Toronto Argonauts
The Toronto Argonauts are a professional Canadian football team based in Toronto, Ontario. The Argonauts compete in the East Division of the Canadian Football League. Founded in 1873, the team is the oldest professional sports team in North America still using its original name, as well as the oldest-surviving team in both the modern-day CFL and East Division. The team's origins date back to a modified version of rugby football that emerged in North America in the latter half of the 19th century. The Argonauts played their home games at Rogers Centre from 1989 until 2016, when the team moved to BMO Field, the fifth stadium site to host the team.
The Argonauts have won the Grey Cup a record 19 times and have appeared in the final 25 times. Most recently, they defeated the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 41–24 in the 111th Grey Cup in 2024. The Argonauts hold the best winning percentage in the championship game and have the longest active winning streak in games in which they have appeared, at eight. The Argonauts have faced every current western CFL team at least once in the Grey Cup, while their most celebrated divisional rivalry has been with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
The team was founded and owned by the Argonaut Rowing Club for its first 83 years, and has been owned by a series of business interests since 1956. The Argonauts were a fixture on the Toronto sports scene for decades, with attendance peaking in the 1970s. In May 2015, a consortium of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment's Larry Tanenbaum and Bell Canada reached an agreement to acquire the team. The sale included a scheduled move to the MLSE-run BMO Field for the 2016 season, which had long been proposed given poor attendance at Rogers Centre. MLSE announced in December 2017 that it had agreed to purchase the team outright, with the deal finalized on January 19, 2018. The previous owners continue to indirectly own stakes in the Argos, as Bell Canada and the Kilmer Group respectively hold 37.5% and 25% stakes in MLSE.
Given the length of franchise history, dozens of players, coaches, and management have been honoured in some form over the years. The team recognizes a select group of players with retired numbers - early greats Joe Krol and Dick Shatto, stalwart offensive lineman Danny Nykoluk, and Michael "Pinball" Clemons, who has been the most recent face of the team.
Name and colours
Since the team's foundation in 1873, the Argonauts name has been in continuous use, a record in North American professional sports. The Atlanta Braves franchise of Major League Baseball is older, but has changed their name and city more than once. The Argonauts are the oldest professional football team in North America.The name "Argonauts" is derived from Greek mythology: according to legend, Jason and the Argonauts were a group of heroes who set out to find the Golden Fleece aboard the ship Argo sometime before the Trojan War. Given its nautical theme, the name Argonaut was adopted by a group of amateur rowers in Toronto in 1872. The Argonaut Rowing Club, which still exists today, went on to found the football club with the same name a year later. Given their roots in a rowing squad, the team is often referred to as "the Boatmen" and less often "the Scullers".
In the 19th century, the most renowned rowing teams in the world were from the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge in England. The Toronto rowers, many of whom had associations with the English schools, adopted uniforms incorporating the light blue of Cambridge and the dark blue of Oxford. In turn, the footballers adopted the colours and the phrase "double blue" became synonymous with the team. Blue has become the traditional colour of top-level teams in Toronto, such as the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Blue Jays.
The team's other official colour is white. Its current helmet design features a Cambridge blue background, with the team logo featuring a boat incorporating a football.
History
1873–1906
The first recorded game of what would become known as Canadian football was played in Toronto on November 9, 1861, featuring University of Toronto students. At the time, the game was a modified version of English rugby, which gained popularity throughout the 1860s. Rugby itself was still an infant game having evolved out of association football in the 1830s. Seeking a way to keep fit after summer, the Argonaut Rowing Club formed their own rugby-football squad on October 4, 1873. The Argonauts Football Club played their first game against Hamilton on October 18 of that year, beginning a storied rivalry. H.T. Glazebrook was their first captain and head coach. Establishment of the football team was formalized by the ARC on September 17, 1874, with a subscription fee of one dollar charged per player.The football team played a handful of challenge matches—one team inviting another to play—as an amateur squad against university and city teams every year throughout the 1870s, with one dormant year in 1879, likely due to injuries. In 1883 the Toronto Football Club, other city teams from Ontario and university squads from Toronto, Queens University and Royal Military College formed the Ontario Rugby Football Union ; it was the first rugby football organization with a league and playoff structure in North America. The Toronto Football Club were league victors in the first year. Starting in 1884, a "Dominion Championship"—a precursor to the Grey Cup—was held, pitting the victors of the country's two organized leagues, the ORFU and Quebec Rugby Football Union, against each other; it was organized nationally by the Canadian Rugby Union from 1892 onwards. In the first true national championship, the Montreal Football Club defeated the Toronto Football Club on November 6, 1884, by a score of 30–0. Argonauts lost the Dominion Title in 1901 to Ottawa College. The Ottawa Football Club and the Hamilton Football Club were frequent opponents in this era.
