This is just a thread that will help get us through these last few weeks of the offseason leading up to draft day.
I'm curious as to when everyone became a CFL fan here. (Year, age) and what was it that got them into OUR league.
Honestly, I felt that the CFL was a joke league and paid ZERO attention to it all my life until 2008 when I saw the "This Is Our League" video on youtube. CFL | This is Our League - YouTube
It must have been during the playoffs when I somehow saw this video because just a few days after seeing the video I watched the 96th Grey Cup. (Calgary vs Montreal in Montreal) It was the first CFL game I had ever watched...and since that Grey Cup I don't think i've missed more than 5 or 6 games in total. In 2009 I went to my first game in person. (BC vs Hamilton East Final)
So to answer my own question: I became a CFL fan in November 2008 at the age of 21 thanks to a YouTube video. To this day, that video still gives me goosebumps and chills. Seriously.
I was 11 in 66. I did not like watching sports on tv, but we didnt have many stations, and usually only 1 tv per household. With nothing else to do, and someone having a game on, I sat down to watch. Of course it was black and white, so I cheered for the white team. It was Ronnie and the boys. They won. I cheered for them all the way to the cup game, which they also won. Watched almost every game I could on tv ever since.
BTW - did you know that the argos had the highest attendance throughout the 70'.
Actually I was aware that the Argos fans were plenty in the 70's and Exhibition Stadium was quite the rockin' place. My father was born in Toronto in 1947 and grew up there. He was a rabid Argos fan and season ticket holder until the World Football League wanted to come to Toronto, only to be blocked by the Liberals and the CFL. That didn't sit well with him I guess and he cancelled his Argos season tickets, never has been to another CFL game..and has never voted for the red guys since. lol. This explains why we have Buffalo Bills season tickets...and why I was not exposed to Canadian football as a kid. I will say that he is starting to soften and has watched a few CFL games in the past few years. I think I might even be able to get him to a game in Hamilton this season.
I played football since I was 8 years old and my dad coached pee-wee football for years.
I went with my dad to see ARGO games at the EX.
My first GREY CUP was in 1976. What a game that was :rockin:
In the womb… early 1985 Hamilton Tiger-Cats regular season… Couldn’t have been any earlier as I was likely conceived around Christmas / New years late 1984.
Can't remember really but it was no thanks to my Dad who really just watched the NFL for football, again trying to remember way back. But he was really only a baseball fan in the summer and fall months for the most part.
Well my whole Dad's side of the family is from Saskatchewan and we went to all the Labour Day Classics 2005-2008, in 2005 I took my first actual liking to football in general (About the same time I became a fan of the Seahawks of the NFL) anyways I enjoyed watching Rider games on TV and attending roughly 2-3 games a year. Watched on TV as they won the Grey Cup in 2007, great moment. Rider Pride for life! :rockin:
I think it was the summer of 1969, My Mom(God bless her) took My older Brother and I to the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, There was a CFL game in progress, Montreal was in town playing the Argonots, Only standing room left , watched Montreal score a TD deep in the Argo end zone close to where we were standing. I was hooked at 6 yrs of age.
For me it was around 1978 I was in grade two started to watch football cheering for all the teams, I really grew to like Warren Moon of Edmonton. Once he jumped to the NFL, I started to follow the Stamps after the SOS campaign of 1985, and since dedicated my cheering to the Stamps exclusively. I do admit my second fav team is my home town Lions, but if both teams meet up in a match I am always Stamps first.
When i was a kid i loved the leafs, then around 8 i realized the way the leafs opperate. Went to a Cats game with my Dad and fell in love with the Cats. An excellent choice, and one that i am glad i made !!
I never followed or watched sports as a kid, so it wasn't something I grew up with. I think one of the first games I saw was in 2003 when the winless Tiger-Cats won their first, and only, game of the season over Saskatchewan. I was fascinated that Saskatchewan could lose to such a team.. and I think it was overtime too. I slowly started to follow it more and more, with the Lions being in the Grey Cup and winning that West Final over Saskatchewan in 2004. I really started following it after high school in 2005, and have followed the league intensely ever since.
Like Blue Blood, I don't remember ever not watching the CFL. And during the season, it was all everyone talked about at school. Quite the rivalries, with most of my friends being Ottawa fans, a couple of Montreal fans, and even a BC fan.
My dad grew up in Hamilton, and had been a Tigers fan before inevitably becoming a Tiger-Cats fan. (I still say "Tigers! Eat 'em raw!" thanks to him.) Even growing up in Ottawa, I didn't have much of a choice but to follow the Ticats. Of course, local TV blackouts didn't help either - even when the Riders games were televised, half of them got blocked.
i became a cfl fanatic after watching the 1982 grey cup. toronto and edmonton playing in the rain. bob o`bilovich bringing the sad sack argos to the grey cup in his very first season, then going on to win in 83.
I grew up in Regina, so I was kind of born into CFL fandom. At my elementary school, we had a teacher who was a players' (Ken Mchaechern) wife, and a couple of kids of players as well.
I remember going to my first Riders' game also, against the Riders, Ottawa won 21-20, I was 5 or 6, so it must have been in '82 or '83.
randomly decided I wanted to start watching football before the 2010 season after I came home to Canada (from the UK) and then started paying attention to it
I honestly don't know why I did, if I can credit it to anything, it was probably TSN's CFL advertising, I had never really seen a good showcase of the league before that and I don't really remember any advertisements on CBC from back when I used to live in Canada up until I was 15.
Now I never miss an Argos game.
Too bad I'm not a nielsen household. I could skew the data
I really started to become a football fan around 1969 (I was 11) when I suddenly decided I liked football. I choose Ottawa as a favourite team because they won the Grey Cup the year before. Before that - as I seem to recall - I hated sports. One thing I do remember from that season, besides the 69 Grey Cup, was attending my first ever game at Civic Stadium in Hamilton against the Rough Riders. It was a wet and cold afternoon but the stadium was sold out with - at the capacity at the time - 22k slightly inebriated fans. The big hi-light of the game was watching Tommy Joe Coffey kick a field goal to set a scoring record. Unfortunately, I do not remember what record he set, but the stadium went nuts.
