The proposed changes make the CFL less Canadian

The Canadian flag is displayed at centre field prior to a CFL game between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Hamilton Tiger-Cats at Tim Hortons Field on June 14, 2025.

Introduction

On September 22, 2025, an earthquake in Toronto sent shockwaves across Canada. More than a year later, the aftershocks are still being felt.

Stewart Johnston, who had only been commissioner of the Canadian Football League for five months at that point, rocked the foundations of the sport by announcing a litany of changes that not only affected the rulebook, but also the physical layout of the field itself. The proposed rule changes included:

Starting in 2026:

• modified rouge

• team benches on opposite sidelines

• 35-second play clock

• double overtime mini-games followed by alternating two-point conversions to eliminate tie games

Starting in 2027:

• shrinking the playing field from 110 yards long to 100 yards long

• moving the uprights from the goal line to the end line

• shrinking the end zone from 20 yards deep to 15 yards deep

• starting the season in May instead of June, extending the full season to accommodate…

• …an expanded eight-team playoff bracket, with a new additional round of games

Of the changes Johnston proposed, two would completely eliminate elements that differentiate Canadian football from American (110 yard fields and uprights on the goal line). Two others would significantly alter uniquely Canadian elements and reduce their ability to remain a factor in this version of the sport (larger end zones and rouges).

There is a loud segment of supporters, online, on TV (many of whom are employees of major financial partners of the league), and in other media who insist these changes don’t diminish the Canadianness of the league. After all, the league still…

- has nine teams, all of which are located in Canada.
- uses a three-down system.

- includes rouges (just fewer ways to score them now).

- is 12v12.

- allows unlimited motion.

- is played on a field that is 65 yards wide.

- has Canadian player roster minimums.

- uses no yards penalties in lieu of fair catches, creating more dynamic kick/punt returns.

- has different clock rules at 0:00.

- has a three-minute warning.

- requires a one-yard neutral zone.

These people believe (much as the commissioner and the Board of Governors do) that the changes to the game will make their version of the sport more recognizable, palatable to audiences who prefer the American football and the NFL, and are a byproduct of a league which has let time pass it by for the sake of tradition to the point these changes are the only way to save it from irreversible irrelevancy and complete collapse.

Contrary to their beliefs, the deluge of changes being brought in all at once is a threat to the Canadian version of the game. After all, Canada is the only country featuring all of the above components in its version of football. The reason so many people are upset by these changes in the CFL is because of how unique the rules are. American football is played in Japan, Italy, Germany, Mexico, and quite literally every other country with tackle football. Canadian football is only found in Canada. The end zone sizes, upright location, rouges, and field length are primarily found in the Canadian version of the game. Removing or reducing those solely Canadian elements inherently makes the game more homogenized, and come next May, it will look markedly more like what the rest of the leagues and countries that play American football already see.

Additionally, these monumental changes were announced without much supporting data to back up the decisions. What little data the CFL did release was paltry and unsubstantiated. Although many critics of the rule changes have called for further evidence and accountability from the league office to provide us with the “decades of data” it claims to have combed through to come to these determinations, those calls have gone unanswered and Commissioner Johnston has since been in hiding.

Not unlike the release of New Coke, the CFL is drastically altering its longstanding, proven product with seemingly minimal regard for how it became such a staple, changing the physical recipe of an already strong brand in hopes it will somehow increase its market share. But while New Coke was tested with over 200,000 subjects and double-checked by multiple marketing and research groups before hitting the shelves, they didn’t ask the right questions or present the new product in its full form, only giving participants one or two sips, not a full serving. Likewise, the CFL is trying to sell the new version of itself without really digging into how to make itself more viable, profitable, and stable in the future – because it too is not asking the right questions. 

Personally, I thought there was a chance the league knew the 2027 field changes would be so unpopular among its most loyal fans that they announced them with the intent to get the diehards and the media to talk way more CFL than normal and put it into the conversation in a way that actually grew the audience more because the league secretly intended to repeal the changes from the start, meaning those diehards would stay in the game and the casual fans and newcomers would be hooked because of how much extra attention the league got. That theory seems less and less likely as more teams release season ticket holder plans with updated maps (sans 55 yard lines) for 2027.

While I fundamentally, personally, and emphatically disagree with the proposed changes to the rouge, the field dimensions, and the placement of the uprights, I will try and attempt to keep the focus of this lengthy article primarily on data, research, and historical context to back my arguments. Because while there is a debate to be had that the changes may or may not be “Americanizing” the CFL, the elimination and reduction of uniquely Canadian elements does in fact mean the CFL is becoming less Canadian.

Canadian Ideas, American Imperialism

“Hard work is rewarding. Taking credit for other people's hard work is rewarding and faster.” - Scott Adams

The first documented divergence and differentiation from rugby to football as we now know it occurred on the University of Toronto’s campus in 1861. A year later, two Canadian battalions met at the Montreal Cricket Grounds in the first match played before a recorded audience. 1869 and 1873 saw the formation of the Hamilton Football Club and the Toronto Argonauts football club, respectively. In 1874, students from McGill and Harvard dueled in two separate contests, one of each played under the home rules of each school. Harvard’s team had a preference for McGill’s game, and used it as the foundation for its own rules moving forward, influencing directly the standardization of the intercollegiate rules soon played by all American institutions. 

