Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Canadian Football

Starting point is 00:00:00 In 1903, the Ontario Rugby Football Union adopted a set of rules for their sport, which had been codified by Thrift Burnside, the captain of the University of Toronto football team. The rules were major changes to the game of rugby and were largely based on the rules created by Walter Camp for use in American football in the 1880s. However, with those rules, a new game was developed that was neither rugby nor American football. Learn more about Canadian football, its origins, and how its play. on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

Starting point is 00:00:57 It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. There's a very good chance that many of the non-Canadians listening to this podcast have no clue that there is even a thing known as Canadian football. Of those non-Canadians who are aware that there is a thing called Canadian football, there's a good chance that they're exactly sure what it is other than it is sort of similar to American football. Canadian football is one of the many sports that evolved from the early proto game known generically as

Starting point is 00:01:37 football, which splintered into a host of games including Association Football, Rugby Union, rugby league, and American football. I've previously covered the history of those games in another episode, so today I'm going to focus on one of the offshoots from that tree, Canadian football. The origins of a unique Canadian game can be traced back to a pair of matches that took place in 1874 between Harvard and McGill University of Montreal. Harvard invited McGill to Boston to play two games of the new sport known as football or rugby. At this point, the games had no formal sets of rules and each team had a time.

Starting point is 00:02:15 own rules. The McGill team arrived in Boston a few days early to Cite C and to practice. One of the Harvard players went to watch the McGill team play and realized that they were playing a very different game and were even using a completely different ball. The teams agreed that the first game would be played by Harvard Rules and that the second game would be played by McGill Rules. The Harvard game was closer to modern-day association football or soccer. They used a round ball and it was mostly just kicking. The McGill game was using an oblong ball and involved picking up the ball and running. It was closer to what we now know as rugby. This was the first formal football game in North America, and the differences between the teams in terms of rules, unbeknownst to them at the time,

Starting point is 00:03:02 became the basis for two completely different games in each country. The Canadian game was called rugby, but there were some very big differences from what most people know today as rugby. In fact, the Canadian game was known as rugby for years after it ceased really being rugby. The big advance in the Canadian game took place in 1903. There had been changes to the rules over the years, but they were codified for the first time in 1903 by the Ontario Rugby Football Union. The rules were named the Burnside Rules after the captain of the University of Toronto football team, Thrift Burnside. The Burnside Rules established many of the rules that came to defundside. find the Canadian game, including rules that are still in effect today. Many of these rule changes

Starting point is 00:03:49 were based on the American rules that had been previously established by Walter Camp in the 1880s. More on those rules in a bit. In 1909, the Canadian Rugby Union established a championship. The prize was a cup donated by Albert Gray, the fourth Earl of Grey, the Governor General of Canada, who was the King's representative in the country. The annual championship became known as the Grey Cup. Initially, the Grey Cup was for amateur teams. The first Gray Cup was held on December 4, 1909, between the University of Toronto Varsity Blues and the Parkdale Canoe Club. The University of Toronto team won 26 to 6 in front of a crowd of 3,800 spectators. The Toronto Varsity Blues won the first three Grey Cups and refused to hand over the cup in 1912 when the

Starting point is 00:04:38 Hamilton Alerts defeated the Toronto Argonauts 11 to 4. They wouldn't give the cup back until they were beaten on the field, which is what happened in 1914. In 1907, several of the best teams in Ontario and Quebec formed the interprovincial rugby football union, which became known as the Big Four. They were the Hamilton Tigers, the Toronto Argonauts, the Montreal Football Club, and the Ottawa Rough Riders. The Grey Cup was originally only contended for by clubs in eastern provinces, but eventually clubs from Western provinces were allowed to compete in the 1920s. The best teams eventually became more professional, which widened the gap between them and amateur clubs.

Starting point is 00:05:20 The last university club withdrew in 1933, and in 1954, the Ontario Rugby Football Union, the last purely amateur union competing, totally withdrew from the competition. In 1956, the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union and the Western Interprovincial Football Union merged to form the Canadian Football Council, which was a member of the Canadian Rugby Union. Finally, in 1958, the Canadian Football Council left the Canadian Rugby Union to form the Canadian Football League, or the CFL. And this was the final removal of the term rugby, a term which Canadian football had long since moved away from. As part of the CFL's formation, they assumed control over the Grey Cup and made it an

Starting point is 00:06:07 exclusively professional competition. The CFL was split into Eastern and Western conferences that never played each other outside of the Grey Cup until 1981. The CFL was an exclusively Canadian affair until the 1990s when they attempted an ill-fated expansion into the United States. From 1993 to 1995, they added the Sacramento Gold Miners, Las Vegas Posse, Baltimore, and Shreveport Pirates. For the 1995 campaign, they added two more teams, the Birmingham Barracudas and the Memphis Mad Dogs. The Baltimore Stallions were actually a runner-up in the Grey Cup in 1994 and won it in 1995,

Starting point is 00:06:47 meaning that the franchise was in two championship games the only two years that the franchise existed, winning one of them. And that makes the Baltimore Stallions one of the most successful franchises of any type in sports history. And it also means that an American team has won the Canadian Grey Cup more recently than a Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup in hockey. As of today, there are nine teams in the CFL. The Eastern Division consists of the Hamilton Tiger Cats, the Montreal Alouettes, the Ottawa Red Blacks, and the Toronto Argonauts. The Western Division consists of the BC Lions, the Calgary Stampeders, the Edmonton Elks, the Winnipeg, Blue Bombers, and the Saskatchewan Rough Ruff Riders.

