The CFL has never been more meaningfully Canadian

As the Canadian Football League gets set to open its 67th season tonight in Regina where the Saskatchewan Roughriders host the Ottawa Redblacks, the league has never been more meaningfully Canadian.

Where once the league was a place where Canadians participated but Americans starred and held most of the important off-field titles, that is no longer the case.

In today’s CFL there are Canadians at every prominent role in the game – star running backs and receivers on offence, difference makers at all three levels of the defence, successful head coaches and general managers.

And yes, even at quarterback, where Saturday’s game between B.C. and Edmonton will feature the Lions’ Nathan Rourke and the Elks’ Tre Ford as the first Canadian quarterbacks to open a season head-to-head in almost 60 years.

Along the sidelines, four of the league’s nine head coaches are Canadians – two ex-players in Winnipeg’s Mike O’Shea and Saskatchewan’s Corey Mace, and two who’ve come up through amateur football in Edmonton’s Mark Kilam and Ottawa’s Bob Dyce.

In a league where five of nine general managers are Canadians, there are Canadian GM/coaching combinations on three teams – Ottawa, Saskatchewan and Winnipeg, the latter of those having been to five consecutive Grey Cup games under the same leadership.

This first quarter of this century has witnessed the disintegration of barriers for Canadians in all areas of the game, with the success of few opening the way for the many who’ve followed and raised the bar.

For the first time ever, the CFL’s leading rusher and receiver were both Canadians last season. Winnipeg’s Brady Oliveira and B.C.’s Justin McInnis took those titles, and Oliveira was also named the league’s Most Outstanding Player, the first homegrown player to win the award since Calgary’s Jon Cornish in 2012 and just the second since Ottawa’s Tony Gabriel in 1978.

Oliveira has continued a stunning run of Canadian dominance at the top of the running back hierarchy, winning his second consecutive rushing title last season to make it nine of the past 12 rushing titles owned by Canadians.

The greatest backs of this generation – players such as Cornish, Andrew Harris and Oliveira – are Canadians. This from a position that, not all that long ago, was an automatic American spot on every team across the league.

Last season also brought wide recognition of the new class of Canadian receivers, headlined by McInnis and Montreal’s Tyson Philpot, whose outstanding 2024 campaign was cut short by a mid-season injury.

And while there have always been skilled Canadian receivers in the game, this generation is less devoted to underneath routes and possession assignments, instead stretching the field with the best and earning the stardom that comes with that ability.

Up until recently, there was just one area of the game unclaimed by Canadians, and it happened to be the most meaningful: quarterback.

But this CFL season represents a giant step forward with regards to that final piece of the puzzle.

Both Ford and Rourke grew up playing the sport at the amateur level in Southern Ontario, Rourke earning his way to an NCAA Division I scholarship and Ford staring at the University of Waterloo, hardly a program known for producing star offensive talent for the CFL.

Ford has demonstrated during his first three seasons in the league that his athleticism and dynamic playmaking ability can translate to the CFL. The Elks bet on that by signing him to a new contract and declaring him their starter during the off-season.

He is the first quarterback developed at a Canadian school to be handed the full-time keys to a CFL offence in more than half a century.

Rourke, meanwhile, will enter this season as the league’s highest-paid player and marquee attraction, his first full season in Canada since a spectacular 2022 earned him some time in the National Football League.

The final spot on the Canadian depth chart is now occupied.

All across the CFL, Canadians are seizing opportunities and excelling.

And Canada’s game has never been more Canadian.