Comparison of American and Canadian football
Rugby football was introduced to North America in Canada by the British Army garrison in Montreal, which played a series of games with McGill University.
When the Canadians arrived several days early, to take advantage of the trip to see Boston and the surrounding areas, they held daily practices.
While the American team bested the Canadian (3–0 and a following tie game), both countries' flavours of football were forever changed and linked to one another.
Additionally, Canadian football was slower in removing restrictions on blocking, but caught up by the 1970s so that no significant differences remain today.
Once a fairly common practice, the only example as of 2024[update] in the CFL is the Percival Molson Memorial Stadium, home of the Montreal Alouettes.
[6] In American amateur rules, at the high school level, the distance is 17 yards 2 feet 4 inches (16.3 m), sectioning the field into three almost equal columns.
Despite the CFL and NFL having different specifications until 2018, they overlapped to a sufficient degree that from at least 1985 forward, the same ball could fall within the requirements of both leagues.
The original reason for adopting striped balls was to make them easier to see at night in an era when stadium lighting standards were far less rigorous compared to today.
In both games, the ball is placed at a line of scrimmage, in which a player known as the "centre" or "center" performs a "snap" to start a football play.
It also provides receivers the advantage of a running start, as they can time their runs so that they cross the line of scrimmage at speed when the ball is snapped, allowing them to get downfield faster than receivers in American football, allowing for comparatively longer throws in the same amount of time after the snap or quicker throws for a given distance.
[citation needed] Timing rules change drastically after the minutes warning in both leagues: These timing differences, combined with the fewer downs available for the Canadian offence to earn a first down, lead to spectacularly different end games if the team leading the game has the ball.
[27] American football also allows a defending team to advance a missed field goal; however, because of the absence of singles and the goalpost position at the back of the end zone, the return is rarely exercised, except on a blocked kick, or as time expires in the half or in the game (with a famous example being Chris Davis' game-ending return of a missed field goal for the winning touchdown in the 2013 Alabama–Auburn game).
Most teams instead elect not to attempt a return and assume possession – at the previous line of scrimmage in the NCAA and at the spot of the kick in the NFL.
Under NCAA and NFL rules, a kickoff or free kick after a safety that ends in a fair catch by the receiving team inside its own 25-yard line is treated as a touchback, with the ball moved to the 25.
According to the rules of both the NFL and NCAA, on conversion attempts, the ball is automatically spotted in the middle of the field at the appropriate scrimmage line unless a member of the kicking team expressly asks a referee for an alternative placement.
Hitting a player who is kneeling, sliding, or clearly intends to run the ball out of bounds (especially quarterbacks) is generally viewed as unsportsmanlike and is often penalized, and in the most blatant of cases (especially if it happens in the dying seconds of a game), the player may be subject to off-field disciplinary action by their respective league governing body, usually in the form of fines or suspensions.
[citation needed] The procedures to settle games that are tied at the end of regulation vary considerably among football leagues.
Most leagues other than the NFL, including the CFL, use a procedure frequently called the "Kansas Playoff", so named because it was first developed for high school-football in that state.
The overtime protocol of the second XFL, currently on hiatus, was significantly different from that of other leagues, being most similar to that used in US college football after that rule set's fourth overtime procedure:[38][39] Both games have a penalty for intentional grounding, which is making a forward pass without a significant chance of completion to prevent loss of yards.
A CFL team may dress up to 44 players, composed of 21 "nationals" (essentially, Canadians), 20 "internationals" (almost exclusively Americans), and 3 quarterbacks.
In American football, players who wear numbers from 50 to 79 are, by rule, prohibited from catching or touching forward passes if their team is in possession of the ball and may not line up in a position that allows them to do so, unless explicitly indicated to the referee during a tackle-eligible play.
However, the offensive team enjoys a counteracting advantage of end zones more than twice the size of those in American football (20 yards with a wider field), significantly expanding the area that must be covered by the defensive team and also allowing the freedom to run some pass patterns not available in American football's red zone.
Moreover, the rule requiring only a single foot to be in bounds upon pass reception in Canadian football further stretches the amount of area that the offenses have to work with.
This set of special teams play (field goal return units) are rare in the American game to the point where a returner is not a standard part of a defensive field goal unit and will only be seen in unusual circumstances, with one especially notable example being the famous "Kick Six" college football game in 2013.
In 2014 and 2015, the Edmonton Eskimos even used their third-string quarterbacks (Pat White in 2014 and Jordan Lynch in 2015[43]) as part of their kick and kick-coverage teams.
Henry "The Gizmo" Williams[44] was the first player designated by telecasts as "KR" for a kicker returner position as his duties were almost entirely for that role, and referring to him as "WR" for wide receiver was increasingly seen as anachronistic.
Having three downs on a much longer and wider field with unlimited backfield motion results in Canadian teams requiring faster, more nimble athletes (comparatively) than their American counterparts.
Canadian wide receivers, safeties and cornerbacks are far enough from the point where the ball is snapped that they rarely participate in rush offense or defense.
In American football, it is common (or even, arguably, expected) for teams including coaching staffs and other such personnel to come on the field in order to shake hands, etc.
The main caveats are that in all gridiron codes, a half cannot end on any penalty accepted by the non-penalized team even if there is no time remaining on the clock, and a team may always elect to attempt a conversion after a touchdown even if time is expired, so it is always possible for a final play to run with "zeros on the clock" under such circumstances.
