Canadian Football League
The regular season is 21 weeks long, with games beginning in mid-June and finishing by early November. The CFL's nine current teams are divided into two divisions: the East Division with four teams and the West Division, with five teams. Each team plays two games against each of the other eight teams, plus two divisional games with opponents rotating each season. With 18 regular season games being played, each team gets three bye weeks.
Professional football (gridiron)
Canada has historically been sheltered from the rival leagues that the NFL faced for most of its first century of existence. John F. Bassett, a Canadian multimedia heir, was at the center of two attempts to bring the rival leagues to Canada, first with the Toronto Northmen in the WFL, then with a USFL team in Hamilton, Ontario. In both cases, Canadian Parliament threatened to pass the Canadian Football Act, a proposed law that would have codified the CFL's monopoly on football and outlawed any other professional league from playing in the dominion. (In each case, Bassett instead backed a U.S.-based team, the Memphis Southmen and Tampa Bay Bandits, respectively). The Act was never passed or made law.