• By: OLM Staff

It’s football season all winter long for Canadians thanks to the NFL

Canadians may love hockey; it is, after all, our national pastime, but that doesn’t mean that football isn’t extremely popular with residents of the Great White North.

Canada has its own football league, the CFL. Many Canadians will travel to the nearest major city or the local sports bar to watch the much-anticipated CFL playoffs. This season, the title of eastern favourite is shared between the Toronto Argonauts and the Montreal Alouettes, while out west, the mighty Winnipeg Blue Bombers and the B.C Lions are favourites for the Grey Cup.

The CFL is always great fun to watch, but with just over two months left, the season will end soon.

There is good news for football fans everywhere: the NFL is back, and football fans can keep getting their fill of this great game until February 2023. Now that the NFL is back, Canadian sports betting is booming across the country. With Ontario allowing private betting sites online through major gaming providers and single and parlay bets, there is no better time to start looking at stats and winning some significant cash.

A whopping 45 percent of Canadians tuned in to watch the 2022 Superbowl, meaning that nearly half of our population seems to like American Football. On top of giving some much-needed excitement as our national football ends, the NFL has some of the greatest rivalries in sports history, including the notorious, decades-long rivalry between the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears.

The feud seems good for the midwestern football world, with the Packers and the Bears claiming 22 league championships. Other teams with fewer titles still enjoy some tense rivalries that make the NFL’s battle of New York or the battle of Ontario look small in comparison.

The Houston Texans and the Dallas Cowboys face off every four years for the Texas Governor’s Cup, an event in the Lone Star State. This year’s Governor’s cup will be the first regular season battle in four years. The East Coast is also scheduled for a major showdown between the longtime rival New York Jets and the New England Patriots. The battle will be anybody’s to win after the Patriots lost their star quarterback, Tom Brady, in 2020 to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Canadians also love watching football because of the great players. Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers is now widely considered one of the greatest regular season players in the history of the NFL. Tom Brady is still in the game at the old (for pro-football) age of 45 and continues to shock fans with his consistently outstanding performance in the regular season. Relatively new legends are also being created with Patrick Mahomes, who in his 2018 season threw 5000 yards and 50 touchdowns. At only 26, the young star has many more seasons.

With the end of the Canadian Football League season, despair not; American football will carry the die-hard fan into the new year and provide a nice change of pace from the NHL.

There will also be plenty of good reasons to place a wager during the regular season, including the Texas Governors Cup. It will be a hard-fought battle this year, with the Texans and Cowboys having to struggle for in-season points on top of taking the trophy back to their respective city. Aaron Rodgers may also be someone to watch. While not a playoff performer, he has consistently led the Packers through the regular seasons with four consecutive 13-win seasons out of 17 games. Betting on Tom Brady in the playoffs may pay off well too, but with substantive contenders, including Mahomes, there are plenty of options for bets in the NFL playoffs.

When the Grey Cup is over, and the CFL players have hung up their cleats for the season, tune into the NFL. There will be upsets, new legends created, and great plays to watch; the American league never disappoints.

Capitalize on all and enjoy the season!