In the mid-1990s the Canadian Football League was struggling financially. The league had teams in all of Canada’s big cities with the exception of Montreal. Out west were the British Columbia (Vancouver) Lions, the Edmonton Eskimos, Calgary Stampeders and Saskatchewan Roughriders. In the east were the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Ottawa Rough Riders and the Toronto Argonauts. There was really no place left for the CFL to expand and realize the windfall it needed from expansion fees. So, the CFL looked to the lower 48 and expanded to Sacramento in 1993. In 1994 it added teams in Baltimore, Shreveport, and Las Vegas; and in 1995 it expanded to Birmingham and San Antonio. The expansion money gave the league the boost it needed. However, none of the new U.S.-based teams really caught on with the exception of one – Baltimore. Football fans in Charm City were starving for a professional football team, especially after the Colts had left in the middle of the night a decade earlier and the NFL teased Baltimore with possible expansion teams and the possibility of a relocating franchise. None of those scenarios ever developed, so when the CFL announced it would expand to Baltimore, football fans got behind the team. Instantly, Baltimore, which had hoped to use the name Colts but was denied by a judge the day before its first-ever game, established itself as one of the CFL’s best. The Baltimore CFL’ers, as they were known during their first season, put together a team stocked with experienced CFL talent and a CFL coaching staff. Fans came out in droves. In fact, Baltimore led the CFL in attendance, and the fans were rewarded with a team that went 12-6 and advanced all the way to the CFL’s championship game – the Grey Cup. The CFL’ers lost that game to BC, 26-23, but returned in 1995 with unwavering determination. It paid off as the newly-named Stallions went 18-3 and won the Grey Cup. Along the way, though, Art Modell announced he was going to relocate his Cleveland Browns to Baltimore. Once it became official, and even though the Stallions were in the midst of a championship run, the fans stopped showing up for the games. Shortly after the Stallions 37-20 win over the Stampeders, Baltimore closed shop and the CFL was done in the U.S. Ron Snyder who wrote the book, “The Baltimore Stallions: The Brief, Brilliant History of the CFL Championship Franchise,” talks about the Stallions, the CFL and the history of football in Baltimore on this episode of Sports’ Forgotten Heroes.
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