Sports' Forgotten Heroes

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 B