Canadian football
Canadian football, or simply football, is a sport in Canada in which two teams of 12 players compete on a field long and wide, attempting to advance a pointed oval-shaped ball into the opposing team's end zone.
Canadian and American football have shared origins and are closely related, but have some major differences. Canadian football is played with three downs, goalposts in the front of the end zone, and twelve players on each side. American football has four downs, goalposts in the back of the end zone, and eleven players on each side. Canadian football is also played on a wider and longer field, with deeper end zones.
Rugby football, from which Canadian football developed, was first recorded in Canada in the early 1860s, taken there by British immigrants, possibly in 1824. Both the Canadian Football League, the sport's professional league, and Football Canada, the governing body for amateur play, trace their roots to 1880 and the founding of the Canadian Rugby Football Union. The CFL championship game, the Grey Cup, is one of Canada's biggest sporting events, attracting a large television audience.
Canadian football is also played at high school, junior, collegiate, and semi-professional levels. The Canadian Junior Football League and Quebec Junior Football League are for players aged 18–22. Post-secondary institutions compete in U Sports football for the Vanier Cup, and seniors in the Alberta Football League. The Canadian Football Hall of Fame is in Hamilton, Ontario.
History
The first documented football match was a practice game played on November 9, 1861, at University College, University of Toronto. One of the participants in the game involving University of Toronto students was Sir William Mulock, later chancellor of the school. A football club was formed at the university soon afterward, although its rules of play at this stage are unclear.The first written account of a game played was on October 15, 1862, on the Montreal Cricket Grounds. It was between the First Battalion Grenadier Guards and the Second Battalion Scots Fusilier Guards resulting in a win by the Grenadier Guards 3 goals, 2 rouges to nothing. In 1864, at Trinity College, Toronto, F. Barlow Cumberland, Frederick A. Bethune, and Christopher Gwynn, one of the founders of Milton, Massachusetts, devised rules based on rugby football. The game gradually gained a following, with the Hamilton Football Club formed on November 3, 1869. Montreal Football Club was formed on April 8, 1872. Toronto Argonaut Football Club was formed on October 4, 1873, and the Ottawa Football Club on September 20, 1876. Of those clubs, only the Toronto club is still in continuous operation today.
This rugby-football soon became popular at Montreal's McGill University. McGill challenged Harvard University to a two-game series in 1874, using a hybrid game of English rugby devised by the University of McGill.
The first attempt to establish a proper governing body and to adopt the current set of Rugby rules was the Foot Ball Association of Canada, organized on March 24, 1873, followed by the Canadian Rugby Football Union founded June 12, 1880, which included teams from Ontario and Quebec. Later both the Ontario Rugby Football Union and Quebec Rugby Football Union were formed, and then the Interprovincial and Western Interprovincial Football Union . The CRFU reorganized into an umbrella organization forming the Canadian Rugby Union in 1891. The immediate forerunner to the current Canadian Football League was established in 1956 when the IRFU and WIFU formed an umbrella organization, the Canadian Football Council. In 1958, the CFC left the CRU to become the "Canadian Football League".
The Burnside rules closely resembling American football that were incorporated in 1903 by the ORFU, were an effort to distinguish it from a more rugby-oriented game. The Burnside Rules had teams reduced to 12 men per side, introduced the snap-back system, required the offensive team to gain 10 yards on three downs, eliminated the throw-in from the sidelines, allowed only six men on the line, stated that all goals by kicking were to be worth two points and the opposition was to line up 10 yards from the defenders on all kicks. The rules were an attempt to standardize the rules throughout the country. The CIRFU, QRFU, and CRU refused to adopt the new rules at first. Forward passes were not allowed in the Canadian game until 1929, and touchdowns, which had been five points, were increased to six points in 1956, in both cases several decades after the Americans had adopted the same changes. The primary differences between the Canadian and American games stem from rule changes that the American side of the border adopted but the Canadian side did not. The Canadian field width was one rule that was not based on American rules, as the Canadian game was played in wider fields and stadiums than its American counterpart.
The Grey Cup was established in 1909, after being donated by Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey, Governor General of Canada, as the championship of teams under the CRU for the Rugby Football Championship of Canada. Initially an amateur competition, it eventually became dominated by professional teams in the 1940s and early 1950s. The ORFU, the last amateur organization to compete for the trophy, withdrew from competition after the 1954 season. The move ushered in the modern era of Canadian professional football, culminating in the formation of the present-day Canadian Football League in 1958.
