Canadian Football League: Encyclopedia II - Canadian Football League - Format

Canadian Football League - Format

League training camps open in May, with regular season games beginning by late June and finishing by early November. The current season format has each team playing 18 games over this 20 week span (thus giving each team at least 2 bye weeks, while one team must play 2 games in one week at some point during the schedule, because of the odd number of teams). Teams are divided into 2 divisions, with 4 teams in the East and 5 in the West. Each team plays a home game and an away game against every other team, with 2 additional games versus divisional rivals.

The principal television broadcaster is TSN, with some games also shown on CBC and RDS within Canada, and a variety of regional networks in the U.S. Games are typically scheduled for Thursday to Saturday evenings during June, July and August, but switch to more Saturday and Sunday afternoon games during September and October. TSN has also created a tradition of at least one Friday night game each week.

Another fixture in the CFL season is the Labour Day Classic, played over the course of the Labour Day weekend (typically Week 10 in the regular season), where the matchups for three of the games in the week (Toronto at Hamilton, Edmonton at Calgary, and Winnipeg at Saskatchewan) have always remained the same year after year. The week after also sees matchups that remain the same between years (most notably the Calgary-Edmonton rematch at Commonwealth Stadium).

A lesser known fixture in the CFL season is the Thanksgiving Day Classic, played over Thanksgiving Day (Canada's Thanksgiving Day is the same date as the USA's Columbus Day). Unlike the Labour Day games, however, the matchups are not always the same each year.

The playoffs begin in November. After the regular season, the top team from each division has an automatic berth to the Division Finals, and the second place team has an automatic berth in the Division Semifinals. The third place team from each division will face the second place team, unless the fourth place team from the opposite division finishes with a better record (this provision is known as the crossover rule). The two division champions then face each other in the Grey Cup, which is held on the 3rd or 4th Sunday of November.

Although the crossover rule implies that it is possible for two teams in the same division to play for the Grey Cup, no team that has crossed over has gone past the Division Semifinals.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Format", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki