Quarterback Jalen Hurts isn’t expected to play when the Philadelphia Eagles conclude their preseason schedule against the Indianapolis Colts on Thursday night.

But the former Alabama QB arrived at Lincoln Financial Field wearing a jersey – a Birmingham Barracudas No. 50 jersey. That was the number his father, Averion Hurts, wore during his brief stay with the CFL team.

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The Barracudas represented Birmingham in the Canadian Football League in the 1995 season.

The CFL tried to gain a foothold in the U.S. football market for three seasons in the 1990s before retreating north of the border.

The CFL added the Sacramento Gold Miners and the San Antonio Texans for 1993.

San Antonio was gone in 1994, but the Baltimore Colts, Las Vegas Posse and Shreveport Pirates came aboard.

In 1995, Sacramento was gone, but Shreveport returned, San Antonio was back (because Sacramento relocated), Baltimore had a nickname (the Stallions) that wasn’t subject to legal action and the Birmingham Barracudas and Memphis Mad Dogs played their only CFL seasons.

By 1996, the experiment was over, saving Birmingham the ignominy of losing a franchise to Shreveport. The Barracudas were sold for relocation to Shreveport to replace the shuttered Pirates, but it was contingent on the CFL continuing its U.S. plan.

Under coach Jack Pardee, the Barracudas went 10-8 and finished third in the South Division, which earned a spot in the eight-team playoffs. To open the postseason, the Barracudas played at San Antonio for the second straight week and got routed by the Texans 52-9 after losing 48-42 to San Antonio five days earlier in the regular-season finale. The players were told between the trips to San Antonio that the team would not be back in 1996.

The Barracudas averaged 17,626 fans per home game at Legion Field. Birmingham finished ninth among the CFL’s 13 teams in attendance.

The Barracudas played their first home game — a 51-28 victory over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on July 15, 1995 — before a crowd of 31,185. But attendance declined as the season went on, bottoming out at 6,317 for a 45-18 loss to the Edmonton Eskimos in the home finale on Oct. 19, 1995.

Attendance declined even though the Barracudas scheduled to avoid going up against high school and college football. Birmingham’s first five home games were played on Saturdays in July and August. When September arrived, the Barracudas played three times on Sunday and once on Thursday at Legion Field in the remainder of the season.

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.