Edmonton Elks

Team information

• Inaugural season: 1949
• Home field: Brick Field at Commonwealth Stadium, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
• Owners: Pierre Karl Penadeau
• Team colors: Green, gold, and white

Overview

The Edmonton Elks are a Canadian Football League (CFL) team based in Edmonton, Alberta. Since its inception, Edmonton has been one of the marquee franchises in Canadian football. By 2024, the team had won fourteen Grey Cups, second only to the Toronto Argonauts. Edmonton has been so successful that by that point the franchise owned a streak of thirty-four consecutive playoff appearances and had won championships in every full decade of its existence except for the 1960s. During its most dominant period in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Edmonton won five straight Grey Cups and was quarterbacked by the only player to be inducted into both the CFL and National Football League (NFL) halls of fame.

History

Rugby-style football clubs—a precursor of modern gridiron football—first sprang up in eastern Canada in the 1860s and 1870s. After a few years, the sport began to catch on in the nation’s western provinces. The first Edmonton football team formed in 1895 and was named the Esquimaux, an old French word referring to the indigenous inhabitants of the far North. In 1910, the club was renamed the Edmonton Eskimos. The team briefly changed its name to the Elks in 1922 but switched back before folding in 1924. An attempt to restart the franchise in 1928 failed as the new version of the team lasted just four seasons.

The city tried to bring the team back again in 1938 as it joined teams from Winnipeg, Regina, and Calgary in the newly formed Western Interprovincial Football Union (WIFU). This time, the experiment lasted just two years as the team folded. The league itself suspended operations at the onset of World War II (1939–45) but reformed after the war without a team in Edmonton.

In 1948, the Calgary Stampeders of the WIFU won the Grey Cup with a dominating, unbeaten season. Previous Calgary franchises had been Edmonton’s arch-rivals, and the team’s success sparked interest in reviving a team in Edmonton. In 1949, a group of local officials, businesspeople, and football representatives formed the new Edmonton Eskimos as a community-owned franchise. For its inaugural season, the team acquired the old green-and-gold uniforms that were no longer being used by the University of Alberta. The colors would go on to become the signature look of the franchise.

Just five years after the franchise was formed, the Edmonton team won its first Grey Cup. The team followed its 1954 championship with two more in 1955 and 1956. The Grey Cup is a trophy established in 1909 to be presented to Canada’s best football team. At first, it was an amateur award, but by the 1940s, the cup was presented to a team from the nation’s top two professional leagues, the WIFU and its eastern counterpart, the Interprovincial Rugby Union (IRFU). The two leagues merged in 1958 to form the modern Canadian Football League. The Grey Cup became the official championship trophy of the CFL.

The Edmonton team’s success in the 1950s did not carry over into the 1960s. Edmonton lost its only Grey Cup appearance of the decade in 1960, and by the mid-1960s, the financially struggling squad was in danger of folding like its predecessors. The team survived, and entered the 1970s on the verge of the most dominant run in CFL history. The team made the CFL playoffs in 1972 and would go another thirty-four years before the postseason streak ended in 2005. From 1973–77, Edmonton made four Grey Cup finals, winning only once in 1975. However, from 1978–82, the team won five consecutive championships, the longest streak in CFL history. During this time, Edmonton was led by quarterback Warren Moon, a college star at the University of Washington who was not drafted by the NFL. Moon initially shared signal-calling duties with quarterback Tom Wilkinson, but by 1980, he had come into his own, winning the Most Valuable Player award in the 1980 and 1982 Grey Cups. Moon’s CFL success soon attracted the attention of the NFL, and in 1984, he signed with the Houston Oilers.

Edmonton made five more Grey Cup appearances in the late 1980s and 1990s, winning championships in 1987 and 1993. The team won two more Grey Cups in 2003 and 2005 before posting a 7–11 record in 2006 and ending its record playoff streak. In the early 2010s, Edmonton went through its toughest period since the 1960s, culminating with a 4–13 record in 2013. The team did bounce back to make the playoffs in 2014 and won its fourteenth Grey Cup in 2015. Those fourteen championships trailed only the Toronto Argonauts’ seventeen Grey Cups. However, because ten of Toronto’s titles came before the formation of the CFL in 1958, Edmonton had won eleven CFL championships to Toronto’s seven. Throughout the rest of the 2010s, the team qualified for the playoffs every season except for 2018.

