Las Vegas Posse
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The Las Vegas Posse was a Canadian Football League team that played just the 1994 season at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The experimental expansion of the CFL into the United States began in 1993 with the addition of the Sacramento Gold Miners into the West Division. The relatively high franchise fee that American owners were willing to pay the financially struggling league prompted the CFL to add three more American teams in 1994. The Las Vegas Posse were added to the West Division.
The team struggled both on the field and at the box office. In their final home game in Las Vegas they drew the worst crowd in CFL history against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, a mere 2,350, including about 800 fans who made the trip from Winnipeg. The franchise is memorable for several infamous moments. The first was where, at the team's first home game against the Saskatchewan Roughriders, the singer of the national anthems, Dennis K.C. Parks, had only a vague knowledge of the Canadian anthem and so improvised something that made "O Canada" sound somewhat like "O Christmas Tree". Two weeks later he was brought to a Canadian Football League game in Toronto where he sang it properly. Another time, Posse head coach Ron Meyer asked the team's cheerleading squad, known as the "Showgirls", to loiter behind the bench of the B.C. Lions in an attempt to distract the opposition. The scheme did not work, as Las Vegas lost the game. Also, the franchise's final game against the Edmonton Eskimos was moved to Edmonton, as poor attendance in Las Vegas prompted team officials to shift the locale of the game.
Finishing the season with 5 wins and 13 losses, last in the West Division and 11th of 12 CFL teams, the franchise quietly folded before the next season.
External Links
Las Vegas Posse team profile (http://www.oursportscentral.com/cflinamerica/lasvegas.php)