page_title: Laval Rouge et Or football
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Laval Rouge et Or football / History
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Match de football entre le Rouge et Or et les Axemen d'Acadia à l'Université Laval.English: Football game opposing Laval Rouge et Or and Axemen at Laval
context_page_description: The Laval Rouge et Or football team represents Laval University in Quebec City in the sport of Canadian football in U Sports. The program began its first regular season in 1996 and has quickly become one of the most successful programs in Canadian collegiate football history. The Rouge et Or have won a record ten Vanier Cup championships and their most recent victory occurred at the 54th Vanier Cup in 2018. They are also the only program to have played in four straight Vanier Cups and have a record of 10–2 in Vanier Cup games. The Rouge et Or have also won the Dunsmore Cup 15 times since 1999, demonstrating their historical dominance in their conference.
context_section_description: The Rouge et Or football program was first conceived of by Mike Labadie, a local physical education teacher, and Jacques Tanguay, a wealthy alumni and avid sports fan. They had noticed that there were an exodus of French-speaking football players to English speaking schools because there was no Francophone option for them to continue their football careers. Tanguay invested heavily into the football program as the Rouge et Or began their first season in 1996, one year after the National Hockey League's Quebec Nordiques had left Quebec City to relocate to Colorado. Labadie was the team's first head coach and they finished the year with a 1–7 record. The following year, Jacques Chapdelaine was hired to become the team's head coach. The Rouge et Or were the first Canadian collegiate team to feature full-time, paid assistant coaches and the first to use video editing, further giving them a heightened competitive advantage.
  Laval won their first national championship in 1999, against the Saint Mary's Huskies, under head coach Chapdelaine, bringing the Vanier Cup back to Quebec for the first time since 1987. Chapdelaine left the program following the 2000 season to continue his coaching career in the Canadian Football League. In 2001, current head coach Glen Constantin was promoted from his defensive coordinator position and led the team to 5–3 record and another Dunsmore Cup. However, during that season, the program had to vacate all victories due to use of an ineligible player. Consequently, that season is recorded as having eight regular season losses and three playoff losses.
  For the following season in 2002, the Rouge et Or finished 6-2 and lost to the Concordia Stingers in the QUFL semi-final. This is notable because, as of 2017, it is the last time that the Rouge et Or have had more than one regular season loss and the last time the program failed to qualify for the Dunsmore Cup. The following season, the Rouge et Or began their conference dominance, scoring a school record 481 points in eight regular season games (over 60 points on average per game), en route to their second Dunsmore Cup. The Rouge et Or finished that season with their second Vanier Cup victory, also against Saint Mary's, in the 39th Vanier Cup which was Constantin's first as head coach.
  In 2004, the Rouge et Or repeated as Vanier Cup champions for the first time in school history by defeating the Saskatchewan Huskies in the 40th Vanier Cup. Laval became the fourth program in Canadian collegiate history to repeat as Vanier Cup champions. It was the lowest scoring game in Vanier Cup history as Laval won by a score of 7-1 and it was the first Vanier Cup held outside of Toronto as the game was played at Ivor Wynne Stadium in Hamilton, Ontario.
  In 2005, the Saskatchewan Huskies collected a measure of revenge as they defeated the Rouge et Or in the semi-final Mitchell Bowl in Saskatoon. However, in the following year, the two teams met again in the 2006 Vanier Cup, where the Vanier Cup was being played in Saskatoon for the first time and in the Huskies home stadium, Griffiths Stadium. The team claimed the rubber match by defeating the Saskatchewan Huskies 13–8, in a game played in temperatures below −20 °C. Linebacker Éric Maranda, that game's MVP, was chosen to play in the U.S. East–West Shrine Game in Houston, Texas on January 19, 2008.
  For the 2007 season, the Rouge et Or claimed their fifth straight Dunsmore Cup championship, but lost to the Saint Mary's Huskies in the Uteck Bowl in Huskies Stadium in Halifax. It marked the last time, as of 2017, that Laval had lost to a team from the Atlantic University Sport conference. The following year, Laval, ranked first in Canada, played in the 2008 Vanier Cup, and defeated the third-ranked Western Mustangs 44–21 to claim their fifth national championship. It was the eighth time that Laval had finished their season paying in a national final or semi-final and, oddly, the first of those occurrences where the opposing team was not nicknamed the "Huskies." The 2008 season also saw the program produce its first Hec 
caption: Football game featuring the Rouge et Or and Acadia Axemen at Laval in 2012.
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