Starting point is 00:07:31 About half of all CFL players are Americans who played college football in the United States. However, there is a quota for Native Canadian players. So for those of you who aren't familiar with Canadian football, what exactly is it that makes it different from American football? At first glance, the games look the same. The fields look kind of similar. There are players wearing helmets and pads. There are goalposts and the ball is of a similar shape.

Starting point is 00:07:59 However, if you look closely, you will feel. find some profound differences. The first difference is in the field. The Canadian football field is much larger than an American football field. The Canadian field is 110 yards long and 65 yards wide, as opposed to an American field that's 100 yards long and 53 and a third yards wide. The actual playing field, however, isn't the whole story. American football fields have end zones that are 10 yards deep. Canadian football fields have an end zone that's 20 yards. deep. The size of the field has always been different between Canadian and American football. The Canadian field was always closer in size to a rugby field. Because of the field size, most stadiums in

Starting point is 00:08:44 the United States couldn't actually host a CFL game on a regulation-sized field if they wanted to. The goalposts on a Canadian field are at the goal line right at the front of the end zone, whereas on an American field, they are at the back of the end zone. American football was actually the game that changed their goalposts. The NFL used to have goalposts like the CFL, but they moved them back in 1974. Another big difference is that Canadian football has 12 players on a side versus 11 for American teams. This change was part of the original Burnside rules which changed the number of players on a team from 16 to 12. Because of the larger field and the extra player, you seldom see tight ends in the CFL. They will normally just put in another wide receiver.

Starting point is 00:09:31 There's nothing against having a tight end in the rules, but that's how the strategy for the game has evolved differently. The other thing that really makes the game more pass-orientated is that there are only three downs instead of four. And this was actually the way the American game was played in the late 19th century as well, but they later added a fourth down. The addition of a fourth down has been debated in the CFL for several years, but so far they have stuck with the three-down system. There are also differences in how the game clock is managed. The CFL only allows two timeouts per game, whereas the NFL allows three per half. Likewise, the play clock in the NFL is 40 seconds, whereas in the CFL it's 20 seconds. In addition to a bigger field, another difference between the CFL and the NFL is how far the offense and defense are apart from each other at the line of scrimmage.

Starting point is 00:10:25 In the NFL, each side has to be the width of the football apart from the game. each other at the line of scrimmage or about 11 inches. However, in the CFL, each side has to be one yard apart from the other at the line of scrimmage. This makes it easier for receivers to get downfield, which also encourages the passing game. In Canadian football, any offensive player, not at the line of scrimmage, can move freely so long as they remain behind the line of scrimmage. In American football, all offensive players have to be set before the snap starts play. Perhaps the biggest difference between the American and Canadian game has to do with kicking and unique scoring opportunities.

Starting point is 00:11:07 Canadian football has a unique method of scoring known as a single or a rouge. It is literally a way to score one point that doesn't exist in any variant of American football. A single can be scored whenever a ball is legally kicked into the opponent's end zone and not returned out of the end zone. This can happen on a kickoff, a missed field goal, or a punt. A single point may not seem like a big deal, but it can be a huge strategic element of the game. On the one hand, games can be won by a single point. On the other hand, CFL games tend to be higher scoring than NFL games.

Starting point is 00:11:48 If the kicking team scores a single, then the receiving team will still get possession of the ball at their 40-yard line. But sometimes it might be wise to concede. the point to avoid a safety which would transfer possession as well as simply to get better field position. As I mentioned, the single rule also comes into effect on missed field goals. Let's say that a game is tied and there are only seconds on the clock. A team attempts a long field goal to win the game. Under the single rule, they could miss the field goal and still possibly win the game if the other team doesn't get the ball out of the end zone. Not surprisingly, there are no fair catches in the CFF The lowest scoring CFL game in history was a one-to-nothing victory by the Montreal

Starting point is 00:12:33 Allouettes over the Ottawa Rough Riders in 1966. There is another rule that's unique to Canadian football and also has some unique implications. In Canadian football, you can do what's known as an open field kick. Basically, you can punt the ball from anywhere on the field at any time. This isn't very common because it entails a lot of risk, but it is in the rule. rules. These rules can act in conjunction in very rare occasions to create some very bizarre plays. For example, in the semifinals of the 1972 Grey Cup, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers were playing the Saskatchewan Rough Riders. At the end of the game, the score was tied 24 to 24, and Saskatchewan

Starting point is 00:13:17 attempted a game-winning 32-yard field goal on the last play of the game. Saskatchewan kicks and misses the field goal as the ball goes wide right. Now, unless Winnipeg gets the ball out of the end zone, Saskatchewan will score a single and win the game. So Winnipeg grabs the ball and punts it out of the end zone. Saskatchewan then gets the ball and punts it back into the end zone, where another Winnipeg player is waiting, grabbing the ball and punting it back out of the end zone again.

Starting point is 00:13:50 There ended up being a penalty on the play in Saskatchewan, Match Juan got to re-kick making the field goal this time winning the game, but the events that got them there were extremely bizarre. Canadian and American football superficially do look alike. But once you scratch the surface, you'll see that the games, despite their common origin, are very, very different. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever.

Starting point is 00:14:22 I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the Completionist Club,

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Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Canadian Football

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