About

The Montreal Alouettes (French: Les Alouettes de Montréal) are a professional Canadian football team based in Montreal, Quebec. Founded in 1946, the team has folded and been revived twice. The Alouettes compete in the East Division of the Canadian Football League (CFL) and last won the Grey Cup championship in 2010. Their home field is Percival Molson Memorial Stadium for the regular season and as of 2014 also home of their playoff games. The original Alouettes team (1946–1981) won four Grey Cups and were particularly dominant in the 1970s. After their collapse in 1982, they were immediately reconstituted under new ownership as the Montreal Concordes. After playing for four years as the Concordes, they revived the Alouettes name for the 1986 season. A second folding in 1987 led to a nine-year hiatus of CFL football in the city. The current Alouettes franchise was established in 1996 by the owners of the Baltimore Stallions. The Stallions were disbanded at the same time as the Alouettes' re-establishment after having been the most successful of the CFL's American expansion franchises, culminating in a Grey Cup championship in 1995. Many players from the Stallions' 1995 roster signed with the Alouettes and formed the core of the team's 1996 roster. For record-keeping purposes, the CFL considers all clubs that have played in Montreal as one franchise dating to 1946, and considers the Alouettes to have suspended operations in 1987 before returning in 1996. Although the Alouettes' re-establishment in 1996 is often considered a relocation of the Stallions, neither the league nor the Alouettes recognize the Baltimore franchise, or its records, as part of the Alouettes' official team history. The latest incarnation of the Alouettes were arguably the best CFL team of the 2000s; they took home three Grey Cups in that decade bringing the franchise total to seven. The Alouettes had from 1996 to 2014 the CFL's longest active playoff streak, only having missed the playoffs three times since returning to the league. The streak came to an end in 2015. They have hosted a playoff game every year except 2001, 2007, 2013, and from 2015 to 2018. Their five losing seasons came in 2007, 2013 and from 2015 to 2018. The 2015 through 2018 Alouettes' seasons marked the first time the team missed the playoffs in consecutive years since their re-activation. Major stars of the recent era include Mike Pringle, the CFL career leader in rushing yards, and quarterback Anthony Calvillo, who led all of pro football in career passing yards before Drew Brees took over in late 2020. The Alouettes are currently owned by Crawford Steel executives Sid Spiegel and Gary Stern (through their subsidiary S and S Sportsco), who took over the team on January 6, 2020; the team had been purchased by the CFL in 2019 after the previous owner, American businessman Robert Wetenhall, could not find a buyer. Prior to selling the team to the league, Wetenhall was the league's only remaining non-Canadian owner.