Canadian Football League

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.

Baltimore's exhilarating, death-defying, liver-chilling -- anybody got a few spare adjectives to throw onto the pile? -- victory over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers Sunday to win a Canadian Football League division title is a fabulous gift from the gods of sport, which, unfortunately, not many people around here had particularly requested.It's nice, it's nice, we assure each other, hoping not to appear ungracious while we find out from somebody exactly what it is we've won. A great victory, certainly.

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...

There's going to be something different about the Colts Band. The organization has become synonymous with Baltimore, in good times and bad, with or without a football team, and demonstrates a loyalty to its constituency that approaches fanaticism.The music-making marchers' resilience and devotion as non-paid volunteers have given them a distinction that no other musical organization can begin to challenge, including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. They keep performing even with no team to represent.

And there was the staccato chant: "Grey Cup . . . . Grey Cup . . . . Grey Cup." On Saturday, it continued to grow in intensity during Baltimore's 57-10 victory over Winnipeg, as if it were an orchestrated beat, from a crowd of 39,417 in Memorial Stadium that eight months ago wouldn't have known the Grey Cup from a gray hat.But Baltimore's franchise is reveling in the glow that comes with the possibility of qualifying for the Canadian Football League championship,...

Jearld Baylis will turn pro one day. Most likely it will be sometime after 1996, after he's through playing for the Baltimore CFLs, after he's won a Grey Cup title or two, after he's had his fill of football.Then he will kick back and pull in the big ones. We're talking bass here, of course."That's what I plan on doing when I'm done football -- go on the pro bass circuit," Baylis said. "I've been in a few amateur tournaments, and I think I'm good enough to make it."When it comes to fishing or football, Baylis, 32, is one of the best.

Havre de Grace. -- Common sense rejects as ludicrous the idea that Canada is a second-rate country, but that's not much help to those insecure Canadian intellectuals who are paralyzed to the point of psychosis by an overpowering sense of inferiority.Their condition isn't just a sense of inferiority in general, either. It's a sense of inferiority specifically to the United States, and it's reinforced by a dark suspicion that just about anything coming up from the south -- especially if it's well-received by most Canadians -- is bad.The Toronto Star's recent lamentations concerning the Canadian Football League, printed on this page two weeks ago today, were a wonderful example of northern-style egghead angst about American culture.

The following editorial appeared July 7 in the Toronto Star.As the Toronto Argonauts prepare to open their season against the Baltimore No-Names, there is a lot of premature celebrating about the revival of the Canadian Football League.The CFL, constantly on the brink of extinction, is now said to have been saved by the decision to expand to the United States.But we are reminded of the surgeon who says, post-op, that the operation was a success; unfortunately, the patient died.The expansion to second-rate American cities such as Baltimore (and third-rate ones like Shreveport and Sacramento)

I do not consider myself old-fashioned or a stickler for detail. I'm definitely not hung up on labels.But it seems to me -- and you tell me if I'm wrong -- that any team in the Canadian Football League should, by all rights, be based in Canada.Otherwise, what's the point? Isn't the french fry dependably French? Isn't cream cheese Philadelphian? There must be some agreed-upon, universal standards.I bring this up only because it has recently come to my attention that Baltimore has a team in the Canadian Football League.

TORONTO -- Playing a strange new game, a "race horse" form of football, in a different country, Canada, is where a Baltimore team without a nickname finds itself tonight under circumstances that are foreign to a city which helped shape the popularity of another league that slapped it in the face and then humiliated it without showing an iota of compassion or consideration.Baltimore, with no other alternative, makes its official Canadian Football League debut in the glorious facility known as SkyDome, considered the finest and most revolutionary stadium on the North American continent.