Pre-snap motion, one-point scores, running back nearly every kick (no fair catch), huge field and end zones…I love it!
Speaking as a lifelong NFL and Packer fan, I also love the CFL. I first discovered Canadian football in the early '80s, when I was a teenager, and my family first got cable TV – in those days, ESPN didn’t have the broadcast rights to any of the major U.S. sports, so they ran a lot of other things, including CFL games. Those were the days that the Edmonton Eskimos were the league’s best team, with Warren Moon at QB.
In recent years, American cable channels have been regularly carrying CFL games, so I’m able to watch them again. I really enjoy the style of play, though I do note that the running game seems to be even more de-emphasized in Canadian play than it is in NFL play these days.
I enjoy both leagues, but I agree, the CFL has a more wide-open feel to it. OTOH, CFL teams have tiny payrolls, compared to their NFL counterparts, and the overall talent level is likely a notch below the NFL.
I was able to attend an Argos game in 2012, when my wife and I vacationed in Toronto – that was a lot of fun.
Love the CFL!
Yesterday’s game between the BC Lions and Montreal Alouettes came down to a final field goal, with TWO-TENTHs of a second left in the game! BC had been losing the entire game until a touchdown with a few minutes to go put them ahead. Montreal came back to go ahead with their own FG. Great game.
- The game is fast.
- Twelve players per side.
- No fair catch on punts.
- Only three downs to make a first down.
- Players in motion before the snap. Receivers are often running full speed and cross the scrimmage line just as the ball is snapped.
- End zones are 20 yards deep. Lots of great plays made in a big end zone.
- As long as the offense is set, the clock can run out at the end of a quarter and that play can continue.
- A single is a one-point score awarded for certain plays that involve the ball being kicked into the end zone and not returned.
And the announcers are talking in real time, meaning they watch the game and not watching monitors in front of them.
No surprise, since they effectively begin their downs as 2nd and 10, even with the stated advantages the offense gets vs. the NFL.
I’ve always said that the CFL is a better game with a better set of rules. The shorter play clock helps too; the players actually have to play and spend a lot less time wandering around talking about maybe playing a down sometime soon…!
The talent level is different, but most of the import players (Americans) were probably at least looked at by NFL teams, if not drafted, but didn’t make the cut. Canadian players probably not as much, but the league roster requirements do mean the best Canadian players can play professionally.
I don’t follow as closely as I used to, mostly just due to other commitments and forgetting to check the schedules, but I do catch Alouettes games regularly. Missed last night’s game, though, as I was at a concert.
Last night BC-Als game was a variant on the old comment about hockey:
“I was watching the CFL fights last night, and a game broke out.”
There will be fines and possibly suspensions coming.
PS - I’ll just mention that the Riders are on the top of the league, with a game in hand over the Als. 
As for the running game, yes, passes play a bigger role here than in the NFL, so less time for runs.
But it also depends on having a a good running back.
Enter A.J. Ouellette for the Riders, who ran for 139 yards and a TD last week over BC:
The combination of the bigger field, more passing, more player movement, and three downs, also opens up the game for more wide-open plays than in the more regimented NFL games.
Case in point last year: one of the strangest pick-sixes I’ve seen, Riders over BC; see the embedded video in this article:
Has this always been the case? I vaguely recall as a youngster end zones were 25 yards deep, and possibly that they changed it after some stadiums couldn’t fit that much.
Yes, it’s been shrinking gradually (Wikipedia):
Since 1986, Canadian end zones are 20 yards (18.3 m) deep while the American end zones are 10 yards (9.1 m) deep. Canadian end zones were previously 25 yards (22.9 m), with Vancouver’s BC Place the first to use the 20-yard-long end zone in 1983, and since 2016, the home of the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts, BMO Field, uses an 18-yard-long (16.5 m) end zone.[4]
Ahh makes sense. I lived in Vancouver the summer of 1983 so I’m sure that’s where I picked up the information including that the larger end zones wouldn’t fit.
I really enjoy the CFL, but I disagree with the premise that a game is better or more fun because it’s “more open”, “faster paced” or “higher scoring”. That’s like sports junk food. Defense and methodical attacks are fine dining.
Sports junk food is ideal while sitting at a bar w friends eating & drinking stuff bad for you while watching 3 games on 5 TVs.
Careful study of a single game alone by a knowledgeable observer is a different experience. And yes, akin to fine dining.
Honestly I think that’s why I like football so much. That in-the-trenches kind of play. But I’ve been watching it for a long time and it took a while to appreciate it.
The looser, higher-scoring kind of play would be more appealing to a casual fan I’m sure. And even as a fan of the NFL, I love that the CFL is different. Having variety is good. I don’t need another NFL to watch. It’s also why I like the differences at the college level.
I recall my American ex-wife, who loved NFL, moved here for work, and fell in love with the CFL too. She liked much of what has been said so far: more open play, backfield in motion, the single point, and so on. As she stated once, being a football fan in Canada is great, because you get seven months of CFL and NFL combined.
Discipline has been handed out by the league: BC player suspended for one game for starting the brawl. Two Montreal players fined for participating, one fined for making contact on a TSN camera operator.
Stamps @ Riders tonight.
Maybe.
Game was to start at 7 pm Sask time.
Now 8 o’clock Sask time, over an hour late, and game hasn’t started. Smoke from the wildfires is making the air quality not safe to play in.
TSN’s talking heads are earning their money tonight, keeping the pre-game show going for an hour and a half.
One of TSN’s sideline talents took off his jacket and started practising punts, to derisive comments from the panel back in Toronto.
Text message from Riders to tix holders advised that kickoff will be at least 30 minutes from now.
Game deferred to tomorrow at 2pm.
Honestly, a lot of the CFL’s rules seem pretty cool to me, particularly the liberalized pre-snap motion that offenses are allowed to indulge in, the increased size of the playing field and, of course, the mighty rouge. But I just find the whole thing with the offenses only getting three downs to be really hard to embrace. It just doesn’t seem like enough.
It’s the three downs that opens the game up. When you’ve only got three chances to make ten yards, you think twice about trying this, or attempting that, because if things don’t work, then you’ve got another chance or two.
In three-down football, you’ve got to know what you can accomplish with so few chances to advance the ball. Mostly, that’s going to be a forward pass of some sort. And what CFL quarterbacks can do is pretty amazing, being able to target a receiver far down the field. Mostly accurately. Not always, but usually pretty close.
What an NFL TV commentator would call a “Hail Mary, sixty yards away,” a CFL commentator would call, “Just another Friday.”