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Thanksgiving Day Classic
Canadian Football League games held on the second Monday in October From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Thanksgiving Day Classic (French: Classique de jour de l'Action de grâce) is an annual doubleheader held on Thanksgiving in the Canadian Football League (CFL). It is typically one of two days in which the league plays on a Monday afternoon; the other is the Labour Day Classic. Purolator is the presenting sponsor of the event as of 2022.[1]
The Montreal Alouettes have hosted the Thanksgiving Day Classic most years since 1997 and every year since 2006. This was originally started to compensate for not being part of the Labour Day Classic festivities; Montreal and the various Ottawa franchises normally play on Labour Day when both franchises are active. The Alouettes' permanent hosting of Thanksgiving remained in place after Ottawa returned to the league in 2014, with the Ottawa Redblacks serving as the permanent away team since 2021. Through the 2013 season, there were two Thanksgiving Day Classics each year, with the second being hosted by a rotating team; Montreal has been the lone host all but once since 2015, and Ottawa vs. Montreal the lone matchup every year since 2022. The Hamilton Tiger-Cats played CFL games annually in all but three years between 1958 and 1982, hosting the vast majority of them; Hamilton also hosted three times in four years from 1990 to 1993 and again hosted Thanksgiving games in 2013 and 2021.
Since the CFL's creation in 1958 through 2025, there will have been 127 games played on Thanksgiving Day.[2] The 2019 CFL season was the first and, to date, only time in league history to feature no games on Thanksgiving Day.[3] The league scheduled the Classic for the 2020 CFL season, with one game being played on Thanksgiving Day.[4] However, due to financial issues stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, the entire 2020 CFL season was cancelled and this game was not played.[5]
Despite Canadian Thanksgiving being a legal holiday in the United States (Columbus Day at the time), none of the CFL's American teams ever played the Thanksgiving Day Classic during the league's presence there in the mid-1990s.
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Possible discontinuation or reformatting
In late 2017, a proposal emerged to move the start of the CFL season to five or six weeks earlier than it begins in the present day, so that the Grey Cup would have been held on the third weekend of October, as opposed to the fourth Sunday in November as it stands as of 2024. The change, designed to accommodate a potential U.S. television agreement with NFL Network, had support among CFL owners and would have, if approved, taken effect for the 2019 CFL season. If the proposal had taken effect, Thanksgiving Day weekend would have overlapped with the CFL's division championship games.[6] While this change was not implemented and the season schedule remained the same, the league did not schedule any Thanksgiving Day games in 2019.[3] The league has indicated that such a schedule change would have needed to be negotiated in the league's collective bargaining agreement with the players' association. The CBA at the time expired in 2019; at the same time, the league renewed its existing agreement with ESPN, making a schedule change unnecessary, and the new CBA approved that year made no provision for a change.[7]
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