Professional football in Canada
Only one professional football league has a permanent presence in Canada: the Canadian Football League (CFL), an organization founded in 1958 to accommodate the ongoing trend of professionalism in the Canadian football ranks since the 1940s. The CFL, like most amateur Canadian football leagues, plays on a larger field using a rulebook with several significant rule differences compared to the game as it is played in the United States. The league is composed of two divisions and nine teams in most of the largest Canadian markets, with at least one team in each province between British Columbia (BC Lions) and Quebec (Montreal Alouettes) inclusive. The only presence in Atlantic Canada is a semi-regular series of games in Moncton (Touchdown Atlantic) and a smattering of earlier preseason contests. The CFL operates a two-week preseason beginning in June, an 18-game season from July to October, and a six-team playoff tournament, culminating in the Grey Cup on the fourth weekend of November.
List of defunct American and Canadian professional football teams
For the sake of simplicity, this list will only focus on national (non-regional, non-National Football League) outdoor North American football teams not covered in other lists (i.e. the All-America Football Conference, the first three universally recognized as major incarnations of the American Football League, Continental Football League, World Football League, American Football Association, United States Football League, non-European teams from the World League of American Football, Canadian Football League (including predecessors and South Division teams), and the XFL). As a general rule, only teams with existing Wikipedia articles are listed here.