The West Division is one of the two regional divisions of the Canadian Football League (CFL), its counterpart being the East Division. Although the CFL was not founded until 1958, the West Division and its clubs are descended from earlier leagues. The five teams in the West Division are the BC Lions, Calgary Stampeders, Edmonton Elks, Saskatchewan Roughriders, and Winnipeg Blue Bombers. There were also two now-defunct teams from the mid 1990s United States expansion of the CFL who played in the West Division. Additionally, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers have played three separate stints in the East Division, during seasons in which the divisions needed to be rebalanced due league expansion, contraction, or reorganization. History Pre–1936 The first organized football club in Western Canada was the Winnipeg Rugby Football Club which was founded in 1879. At the time the sport was generally called rugby or rugby football because its rules were similar to rugby union's, although this would change drastically in the coming decades. The first organized competition in the West was formed in 1888. Winnipeg Rugby Football Club, St.John's Rugby Football Club and the Royal School of Infantry / 90th Regiment formed the Manitoba Rugby League, later re-organized as the Manitoba Rugby Football Union. Football was being played in what was to become Alberta and Saskatchewan by 1890, and by 1907 the new provinces had organized their own respective competitions and agreed to adopt the rules of the national governing body, the Canadian Rugby Union. Initially, interest in rugby football was mostly confined to the prairie provinces. As is the case today, ice hockey was Western Canada's most popular sport, and the presence of what were recognized to be "major league" professional circuits in Western Canada initially served to limit the resources which the fledgling senior football unions on the prairies could muster. The collapse of the last such "major" Western hockey league in 1926 opened a void that was quickly filled by football, with a provincial union finally being formed in British Columbia that same year. The four rugby unions in the West were named the Manitoba Rugby Football Union, Saskatchewan Rugby Football Union, Alberta Rugby Football Union and the British Columbia Rugby Football Union. Until the mid-1930s, the Western provincial unions usually maintained separate regular season schedules. However, they soon set out to create a unified Western Canadian playoff structure involving the respective provincial champions, with the