The Sacramento Gold Miners are the first U.S. team in the Canadian Football League. This week the Gold Miners open their season against the Ottawa Rough Riders, who, alas, were not named for Teddy Roosevelt’s brigade. “Sure it feels a lot different than saying we have the Cowboys this weekend,” says Gold Miner David Archer, who last season was the Philadelphia Eagles’ third-string quarterback. “But if you’re a competitor, you play whoever is in front of you.”
What’s in front of the CFL, it hopes, is a period of rapid expansion into second-tier American cities, stretching, say, from Portland, Ore., to Birmingham, Ala. “We’re not trying to go head to head with the NFL,” says CFL Commissioner Larry Smith. “We just want to find a niche.” What a niche means, translated from Canadian, is enough American interest to generate a TV contract in the States. “The difference between the CFL and the NFL comes down to one word-television,” insists Smith. And in an era of 500-channel TV, anything’s possible.
But the CFL hasn’t even been a total success at home. Its Montreal franchise went bust six years ago. But Montreal may not be as Canadian a town as Las Vegas or San Antonio, the prime candidates to join the CFL next season. Meanwhile in Sacramento, the team is trying to educate prospective fans about a game played by more men (12 a side) than in U.S. football, on a bigger field (I 10 yards), with slightly different rules-including the “rouge,” which is a 1-point score on a punt or missed field goal, not the tight end’s cosmetic. “This is no league from outer space,” says Gold Miners coach Kay Stephenson, a former head coach with the Buffalo Bills. “You still gotta pass, run and block”-and sell tickets.
Bruce Robinson, Winnipeg Blue Bombers president, worries that “our game will be swallowed up” just like pro hockey, where U.S. teams now outnumber Canadian ones 18 to 8. CFL rules permit only 17 Americans per 37-man roster, but U.S.based teams can’t be bound by that limit. They’ll get to draw from a deeper domestic talent pool. Sacramento, despite only a few weeks of training, won both its exhibition games. If the Gold Miners keep winning, the Canadians can hardly complain: Toronto, you’ll recall, won the World Series last fall.
