Canadian football

Canadian football, or simply football, is a sport in Canada in which two teams of 12 players each compete on a field 110 yards (101 m) long and 65 yards (59 m) 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 endzone, and twelve players on each side. Comparatively, American football has four downs, goalposts in the back of the endzone, and eleven players on each side. Canadian football is also played on a wider and longer field, with deeper endzones.

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 (CFL), 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.

The first documented football match was a practice game played on November 9, 1861, at University College, University of Toronto (approximately 400 yards or 370 metres west of Queen's Park). 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 (later the Hamilton Tiger-Cats) 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 (later the Ottawa Rough Riders) 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 (CRFU) founded June 12, 1880, which included teams from Ontario and Quebec. Later both the Ontario Rugby Football Union and Quebec Rugby Football Union (ORFU and QRFU respectively) were formed (January 1883), and then the Interprovincial (1907) and Western Interprovincial Football Union (1936) (IRFU and WIFU). The CRFU reorganized into an umbrella organization forming the Canadian Rugby Union (CRU) 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 (CFC). In 1958, the CFC left the CRU to become the "Canadian Football League" (CFL).