experienced years of ownership chaos and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers faced $3 million in debt, despite frugal management. The Toronto Argonauts were embroiled in a series of ownership crises after the initially successful ownership triumvirate of Bruce McNall, Wayne Gretzky, and John Candy faced mounting financial losses.Willes (2013). End Zones. pp. 70–79. The Hamilton Tiger-Cats were confronting an attendance swoon, fan malaise, and struggling community ownership. Both Southern Ontario teams faced competition at the gate from the NFL's Buffalo Bills, then in the middle of their historic run of four consecutive Super Bowl appearances. Finally, the Ottawa Rough Riders and their fans saw squads on the field and constant drama off it from the team's under-capitalized and mercurial owner, Bernie Glieberman.Willes (2013). End Zones. pp. 60–63

Against this economic backdrop, a new generation of venture capitalist owners took the place of the local consortiums and philanthropists that typically had owned the teams and operated them without any serious profit motive. They were led by McNall in Toronto, Glieberman in Ottawa, and Larry Ryckman in Calgary. Larry Smith was hired as league commissioner in February 1992, reportedly on the explicit understanding that he would pursue American expansion. While Smith would become the most visible face of the era, he emphasized that it was the owners who drove the initiative, particularly McNall and Ryckman.Willes (2013). End Zones. pp. 19–22 McNall's issues with cash flow, later revealed to be the result wealth inflation through illegal accounting, was one obvious instigator.Willes (2013). End Zones. pp. 77–78. While the newer owners championed expansion, equal distribution of the expansion fees also appealed to the community-owned teams as these would shore up their finances.

1992–1993

With the green light from the owners, Smith began the task of expanding the league across the border, beginning with a June 1992 exhibition game between the Argonauts and Stampeders in Portland, Oregon. A total of 15,362 attended, close to the averages later American teams would post. Portland was seriously considered for a franchise, but investors failed to emerge.Willes (2013). End Zones. pp. 26–29. The expansion announcement prompted numerous applications from a wide variety of American cities. By the end of the expansion era, a minimum of twenty-two cities were reported to have been considered for teams.Willes (2013). End Zones. pg. 57