Over the thirty years from 1880 onwards, rule changes were incrementally introduced into the game, including the adoption of the line of scrimmage, scoring that began to resemble the modern version, and the down and yardage structure. Popular personalities of the era included player-coach Joe Wright Sr., one of the best all around Canadian athletes at the turn of the century. One major outstanding issue within the CRU at the time was the role of professional versus amateur players; this dispute caused the Argonauts to withdraw from the league in 1903 and eventually led to the establishment of a new league, The Big Four or Interprovincial Rugby Football League. Alongside the professionalism dispute, there was serious disagreement over the adoption of the Burnside rules, with Ontario, Quebec, and the intercollegiate league often not in alignment. Among other critical innovations, the Burnside rules reduced the number of men per side to 12 and introduced the ten yards in three downs structure that is central to the modern game.
The Argonauts merged with the Toronto Football Club in 1905, and W. A. Hewitt was manager of the Argonauts until 1907. He was also vice-president of the ORFU for the 1905 and 1906 seasons, and sought for ORFU to have uniform rules of play with the CRU, with a preference to use the snap-back system of play. When the CRU did not adopt the snap-back system, his motion was approved for the ORFU to adopt the CRU rules in 1906.
1907–1952
In December 1906, The Gazette reported that a proposal originated from Ottawa for the ORFU and the QRFU to merge, which would allow for higher calibre of play and create rivalries. Hewitt helped organize the meeting which established the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union in 1907. Seeking looser rules regarding the employment of professional players, Toronto and other cities split from the ORFU and formed the IRFU, along with Hamilton, Ottawa, and Montreal.The IRFU continued under the larger auspices of the Canadian Rugby Union. Beginning in 1909, the CRU champion was awarded the Grey Cup, with the Big Four competing against university squads and eventually teams from Western Canada. The Argonauts first competed for the Cup in 1911, losing 14 to 7 to the University of Toronto in front of a then record 13,687 spectators at the newly opened Varsity Stadium. The team claimed their first championship in 1914, exacting revenge on U of T with a 14 to 2 victory. Their star runner and kicker in their first championship year was Jack O'Connor, who scored a league record 44 points.
Image:Argos v Rough Riders 1924.jpg|left|thumb|The Argonauts playing the Ottawa Rough Riders at Varsity Stadium in 1924
After play was halted during World War I, the Argos again achieved success in the early 1920s on the back of one Canada's greatest ever sportsmen. Lionel Conacher, the "Big Train", led the team to two perfect 6–0 seasons in 1921 and 1922. In the first season he accounted for 85 of his team's 167 points, and 15 of the points in the Grey Cup game, a 23–0 drubbing of the Edmonton Eskimos. It was the first east-west Grey Cup championship in Canadian history.
The 1921 Grey Cup victory was their last until 1933, at which point the Argonauts became the dominant team of an increasingly nationwide sport. They put together a number of Grey Cup dynasties in the 1930s and 1940s, winning eight of twenty Grey Cups between 1933 and 1952. The Winnipeg Blue Bombers were most often on the receiving end of Argo Grey Cup victories in this era. From 1933 to 1941 Lew Hayman coached the team with a still unparalleled winning ratio of 45–15–2. Their first back-to-back Grey Cups came in 1937 and 1938. This was also the era of the famed Stukus brothers—Annis, Bill, and Frank—who proved a potent all-purpose trio in the Argonauts' championship years.
Joe "King" Krol and Royal Copeland, the so-called 'Gold Dust Twins', were the best-known players of the 1940s. In an era where players still played multiple positions, they were a threat in every capacity: running, passing, catching, kicking, and playing defence. Often connecting with each other for points, they led the Argos to a Grey Cup threepeat between 1945 and 1947. In 1948, the team broke a cultural barrier with the signing of Ken Whitlock as not only their first import player in quite some time but also their first ever black player. Whitlock played only 4 games as a halfback & punter before getting released from the team, but his signing also ushered a new era for player acquisitions. 1949 and 1950 marked a watershed in Argonauts history as the team began large scale importation of American players for the first time. In 1950, the Argos signed their second ever black player after Whitlock, Ulysses "Crazy Legs" Curtis. Curtis played five strong years with the team as their featured running back.
Frank Clair was brought in as coach in 1950 and left his mark on the revamped roster; he led the team to Grey Cup wins in 1950 and 1952. The first of these was a 13–0 victory over Winnipeg in the notorious Mud Bowl. A November snowstorm followed by mild conditions turned Varsity Stadium into a bog and the play was a shambles; one Winnipeg player is reported to have almost drowned in the muck.
At some time during this period, the phrase "Argo Bounce" came to refer to the Argonauts' propensity to receive a lucky bounce of the football. The phrase may date to the Grey Cups of the 1930s, all of which featured improbable bounces and fumbles favouring the Argos; the phrase was popularized in print by Annis Stukus in the 1940s. It is still in use today, with a number of fortunate on-field happenings attributed to the "bounce".