Beginning in 1970, the team's logo featured a pair of interlocking gold “Es” set against a green circle. For a brief period in the mid-1990s, the design featured a polar bear. The team has played at Commonwealth Stadium since 1978; in 2016, the facility was renamed Brick Field at Commonwealth Stadium.

In the early twenty-first century, the team’s name had become a source of controversy, as some saw the term "Eskimos" as an insult to the indigenous Inuit people of Canada. Some Inuit groups as well as other critics protested the use of the name, believing it to be a racial slur. However, other Inuit people did not see it as derogatory and accepted the use of the term. In 2018, the franchise began an effort to determine the public’s views on the issue. After speaking with numerous Inuit representatives, the team initially concluded in February 2020 that it would keep the name as it could find no public consensus on the matter. However, by July of that year, even as the CFL's 2020 season was uncertain due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, some of the team's sponsors, including those that had partnered with the team for some time, expressed a desire to see the name changed and indicated potentially ending their relationship. After another, shorter review was conducted amid a period of increased nationwide debates and protests around the issue of racial and ethnic injustice that had also impacted the sports world as a whole, by the end of July the team had announced that it was officially committing to a name change. Though the 2020 season was ultimately canceled, it was decided that the team would be known as the Edmonton Football Team until a new name could be chosen with community and public input. The result of this effort, in which name suggestions were narrowed down from thousands to fewer than ten by early 2021, was the official announcement on June 1, 2021, that Edmonton Elks had been the final name favored, agreed upon, and adopted; a new logo was also presented at that time. During the same year, the Elks had their worst record 3-11. In 2022, the team had a better season but was eliminated from playoff qualification after losing to the Winnepeg Blue Bombers. The 2023 season was the second under head coach Chris Jones. The Elks started the season 0-7 for the first time in the team's history. The Elks set a record for the longest home losing streak in North American professional sports and matched a team record for consecutive losses both home and away.

Notable players

More than fifty players, coaches, or officials associated with the Edmonton team have been inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. Edmonton does not have any retired jersey numbers but has inducted more than thirty former players in its Wall of Honour. The team’s first true star was running back Norman Kwong, who played for Edmonton from 1951–60. Kwong was the first Chinese Canadian to play in the CFL and amassed 8,769 career rushing yards with Edmonton, second all-time on the franchise rushing list. Atop that list is Kwong’s teammate Johnny Bright, who played for the team from 1954–64. Bright rushed for 9,966 career yards with Edmonton and holds the team’s single-season rushing mark with 1,722 in 1958. Counting two seasons spent with Calgary, Bright’s 10,909 career yards were fourth all-time in CFL history. Both Kwong and Bright were members of Edmonton’s three Grey Cup-winning teams in the 1950s and both were inducted into the Hall of Fame and the team’s Wall of Honour.

The franchise’s success in the 1970s began with quarterback Tom Wilkinson, who played with Edmonton from 1972–81. Wilkinson quarterbacked the 1975 Grey Cup–winning team and shared quarterback duties with Moon from 1978–81. Wilkinson was the first to be named to the team’s Wall of Honour and inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1987. During his time in Edmonton, Moon threw for 21,228 career yards with 144 touchdown passes. His yardage totals were third all-time in franchise history and his passing touchdowns ranked second. After leaving for the NFL, Moon was selected to nine Pro Bowls over a seventeen-year career and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2006. He was enshrined in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 2001, making him the only player in history to be a member of both. Edmonton’s all-time leading passer was quarterback Ricky Ray, who played for the team in two stints from 2002–03 and 2005–11. Ray threw for 40,531 yards with Edmonton and was MVP of the 2005 Grey Cup. Ray was inducted into Edmonton’s Wall of Honour in 2019.

Possibly the most dynamic player to ever suit up for Edmonton was Henry “Gizmo” Williams, who spent eleven years with the team from 1990–2000. Known for his acrobatic back-flips into the end zone, Williams set both team and league records for punt return yardage and touchdowns. His 26 career punt return touchdowns were 15 more than anyone else in CFL history. Williams’s 11,257 career punt return yards were also a CFL record and almost 5,000 yards ahead of the player in second place. Williams was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2006. Wide receiver Brian Kelly played for Edmonton from 1979–87 and held franchise records for most career receptions with 575 and most receiving yards with 11,169. Kelly was named to the Hall of Fame in 1991. Both Williams and Kelly are also members of the team’s Wall of Honour.

Bibliography

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