It’s Draft Day in the Canadian Football League. Today is the day when the CFL’s nine teams divvy up the incoming top Canadian players. It’s done in an orderly fashion through a number of rounds to allow for competitive fairness and to encourage parity.
In the early days of Canadian football, players tended to be locally based so there was really no need for a draft. Even as the game became more professional, teams selected players based on territorial rights.
In 1952, the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union (IRFU) aka the Big Four experimented with a draft. The draft allowed the four teams (Hamilton, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal) to name players who would then be off limits to the other clubs unless an agreement could be reached between the teams.
In 1953, the Big Four draft became more formalized. The draft was limited to forty Canadian players from five universities: McGill, Queen’s, the University of Toronto, McMaster, and the University of Western Ontario.
The Montreal Alouettes selected Doug McNichol, a defensive lineman, from the University of Western Ontario in the first pick overall.
It wasn’t until 1956 that a Canada-wide draft was held.
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