Don't tell Baltimore resident Joe Short the Grey Cup is solely a Great White North huddle.
The American citizen's been on-side with the CFL since the 1950s "when they began broadcasting it down here," said Short, 69, who'll longingly watch this year's classic finale from his Maryland home.
"This'll be the first one I'll miss being at in 15 or 16 years."
Short's car sports a CFLFAN licence plate and he can be spotted wearing a Saskatchewan Roughriders cap -- items that regularly jog the memories of locals he says still mourn the loss of their CFL entry, the Baltimore Stallions.
"There's 20,000 broken hearts still here after the team left -- we used to average 40,000 people a game," he said.
The expansion Baltimore squad proved a resounding success, making it to the Grey Cup in 1994 and winning it 37-20 in a 1995 showdown with the Doug Flutie-quarterbacked Calgary Stampeders.
By 1996, the expansion effort that at one time counted five U.S. clubs had collapsed and all the CFL teams were located in Canada. Even so, Short said the league's popularity on the U.S. eastern seaboard keeps creeping up.
"It's a much more exciting game than the boring NFL and more and more cable networks are carrying it," he said, adding he knows several Baltimorians headed for Calgary this weekend.
Festival organizers say they're running after the American market, though U.S. fans won't comprise a lot of the expected visitors -- as many as 20,000, said event president Greg Albrecht.
"We've done marketing in the Pacific Northwest, in the mountain states and a little bit into California," said Albrecht, adding the 1995 Baltimore Grey Cup win still reverberates north.
"It's the only time the Grey Cup has gone south of the border and some of their people come up to pretty well every Grey Cup," he said.
Though the Montreal Alouettes are the successors to the Stallions, Short said he's torn over who to cheer for.
"I'm a Roughriders shareholder, so I guess I'll be wearing two hats," he said.
BILL.KAUFMANN@SUNMEDIA.CA
