Breaking the monotony of all the Olympic posts (I’ve still got two more), were switching gears and talking about football. Of course, it’s not really about football, but more about football stadiums. One thing I’ve never understood while watching an Eskimos game is the endzones at Commonwealth.
Because of the extra length of a Canadian football field and the full size (ten lanes) track surrounding the field, the corners on of the endzones aren’t really corners; they’re more ovally (best seen here, though there are those annoying traingle ads kind of in the way). But, because the corner doesn’t meet at a right angle at the back of the endzones (and it’s like this at all four corners), it seems like there’s some significant real estate being lost for the players.
I figure that the curve starts about ten yards deep into the endzone and finishes about five yards in from the sidelines. That’s some pretty significant space to lose in the endzone. In fact, it must frustrate teams to no end when they try to run corner fades when in the red zone at Commonwealth. For a throw that’s based almost entirely on muscle memory, the lack of a corner must completely throw a team off.
(As an aside, why are there no college football or NFL clips on youtube that aren’t shot on someone’s phone from the 40th row? I don’t get why everyone blcoks their stuff from hitting youtube; it’s terrific free publicity. Okay, full games or shows or movies and stuff I get, but highlights and clips and stuff should be on there daily, like the NHL does—and they even put up the stuff the league might not want you to see like fights and stuff).
So yeah, I can’t believe that the fact that Commonwealth doesn’t have corners has never been a big deal.
