Canadian Football League

Havre de Grace.--It's a truism that Baltimore's a great sports town, and a corollary thereto that the city is suffering great deprivation these days without any so-called big-league teams of its own in action.But while it's fair to say that the departures of the Colts to the Irsaydome and the Orioles to the picket lines have pinched municipal tax revenues and cost a few local people their jobs, the overall impact has been a lot softer than the economic-development party line suggests. In fact, though they usually won't say so in public, a lot of people think the city's better off.It's better off psychologically, too. Big-league sports these days represent much of what's most repugnant about American life in the 1990s.

News item: : The Ravens just completed an undefeated preseason and have a long week to prepare for their regular-season opener against the Kansas City Chiefs at M&T Bank Stadium. My take: : To quote Tom Petty, the waiting is the hardest part, especially when your opening act is the Orioles. Related news item: : The Chiefs fired offensive coordinator Chan Gailey just two weeks before the team's Week 1 matchup against the Ravens. My take: : The Chiefs also might be without starting quarterback Matt Cassel, who is sidelined two to four weeks with a knee strain.

After months of deliberation, negotiation and speculation, the Canadian Football League is sitting at Baltimore's doorstep.When the CFL formally approves the franchise application of Virginia businessman Jim Speros in a cross-continent conference call today -- as it is expected to do -- Baltimore will be back on the football map.Now what?Training camp opens in mid-summer. The season starts in July and ends in late November with the Grey Cup, the league's championship game.And before then, the team should have a nickname.

In Monday's editions of the Toronto Star, the largest newspaper in Canada, the headline on the story of the Baltimore CFLs' victory in Winnipeg was: "Oh, Canada: U.S. Team Eyes Our Grey Cup." The first line of the story: "Is nothing sacred?"That afternoon, on a nationally televised talk show, a Toronto sportswriter said he was rooting for the B.C. Lions to win Sunday because he wanted the Grey Cup to remain in Canada. He wasn't being facetious. None of the other panelists on the show blinked.

Calgary, Alberta -- A snapshot from the 1993 Grey Cup:I am up in the nosebleed seats of Calgary's McMahon Stadium, surrounded by 50,000 locals and out-of-towners -- most of them toque to boots in polar ice-cap gear. The crowd is cranked up for the Grey Cup, the Canadian Football League's championship -- a.k.a. Canada's national drunk. The crowd wobbles upright and sings ''O Canada'' with abnormal fervor, Canadians being a reserved lot. Then the announcer cheerily encourages fans to salute the CFL's new American franchises in a rendition of the ''Star Spangled Banner.

Last Thursday, exactly nine months after pro football returned to Baltimore, it rolled back into Memphis.The Canadian Football League was the midwife in this rebirth, proving conclusively that if the CFL can invade the home of John Unitas, it can invade the home of Elvis, too.While there are still details left to be wrapped up -- a messy little characteristic of CFL expansion, it seems -- there is reason to believe the longer, wider, faster league has...

Although all the numbers have yet to be tabulated -- how many people invaded Regina, how much money did they spend? -- Grey Cup Week was a success for the Canadian Football League.The CFL demanded $3.2 million of the profits, and that obligation has been met. The host team, the Saskatchewan Roughriders, was looking at a deficit of $2.1 million before the Grey Cup. That has been cut in half.But the euphoria of Grey Cup Week will be a distant memory when the CFL's Board of Governors assembles in Toronto for three days of meetings, beginning Wednesday.

The Americanization of the Canadian Football League isn't likely to end with its recent expansion into the United States.When the CFL governors hold their annual meeting this week in Sacramento, Calif., they will pry open a can of controversy guaranteed to raise eyebrows and temperatures north of the border.From all indications, the league is poised to significantly modify the import rule that limits American participation on Canadian rosters once its collective bargaining agreement expires after the 1994 season.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- How can you tell you're at the Grey Cup, the Canadian Football League's human-sized championship, and not at the Super Bowl, the NFL's bloated and almost unbearably self-important championship?You can tell when you're at a player/media interview breakfast and you notice that the players are waiting patiently behind you in the buffet line. (I'm having trouble envisioning Deion Sanders waiting for me while I pick through the kiwi fruit and ladle syrup on my pancakes.

It has been called the most important two days in the history of the Canadian Football League, and the Board of Governors meetings began with a fumble yesterday in Toronto.The Memphis Mad Dogs, another symbol of the futility that has marked the league's expansion into the United States, announced they were bowing out of the CFL after one year in the league.The announcement did not come as a surprise. Memphis struggled at the box office from the outset and went downhill from there. The Mad Dogs averaged a league-low attendance of 14,352, lost about $4 million, and averaged barely 6,000 fans at their final four games.