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.
List of Major League Soccer seasons
Major League Soccer is the premier professional soccer league in the United States and Canada. As of 2016, it consists of 20 teams: 17 in the United States and 3 in Canada. The league has played since 1996. Each year, it plays a league which determines entry into the playoffs. The league is divided into two conferences, the Eastern Conference and Western Conference. In 2000 and 2001, there was also a Central Conference. The team with the overall best regular-season record is awarded the MLS Supporters' Shield, one of three major domestic trophies in North American soccer (the others being the national championships—the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup or the Canadian Championship—and the primary trophy: the MLS Cup league championship). In 2010 and 2011, the league played as a double round robin, with each team playing each other team one home and away—creating a balanced schedule. With a prime number of teams beginning in 2012, the league has moved to an unbalanced schedule weighted towards a team's respective conference.