Previously, it was a recap and pre-game show broadcast by CHCH-DT across Canada, Thursday nights at 11:30 pm ET after local news and sports during football season.
It first aired as CIS Countdown in September 2011 with Jim Mullin as host and Chad Klassen and Andrew Wadden as commentators, providing an overview of Canadian university football games on SHAW TV throughout Western Canada.
The show was developed in conjunction with MRX and Associates as a means to promote the 2011 Vanier Cup at BC Place Stadium.
Ryan Sullivan joined Wadden on the highlight desk as an anchor team, eliminating most of the duties of the host position.
Mullin shifted to the panel with Hec Crighton Award winning quarterback Billy Greene joining the show as a full-time panelist and the two would remain together through the 2013–14 season.
The show went on location to start the Canada West Football season on Shaw TV, with the kickoff game in Saskatoon in 2013[5] and 2014.
In a feature on the Laval Rouge et Or football team Newsweek wrote, "There is a weekly highlight show, Krown Countdown U, that resembles what would happen if ESPN’s College GameDay mated with SCTV’s Bob and Doug McKenzie.
During a recent highlights package, co-host Ryan Sullivan quipped of a player who ran back a punt for a touchdown, “He is gone, like a bullet that was shot out of a gun that shoots bullets.”[6][7] In 2014, former UBC Thunderbirds and Queen's Gaels offensive lineman Gord Randall replaced Greene, who left Canada to play football in Europe.
The show's producer won the Paul Carson Award in 2016 for promotion and development of varsity sports in Canada.
[9] L. David Dube is the principal owner of Krown Produce and has underwritten the cost of production through sponsorship of the program.
Dube and Mullin as project partners started planning and discussion around the Northern 8, a proposed schedule of competition which would place the best CIS/USports football teams from across the country in a nationally televised game of the week.
During the height of the first attempt to broaden competition in the winter of 2014–15, KCU produced a specific show about what the Northern 8 was, with Dube explaining the concept.
[15] Mullin, who had been the play-by-play voice of Canada West football for 10 years was not included in the new conference broadcast package.
This resulted in the show finding a new home on CHCH, which significantly increased the household reach across Canada to 6.8 million[16] and aligned the product with the OUA.
With Mullin off the play-by-play beat, more focus was placed on NCAA Football and Canadian players on Division I teams.
This included Mullin anchoring from Knoxville, Tennessee[18] and Grand Forks, North Dakota[19] along with on-site interviews and visits in Atlanta, Georgia, Athens, Ohio, Seattle, Washington and Buffalo, New York.
The majority of content focused on Canadian participation in the NCAA,[21] with some additional coverage provided to U SPORTS football.
The 2017 #Power7 accurately reflected the eventual outcome of the Vanier Cup, with the Western Ontario Mustangs in first place, and the Laval Rouge et Or in second for the final weeks.