YankeeVol
Raised a Yank, Born a Vol
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2010
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My adopted team is Winnipeg. For some reason, I just love watching Andrew Harris play. I’ll watch any CFL that’s on because of its uniqueness.
Love the extra players on the field, bigger/wider field, and all the motion on offense.
Also you can advance onsides kicks, so there have been plays where they've looped kicks to guys running down the side and they've scored. Also with the 20 yard endzones, there have been quite a few kick-6s; it makes misisng a FG way more risky.
Interesting, love learning stuff like this.Another difference is the CFL ball. It used to be a bit bigger than the NFL ball and has two solid stripes on each end. I remember a Warren Moon interview when he said using the CFL ball made him a better passer because when he came to the NFL the ball felt small and he could throw it better. It used to produce monster punts and long range field goals. Several years ago the CFL adopted the NFL ball but the CFL ball retained the 2 white stripes. It makes for an interesting view when the ball is thrown. You can see how tight a spiral is or how bad it looks as a lame duck throw.
I grew up in Vancouver and attended many Lions games. My mum is from Seattle and dad is Canadian. I hold both passports and it allowed me to get into UDubs Aerospace program. Never got into their football much but we used to get all the Seattle stations in Vancouver. Saw plenty of southern college football and NFL football.
The CFL was more popular in the 80's but I'm not sure what happened. I've been gone for many years. The Lions would regularly get 50K partly because of a new domed stadium but fell off in the 90's and beyond. I think it was mentioned nowadays it's 30K or so and that's right. They'll still get 50-60k for Grey Cup games in Vancouver though. I think most Canadian football fans like all varieties. NFL, CFL and College. BC was the only province that played US rules in high school. Not sure if it's still like that.
Oh...another thing. There is a requirement for having a certain number of Canadian born players on each roster. Not sure what the number is but it's quite a few. The skilled positions are normally US players.
I went to a BC game about 4 years ago. They weren't very good that year and it was late in the season so there was about 25-30K at the game. They had the upper deck fully blocked off but the lower bowl was pretty decently full and the people that were there were pretty passionate. I'm wondering if the Seahawks growing into more of a name NFL team hurt them because I did see a good bit of Seahawks stuff around town when I visited. I wore Titans and Predators gear out some and lots of people would comment on them, moreso the Preds because we had just lost the Stanely Cup Finals and most were saying how much they were pulling for us to beat the Penguins.
From the fans around me I talked to at the Lions game they said one big thing was the Lions had been down for what seemed like an extended time and like any other team when you lose, fans don't show up as much. They also said the increase of televison/streaming seemed to hurt attendance but that ratings and streaming were actually good. Many seemed to think the league had kind of gone the way of other pro sports leagues too in that interest was lower until the playoffs.