History
The first professional U.S. football team to play a home game in Toronto was the Los Angeles Wildcats, a traveling team in the American Football League of 1926; the original AFL was the first major competitor to the National Football League for the dominance of professional football. Because the Wildcats nominally represented Los Angeles, California, a city to which frequent travel still posed a major obstacle, the Wildcats instead were based in Illinois and played most of its games in the home stadiums of its opponents, with the exception of a February 1927 West Coast road trip and their lone game in Toronto. The Toronto game (which the Wildcats lost to the New York Football Yankees, 29–0) was relatively popular; at the time, Canadian football still more closely resembled rugby football and had not yet adopted the forward pass. Three years after the game, Canadian football allowed the forward pass.
The NFL has had a presence in Toronto since 1959, when the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League played three NFL teams in a three-season span. These exhibition games, which had been first tried in Ottawa in 1950 and were later staged in Montreal, were played by CFL rules in the first half and NFL rules in the second. Despite the Argos having the services of all-star fullback Cookie Gilchrist, injury problems led to many of the Argonauts' losses; the Argos at this time were in a rut and had missed the playoffs several times since 1953.
The Bills themselves, then an American Football League team, tried their hand with a game against the nearby Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Unprepared, Buffalo lost the game 38–21.
After several years, the American Bowl series brought three preseason games to Toronto from 1993 to 1997; with two featuring the Bills.
Former Toronto Blue Jays CEO and President Paul Godfrey has been interested in pursuing an NFL franchise for Toronto since 1988. Before recent developments, most skeptics believed that it would be too expensive to bring an NFL team to Toronto and most possible investors may shy away from the approximately US$1 billion price tag that an NFL franchise comes with. Additionally, an NFL team in Toronto would likely have to pay its players in U.S. dollars while reporting its revenues in Canadian dollars--the same anomaly that faces the NHL's Canadian teams. Then-NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue himself dismissed the prospects of a Toronto team in 2006, although he left the door open to including Toronto in the NFL International Series.
The late Ted Rogers, owner of Rogers Communications, and Larry Tanenbaum met in 2008 and discussed the possibility of an NFL franchise in Toronto. Tannenbaum said that he and Rogers were "highly interested" in bringing an NFL franchise to Toronto. He also was quoted as going to "pursue it more rigorously" as soon as the NFL gave him the word.
Read more about this topic: National Football League In Toronto
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is no history of how bad became better.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)
“My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds.”
—Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940)