When the Canadian Football League rolled out American expansion in the early 1990s, support for the idea was far from unanimous. Yes, proponents argued that U.S. expansion was the way forward to grow the league and to help stabilize the struggling Canadian teams. But detractors countered that the CFL simply stood too much to lose in the process.
Traditional CFL fans – many who had supported their teams for decades – feared the CFL would gradually lose its identity and uniqueness as more American teams came onboard. Canadian players felt threatened that they would ultimately lose their jobs once it became evident that the league’s import ratio could not be enforced in the United States due to American labour law. Add in some sceptical media and tepid team governors and it became quite apparent that this was going to take some serious convincing by Larry Smith, the CFL commissioner at the time, who was tasked with implementing the league’s expansion plan.
Perhaps the greatest opposition to CFL expansion to the United States came out of Winnipeg. Looking back, it appears the Manitoba capital was ground zero for opposition to American expansion. I had a great chat with Ed Tait on this subject. Ed was the beat reporter for the Winnipeg Sun covering the Blue Bombers at the time. He recalls how Winnipeg took a bit of heat for being against expansion.
“Cal Murphy (Winnipeg GM and head coach) and Bruce Robinson (Blue Bombers president) were against it,” Ed recalls. “Cal Murphy being a Canadian certainly influenced his opposition, for sure.”
“I remember an article in one of the Toronto newspapers that basically called the Bomber organization a bunch of dinosaurs stuck in the past and unwilling to embrace change.” Winnipeg responded by selling t-shirts with the slogan Dinosaurs play hard rock football.
Winnipeg’s politicians even got into the debate. Winnipeg South Centre MP Lloyd Axworthy, who would later serve as a Minister of the Crown in Jean Chrétien’s government, introduced a Private Member’s Bill in the House of Commons to block the CFL from expanding to the U.S., raising the ire of Larry Smith.
In the end, though, the CFL’s Board of Governors approved the addition of Sacramento and San Antonio by a vote of 7-1. Yes, Winnipeg was the lone dissenter.
Ed Tait shared with me some of his memories of covering the Winnipeg Blue Bombers during the CFL USA era. He was in the room at the Coach of the Year dinner in Edmonton in January 1993 when San Antonio backed out just two weeks after being admitted. “We were all there to celebrate,” he recalls “Then we get the news that San Antonio isn’t going to happen. Larry Smith literally ducked out through the kitchen to avoid giving any interviews.” Talk about a rocky start.
Wild is the word he uses to describe the expansion experience. “They were definitely fun road trips. I kind of marvelled at covering a Bombers game in places like Shreveport, Louisiana and Birmingham, Alabama and Las Vegas,” he said.
The game in Las Vegas is notorious for drawing such a dismal crowd. Only 2,350 fans came out to Sam Boyd Stadium to watch the Las Vegas Posse host the Blue Bombers. And about a third of them were from Winnipeg who came down for the game. Yikes.
Read Ed’s article recollecting the game in Las Vegas: https://www.bluebombers.com/2024/10/16/remember-when-blue-bombers-at-las-vegas-october-15-1994/
Ed shares the commonly held view that the CFL expanded out of desperation and didn’t do its homework on choosing expansion markets. “It made the league a bit of a laughing stock,” he admits. That said, Ed made a habit of collecting various memorabilia of the U.S.-based teams. No doubt, he recognized that the expansion experiment wouldn’t last and that the merchandise would be something unique to hold on to.
Perhaps my favourite story he shared was his experience in Shreveport. Apparently, Shreveport had a pretty high homicide rate. On the ride to the stadium, when he asked the taxi driver if it was true that most people there carried handguns for protection, the driver nonchalantly raised the console cover to show a loaded .45 handgun. Guess that answered that question.
Ed told me that the most memorable Grey Cup that he covered as a journalist was the 1994 game in Vancouver between the BC Lions and Baltimore. That was the first time an American team played in the Grey Cup. “The whole us vs. them made this Grey Cup very special,” he says. And just last year at the 2025 Grey Cup in Winnipeg, several fans from Baltimore were there proudly waving their Stallions flags, representatives from a short-lived and bygone era.
Some thirty plus years later, there are no American teams in the CFL. Sure, the topic of U.S. expansion comes up now and then. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if it ever gains any momentum again. But for now, I think it’s safe to say that the lone dissenters, the so-called dinosaurs in Winnipeg were right all along.
Special shoutout to Ed Tait, who is now the Senior Writer/Reporter for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, for taking the time to share his thoughts and memories with me. Thanks Ed.
Sources:
The Winnipeg Sun, 12 November 1992
The Ottawa Citizen, 29 November 1992
Leave a Reply