CANADIAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE

(CFL) major Canadian professional football organization, formed in 1958 when the Western Interprovincial Football Union (WIFU) and the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union (IRFU), both dating from the early 1900s, joined in the Canadian Football Council, which adopted its present name a year later. The WIFU and IRFU became the Western and Eastern conferences, respectively, of the new league, which soon took over operation of playoffs for the Grey Cup, emblematic of supremacy in Canadian football. Teams in the CFL Western Conference are the British Columbia Lions, Calgary Stampeders, Edmonton Eskimoes, and Saskatchewan Roughriders. In the east are the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Toronto Argonauts, Ottawa Rough Riders, and Winnepeg Blue Bombers. (The Montreal Alouettes, a former member of the league, dissolved in 1987.) In 1993 the CFL added its first American franchise, fielding a team in Sacramento, Calif.