Grey Cup

The Grey Cup (French: Coupe Grey) is both the championship game of the Canadian Football League (CFL) and the trophy awarded to the victorious team playing in the namesake championship of professional Canadian football. The game is contested between the winners of the CFL's East and West divisional playoffs and is one of Canadian television's largest annual sporting events. Since 2022, the game has been held on the third Sunday of November. The Toronto Argonauts have the most Grey Cup wins (19) since its introduction in 1909, while the Edmonton Elks have the most Grey Cup wins (11) since the merger in 1958. The latest, the 111th Grey Cup, took place in Vancouver, British Columbia, on November 17, 2024, when the Toronto Argonauts defeated the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 41–24.

The Grey Cup is Canada's largest annual sports and television event, regularly drawing a Canadian viewing audience of about 4 million. Two awards are given for play in the game: the Most Valuable Player and the Dick Suderman Trophy as the most valuable Canadian player. In 2019, Andrew Harris was the first player to win both the Grey Cup's Most Valuable Canadian and Most Valuable Player the same year, playing for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

The trophy was commissioned in 1909 by The Earl Grey, then Canada's governor general, who originally hoped to donate it for the country's senior amateur hockey championship. After the Allan Cup was donated for that purpose, Grey instead made his trophy available to the winner of the Canadian Dominion Football Championship, the national championship of Canadian football. The trophy has a silver chalice attached to a large base on which the names of all winning teams, players and executives are engraved. The Grey Cup has been broken on several occasions, stolen twice, and held for ransom. It survived a 1947 fire that destroyed numerous artifacts housed in the same building.

The Grey Cup was first won by the Toronto Varsity Blues of the University of Toronto. Play was suspended from 1916 to 1918 due to the First World War and in 1919 due to a rules dispute. The game has typically been contested in an east-versus-west format since the 1920s. The game was always played on a Saturday until 1968, but since 1969 (except for 1970) has always been on a Sunday. Held in late November (in some years in early December, most recently in 2021), and mostly in outdoor stadiums, the Grey Cup has been played in inclement weather at times, including the 1950 "Mud Bowl", in which a player reportedly came close to drowning in a puddle, then the 1962 "Fog Bowl", when the final minutes of the game had to be postponed to the following day due to a heavy fog, and the 1977 "Ice Bowl", contested on the frozen-over artificial turf at Montreal's Olympic Stadium. Most recently, in the 2017 game snow fell, at times heavily, throughout the game.

The then-Edmonton Eskimos formed the Grey Cup's longest dynasty, winning five consecutive championships from 1978 to 1982. Competition for the trophy has been exclusively between Canadian teams, except for a three-year period from 1993 to 1995, when an expansion of the CFL south into the United States resulted in the Baltimore Stallions winning the 1995 championship and taking the Grey Cup south of the border for the only time in its history.

Serious efforts to organize a national governing body and eventually a Dominion championship for what at that time was still a game called and practically identical to rugby union began in the early 1880s, culminating in the creation of the Canadian Rugby Union in 1891 and the first CRU-recognized national championship the following year. After that, national championship games were held every year prior to the creation of the Grey Cup except 1899, 1903 and 1904.

While the Stanley Cup was created in 1893 as the Canadian amateur hockey championship, professional teams were openly competing for the trophy by 1907. Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey, the Governor General of Canada, planned to donate a new trophy to serve as the senior amateur championship; however, Sir Montague Allan donated the Allan Cup before he could finalize his plans. Grey instead offered an award for the Canadian amateur rugby football championship beginning in 1909. He initially failed to follow through on his offer; the trophy was not ordered until two weeks prior to the first championship game.

The first Grey Cup game was held on December 4, 1909, between two Toronto clubs: the University of Toronto Varsity Blues defeated the Parkdale Canoe Club 26–6 before 3,800 fans. The trophy was not ready for presentation following the game, and the Varsity Blues did not receive it until March 1910. They retained the trophy in the following two years, defeating the Hamilton Tigers in 1910 and the Toronto Argonauts in 1911. The University of Toronto failed to reach the 1912 Grey Cup, which was won by the Hamilton Alerts over the Argonauts. The Varsity Blues refused to hand over the trophy on the belief they could keep it until they were defeated in a title game. They kept the trophy until 1914 when they were defeated by the Argonauts, who made the trophy available to subsequent champions.