Paul Woods: Video: TSN: CFL American Expansion 1995: CFL Commissioner Larry Smith

Canadian Football League expansion, or CFL expansion in America, was a great idea because the CFL, lets face it, was a 9-team league back in the early 1990s, before they expanded inside the United States. From a country (Canada) of roughly 30 million people struggling just to pay their bills, let alone save a few dollars, they needed American fans and American dollars spent on the CFL to pay their bills. At the time, there were plenty of major markets inside the U.S. that could afford and want to support major league gridiron football.

The problem with the CFL expansion was that it was poorly executed and poorly thought out, which is what happens when you get 10-20 thousand fans at CFL games inside 65 thousand-seat stadiums, which is what they had in Memphis and San Antonio, because they didn't have the right marketing for America or the right management groups for the American teams.  Only Baltimore was profitable in the CFL, while Sacramento, Las Vegas, San Antonio, Shreveport, Memphis, and Birmingham all folded in the CFL.

Thanks to the new United States Football League, the CFL, I believe, will have the opportunity to merge with the USFL, especially if they agree to play in the spring and summer instead of summer and fall. And you could have an American Football Conference and a Canadian Football Conference in this united league in the future. There will be a future blog about that, but bringing in an American conference would more than save the CFL financially and give lots of Canadian and American football fans teams to root for and follow.