Football Field

An American football field is 100 yards long (plus 2 10-yard endzones). An American football field (high school or college) is 160 feet wide (53 1/3 yards). Take a look at the top picture on this page to get an idea of the layout: http://www.geocities.com/Augusta/6289/football.html.

Lengthwise, football fields have short marks, or yardlines, at the sidelines at one-yard intervals, with every fifth one extending all the way across the field. There are hash marks dividing it in thirds (well, not exactly: high school fields are divided into literal thirds; college fields place their hash marks 60 feet in from the sidelines; professional fields have them at 70 feet, 9 inches. I believe they all used to be divided into thirds, but the hash marks were moved in for college and professional fields).

The primary purpose of the yardlines is to measure the ball's position relative to the two goal lines. The hash marks are used to roughly position the ball relative to the field's width. So, after each play, the ball's position relative to the goal lines is marked using the set of hash marks closest to where the ball came to rest at the end of the play.

This brings up another bit of jargon. Because the ball is positioned closer to one sideline than it is to the other, there are tactical advantages to running to either side. If you imagine the field divided lengthwise by the placement of the ball, the narrower portion is called the "short" or "weak" side; the wider side is called the "wide" or "strong" side. This affects both play calling (running a "weak flood" means putting lots of potential pass receivers in the smaller area between the ball and the weak side goalline), as well as positions (defensive players behind the line of scrimmage usually specialize in playing either the weak or strong side.)

"Flying wedge" - this refers to a very old American football formation, long since made illegal. Blockers on the offensive team would link arms in a "V" (think of a formation of geese) and run down the field at full speed, with the ball carrier behind them. This exceptionally effective formation led to very serious injuries and even a number of deaths on the field in the early 20th century. In common parlance, it means any seemingly-unbreakable and unfair collusion.

Canadian Football A Canadian football field is 110 yards long (plus 2 20-yard endzones). It has a different width than the American field.

Australian Football An Australian football field is an oval in the region of 165 metres long by 135 metres wide.

Gaelic Football And a Gaelic football field is approximately 137 metres long and 82 metres wide.

Association Football And an Association Football field is 120 yd by 75 yd or 110 m by 70 m. (NB: Soccer is the most popular sport known as football - shouldn't 'football field' refer to soccer fields on an international website?) [ISTR that there is actually allowed variation: 90-120x70-80 or something]

Notice that none of these are as few as a few meters or as many as a thousand. They are each about as far as a 30 year old man can sprint while still feeling the thrill of it.

What is this page doing here? It's not relevant to Software Development, the author deletes anyone else's comments, and there are no backlinks.

As it is fairly long, it was moved to its own page from AmericanCulturalAssumption (to which it relates).