Today's Tidbit... Canadian Football’s Big Turnaround
The tradition at major league parks is that fans can keep the baseballs that land in the stands. Unfortunately, the desire to catch a foul ball can lead to fans tripping on the steps or jostling one another to get the ball, sometimes requiring police assistance to sort things out.
The same and worse used to occur at college and pro football games. Although fans were expected to throw the ball back into the field—as they do when basketballs go into the stands—football fans did not always follow this policy.
Such was the case in 1956, the second-to-last season before the Canadian Football League started. The Big Four (Hamilton, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto) stadiums had problems during field goal and extra point (convert) attempts. Teenagers came out of the stands, caught the booted balls, and ran from the stadiums before the coppers could nab them. Besides the safety issue, teams lost four to seven balls per game at $25 apiece.
A partial solution was to turn around the extra-point process. Rather than kicking from the 10-yard line toward the end zone, the offense lined up ten yards into the end zone and kicked toward the field of play.
Of course, the long-term solution was raising nets behind the goal posts in kicking situations, but as best as I can tell, the first net did not arrive until 1959.
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