The Yates Cup is a Canadian sports trophy, presented annually to the winner of the Ontario University Athletics football conference of U Sports. It is the oldest still-existing football trophy in North America, dating back to 1898 and surpassing both the Grey Cup and the Little Brown Jug in longevity.

Ontario University Athletics is a regional membership association for Canadian universities which assists in co-ordinating competition between their university level athletic programs and providing contact information, schedules, results, and releases about those programs and events to the public and the media. This is similar to what would be called a college athletic conference in the United States. OUA, which covers Ontario, is one of four such bodies that are members of the country's governing body for university athletics, U Sports. The other three regional associations coordinating university-level sports in Canada are Atlantic University Sport (AUS), the Canada West Universities Athletic Association (CW), and Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec (RSEQ).