Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada
The Canadian Football League is the highest level of play in Canadian football. The league was organized in 1956 as a cooperative agreement between two regional leagues, the Big Four (which dated to 1907) and the WIFU (which was founded in 1936), and became independent from Football Canada in 1958. The league now consists of nine teams, all based in Canada. The Grey Cup is awarded annually to the champion every November and is the highest attended sporting event in the nation. The oldest extant teams, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Toronto Argonauts, trace their origins to the late 1860s and early 1870s, which ranks them amongst the oldest professional sports teams of any kind still in existence on the continent. The CFL attempted an expansion into the United States in cities that had no NFL team between 1993 and 1995, though the expansion teams all either folded or relocated to Canadian cities.
Western Women's Canadian Football League
The Western Women's Canadian Football League (WWCFL) is a full-contact women's Canadian football league which began play in the spring of 2011. The league plays an annual season in the spring or summer, and with 8 teams it is the largest women's football league in Canada. The teams play 12-women tackle football games using the Football Canada rules, somewhat similar to those of the CFL. The league has teams in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta (the prairie provinces of Canada).