Last modified: 2004-10-30 by phil nelson
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All the CFL (Canadian Football League) teams receive funding from Ottawa to stick a maple leaf on the back of the helmet - I wonder if the Baltimore team did the year it was in the CFL.
Rob Raeside, 1 February 2001
While I cannot answer for the Baltimore team, but the Sacramento Gold Miners and the Las Vegas Posse (yes, there were more US Canadian Football League teams than Baltimore) had the maple leaf on their helmets and commercial sports gear (t-shirts and the like) and flew the Canadian flag at games. The flying of the Canadian flag may have been because most of the opponents were from Canada, I never saw a game between two US teams.
Michael P. Smuda, 1 February 2001
The flags on the helmets were not simply decorative. Only players of Canadian citizenship were allowed to have the Maple Leaf sticker on their helmets. This came into play with the "Canadian content" rules of the game, which stated that teams had to have a certain number of Canadians on the roster, and of those, a certain number had to be in play at any given moment. The U.S. teams (Baltimore, Las Vegas, Birmingham, San Antonio, Memphis, and Sacramento) were not subject to those restrictions as it would have been counter to U.S. labor laws, and I do not recall seeing maple leaves on their helmets.
The Baltimore Stallions, who were in the league two years, 1994 and 1995, had Canadian players on their practice roster, but to my knowledge never fielded a Canadian player. They *did* at one point have the CFL logo, a red Maple Leaf emblazoned with the letters "CFL" in white, as part of the team's logo.
I did witness all-U.S. CFL games (Me