Football Archaeology

Our friend Tim Brown drops by the Pigpen to get us ready to watch some CFL football and also shares the rebranding of his website into FootballArchaeology.com.

Our friend Timothy P. Brown the very talented author and historian has changed his website configuration and nam a bit to really dive into what we love, research and information on the game of football and its rich history. Tim's great work can now be found at FootballArchaeology.com. As a matter of fact Tim describes the site in his "about" section; 

"Football Archaeology digs into the history of the gridiron, emphasizing stories of how football evolved - why some elements of the game went away and others arrived. Period images and a dash of humor help tell each thoroughly researched story."

The new website is fantastic and really organizes his previous work and posts and gives the visitor a really nice gridiron experience. Readers can sign up with the simple listing of their email and received every evening at 7PM EST what Tim calls "Tidbits." These little gems of football factoids and short stories bring that nostailgic and informative feeling that us lovers of the game's history thrive on. Don't forget about his great books too that can be purchased on the Football Archaeology.com website including Fields of Friendly Strife and How Football Became Football: 150 Years of the Game's Evolution.

Wih the CFL pre-season hopefully starting, Tim brought in some information that will help us Americans appreciate the Canadian style of game and its history and parallels to the U.S. brand of the gridiron. Here are some highlights of our discussion, the real meat is in what Tim describes in the podcast above and on the Football Achaeology web pages.

Some of the major differences between the CFL from the NFL are:

• The CFL plays on a 110 yard field goal line to goal line (150 yards endline to endline) x 65 yards wide. End zones are 20 yards deep. Meanwhile we are used to the NFL playing on a 100 yard goal line to goal line (120 yards endline to endline) x 53-⅓ yards wide sideline to sideline. Endzones are 10 yards deep
• Goal Posts location of the CFL are on each goal line while the NFL has placed them on each end line since 1974. American Football had then posts on the goal originally too.
• We are accustomed to the NFL having 4 downs to go 10 yards to line to gain in a series. The CFL via the Burnside Rules uses 3 downs to go 10 yards to line to gain. The Canadians actually copied Walter Camps original rule of 3 downs, but originally the sticks were only five yards apart, and Burnside was the frirst to extend them to ten yards. Th collge game in the US caught up with the ten yards int he early twentieth-century and then took it a step further by adding the extra down.
• The kicking game especially in the punting aspect is an intresting difference in the CFL. Since there are more punts because of the 3 down situation, there have been tweaks to the rules, where there is not a fair catch; the player receiving the ball can imediately punt it back if he doesn't like his field postion; and the return team must return the ball out of the endzone or they might give a point to the opposition with the "single", better known as the "rouge." This is taken right from the yules of English Rugby.
• There are multiple people allowed to be in motion onthe widers field and in Canada there are 12 players to a side during play. 

It is really an exciting brand of football, full of tradition. When you really ponder it, the CFL is more traditional to the roots of early football and rugby than the brand that we are used to in America. So as Tim warns, we need to be carful when we wag our finger at our friends up north for changing the game of football... they actually stayed truer to its inception than we do.

The banner photo is of Canadian football icon simple based off https://openclipart.org/detail/102853/football ad redesigned by CFCF.

A Very Special thanks to information obtained from Timothy P. Brown an the FootballArchaeology.com.