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Canadian Football Teams

Flags on helmets
Winnipeg Blue Bombers

See also:

Canada: Historic, Cultural, Economic, Government

Flags on helmets

All the CFL (Canadian Football League) teams receive funding from Ottawa to stick a maple leaf on the back of the helmet - I wonder if the Baltimore team did the year it was in the CFL.
Rob Raeside, 1 February 2001

While I cannot answer for the Baltimore team, but the Sacramento Gold Miners and the Las Vegas Posse (yes, there were more US Canadian Football League teams than Baltimore) had the maple leaf on their helmets and commercial sports gear (t-shirts and the like) and flew the Canadian flag at games. The flying of the Canadian flag may have been because most of the opponents were from Canada, I never saw a game between two US teams.
Michael P. Smuda, 1 February 2001

The flags on the helmets were not simply decorative. Only players of Canadian citizenship were allowed to have the Maple Leaf sticker on their helmets. This came into play with the "Canadian content" rules of the game, which stated that teams had to have a certain number of Canadians on the roster, and of those, a certain number had to be in play at any given moment. The U.S. teams (Baltimore, Las Vegas, Birmingham, San Antonio, Memphis, and Sacramento) were not subject to those restrictions as it would have been counter to U.S. labor laws, and I do not recall seeing maple leaves on their helmets.

The Baltimore Stallions, who were in the league two years, 1994 and 1995, had Canadian players on their practice roster, but to my knowledge never fielded a Canadian player. They *did* at one point have the CFL logo, a red Maple Leaf emblazoned with the letters "CFL" in white, as part of the team's logo.

I did witness all-U.S. CFL games (Memphis at Baltimore, and the 1995 Southern Final, San Antonio at Baltimore). Canadian flags were flying in the stadium, but this was nothing new - Canadian flags ordinarily fly at Baltimore stadiums, since most Baltimore sports teams (the Orioles, Baltimore's Major League Baseball team, in this case) are in leagues which also feature Canadian teams (Toronto and Montreal).
Stever Kramer, 1 February 2001

Winnipeg Blue Bombers

by David Kendall

Today (Nov. 25), my hometown football team, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, will be competing for the CFL (Canadian Football League) trophy (the Grey Cup) in Montreal against the Calgary Stampeders.

I have mentioned a few times the prominence of blue and gold in Manitoba flag proposals, this may be because of the colours of the Blue Bombers football team (blue and gold), which may, in turn be taken from Winnipeg's flag colours. I post for you all the team flag which I will be carrying a sample of which to wave while watching the game on TV with friends (my wife knows what I like and loves me enough to buy me a genuine cloth version of the flag). The flag has also been seen prominently on the flagpoles at Portage and Main (the city's main intersection) in the last few days. You will notice that the flag is in Canadian pale (ie a 1:2 flag with a 1:1 square in the middle), I'm almost positive this is deliberate, to show it is a Canadian team. Unfortunately, like almost all flags with writing and logos (which this is pretty much both), it is not reversible, and the mirror image is on the reverse of the flag.
David Kendall, 25 November 2001