Canadian football has mostly been confined to Canada, with the United States being the only other country to have hosted high-level Canadian football games. The CFL's controversial "South Division" as it would come to be officially known attempted to put CFL teams in the United States playing under Canadian rules in 1995. The Expansion was aborted after three years; the Baltimore Stallions were the most successful of the numerous Americans teams to play in the CFL, winning the 83rd Grey Cup. Continuing financial losses, a lack of proper Canadian football venues, a pervasive belief that the American teams were simply pawns to provide the struggling Canadian teams with expansion fee revenue, and the return of the NFL to Baltimore prompted the end of Canadian football on the American side of the border.
In Atlantic Canada, the CFL hosted the Touchdown Atlantic regular season game in Nova Scotia in 2005 and New Brunswick in 2010, 2011, and 2013. Prince Edward Island, the smallest of the provinces, has never hosted a CFL game, but has played college football at tiers below U Sports, such as the Holland Hurricanes representing Holland College in the Atlantic Football League. In 2013, Newfoundland and Labrador became the last province to establish football at the minor league level, with teams playing on the Avalon Peninsula and in Labrador City. The province has yet to host a college or CFL game, as is the case for any of the Northern Canada territories.
On 13 February 2023, the International Federation of American Football and Football Canada announced in a joint statement that the Canadian Amateur Football Rulebook would be an accepted rules code for international play, but would not be a substitute for world championships or world championship qualification.
"As Football Canada continues to work with IFAF, I believe this opens the door for international friendlies and tournaments to be staged in Canada employing the infrastructure communities have invested in for our sport from coast to coast," Football Canada president and IFAF General Secretary Jim Mullin said in the joint statement.
League play
Canadian football is played at several levels in Canada; the top league is the professional nine-team Canadian Football League. The CFL regular season begins in June, and playoffs for the Grey Cup are completed by late November. In cities with outdoor stadiums such as Edmonton, Winnipeg, Calgary, and Regina, low temperatures and icy field conditions can seriously affect the outcome of a game.Amateur football is governed by Football Canada. At the university level, 27 teams play in four conferences under the auspices of U Sports; the U Sports champion is awarded the Vanier Cup. Junior football is played by many after high school before joining the university ranks. There are 19 junior teams in three conferences in the Canadian Junior Football League competing for the Canadian Bowl. The Quebec Junior Football League includes teams from Ontario and Quebec who battle for the Manson Cup.
Semi-professional leagues have grown in popularity in recent years, with the Alberta Football League becoming especially popular. The Northern Football Conference formed in Ontario in 1954 has also surged in popularity for former college players who do not continue to professional football. The Ontario champion plays against the Alberta champion for the "National Championship". The Canadian Major Football League is the governing body for the semi-professional game.
Women's football has gained attention in recent years in Canada. The first Canadian women's league to begin operations was the Maritime Women's Football League in 2004. The largest women's league is the Western Women's Canadian Football League.
Field
The Canadian football field is long and wide, within which the goal areas are deep, and the goal lines are apart. Weighted pylons are placed on the inside corner of the intersections of the goal lines and end lines. Including the end zones, the total area of the field is.At each goal line is a set of goalposts, which consist of two uprights joined by an crossbar which is above the goal line. The goalposts may be H-shaped although in the higher-calibre competitions the tuning-fork design is preferred.
File:Commonwealth Stadium, Edmonton, August 2005.jpg|thumb|left|Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium, originally built for the 1978 Commonwealth Games, pictured in 2005.
The sides of the field are marked by white sidelines, the goal line is marked in white or yellow, and white lines are drawn laterally across the field every from the goal line. These lateral lines are called "yard lines" and often marked with the distance in yards from and an arrow pointed toward the nearest goal line. Prior to the early 1980s, arrows were not used and all yard lines were usually marked with the distance to the goal line, including the goal line itself which was marked with either a "0" or "00"; in most stadiums today, only the yard markers in multiples of 10 are marked with numbers, with the goal line sometimes being marked with a "G". The centre line usually is marked with a "C". "Hash marks" are painted in white, parallel to the yardage lines, at intervals, from the sidelines under amateur rules, but in the CFL.
On fields that have a surrounding running track, such as Molson Stadium and many universities, the end zones are often cut off in the corners to accommodate the track. Until 1986, the end zones were deep, giving the field an overall length of, and a correspondingly larger cutoff could be required at the corners. The first field to feature the shorter 20-yard end zone was Vancouver's BC Place, which opened in 1983. This was particularly common among U.S.-based teams during the CFL's American expansion, where few American stadiums were able to accommodate the much longer and noticeably wider CFL field. The end zones in Toronto's BMO Field are only 18 yards instead of 20 yards.
Beginning in 2027, the playing field in the CFL will be shortened from 110 to 100 yards and the end zones from 20 to 15 yards. In addition, the goal posts will be moved from the goal line to the end line.