The Southern Blitz

As a sportscaster in the 1990s, I was around during perhaps the strangest time in Canadian sports: the Canadian Football League’s expansion into the United States. The period brought fans the Shreveport Pirates, the Las Vegas Posse and the Baltimore CFLers (later the Stallions), among others. The three-year period was tumultuous, almost broke the league, probably saved the league and ended with the game back in Canada for good.

After U.S. expansion collapsed, just before the 1996 season, almost everyone was left scratching their helmets and asking the same question, “What the heck just happened?”

Now we know, thanks to Vancouver Province writer Ed Willes and his entertaining book, End Zones and Border Wars: The Era of American Expansion in the CFL. Willes takes a meticulously researched, and at times...