Originally matching the fields of Canadian teams, new American rules adopted in 1912 changed the standard playing field to 100 yards in order to accommodate the creation of end zones (and also formally shifted from three downs to four), a result of the legalization of the forward pass. The creation of end zones also set the precedent for both countries to initially have their uprights placed on the goal line. NCAA rules moved them to the back line in 1927 for college ball, although pro American leagues including the National Football League and American Football League kept them on the goal line until 1974.

Despite Canada’s early development of the game, American influence on its globalization is undeniable. In fact, the role the United States has had in football’s expansion somewhat parallels its increasing influence and international presence in the early-to-mid 20th century. Italy’s first documented exposure to the game came during 1913 military training exercises between the crews of the USS Kansas and the USS Connecticut. Both World Wars saw many of America’s armed servicemen create squads at their camps and bases, and challenge other groups in down time. The trend only continued, as American military personnel played or introduced football in far-flung places like Japan, Vietnam, Bosnia and Herzogovina, and Iraq.

Direct competition between Canadian and American franchises was not unheard of in the 1940s and 1950s, with at least 10 known contests occurring, each employing various mixes and combinations of rules from each team’s own code to put on an exhibition match for fans. Notably, these contests ceased after the Hamilton Tiger-Cats recorded the only victory by a Canadian team when they defeated the Buffalo Bills in 1961.

Simon Fraser University, located in Burnaby, British Columbia, fielded a football team from 1965-2022. The majority of those years were spent as a member of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) or the NCAA’s Division II, and therefore played American football under American rules on American fields. The only span of time this was not the case was from 2002-2009, when SFU was a member of Canada West. Simon Fraser and the University of British Columbia maintained a fierce rivalry, featuring 34 contests played at alternating venues under alternating rules. The Shrum Bowl was revived and played for the final time before the Red Leafs cut football from its athletic department ahead of the 2023-24 school year. Despite playing in U Sports, that contest saw UBC defeat SFU under American rules.

Founded in 1998, the International Federation of American Football (IFAF) is the governing body for American football on the global stage. It has 78 member nations as of 2025 – including the United States and Canada – all of whom participate in men’s and women’s variants of American football, including tackle, flag, and wheelchair. IFAF tackle rules are modeled off of NCAA’s four-down, 100-yard system. However, in 2023, the organization did announce that the Canadian Amateur Football Rule Book would become an approved form of game play for the first time, opening the door for 12-man and 110-yard field competitions. Preliminary inspection has not revealed any tournaments taking advantage of this update, as of yet.

The Central European Football League, which was established in 2005, is an invite-only knockout tournament that originally started as a small league in Serbia and Slovenia. Since then, 51 teams from 22 nations have competed in the CEFL Championship tourney. All of those teams from each of those separate national leagues also play on standard American-size fields.

John Grisham’s fictional 2007 novel, Playing for Pizza, tells the story of a quarterback who is blacklisted from the NFL after his three fourth-quarter interceptions in the AFC Championship cost the Cleveland Browns a shot at their first Super Bowl appearance. His only option to continue playing comes from the Parma Panthers, a very real franchise dating back to 1981 that has won the Italian Football League title seven times in the past 26 years. The Panthers and the IFL play on fields that are compliant with NCAA dimensions.

American influence on global football (even and especially in Canada) doesn’t end there.

Though the NFL has historically not tried to tread on the CFL’s toes too much, Canada has never been too far off the radar of American leagues. When Major League Baseball expanded to Montreal in 1969, the Expos ownership group hosted a pair of NFL preseason games to gauge local interest in potentially acquiring its own team, despite the presence of the Alouettes. 

The World Football League (WFL) and John F. Bassett – whose family owned the Toronto Argonauts at same time – intended to plant a team in Toronto ahead of the league’s 1974 debut. That attempt was halted by the introduction of Bill C-22, otherwise known as the Canadian Football Act. Though the bill never became law, the threat was enough to force Bassett to redirect his sights to Memphis, Tennessee. 

In 1988 and 1990, the NFL played two more preseason games in Montreal, once more presumably testing the market for viability with no CFL team to contest it directly (the Alouettes having folded in 1987). Another planned preseason game in 1988 at Toronto’s Exhibition Stadium was cancelled by NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle after significant backlash from Canadian officials.

The Montreal Machine became a founding member of the World League of American Football (WLAF), a decades-old expansion project of the NFL that finally came to fruition in time for the 1991 spring season. The Machine played two seasons before the WLAF went on hiatus before returning as a European-only project in 1995. It continued to operate until after the 2007 championship game, when NFL Europa as it was then known was shuttered for good. 

Since then, the NFL’s foray into Canada has featured seven preseason and six regular season contests, most significantly during the Bills Toronto Series from 2008-2013, and ending with a matchup between the Oakland Raiders and Green Bay Packers in Winnipeg in 2019. Current commissioner Roger Goodell has indicated that more Toronto games aren’t off the table, but also mentioned that Canada currently lacks an NFL-worthy stadium.

Since the initial trip by Harvard footballers to Montreal in 1874, American college teams have played over two dozen games in Canada. In 2007, the International Bowl became the first game in over 50 years to feature American teams playing north of the border. The postseason contest between teams from the Mid-American Conference and Big East was played four times before being discontinued in 2011. Plans for a matchup between Syracuse and Wake Forest were announced in May 2026, with the game scheduled to kick off the 2027 season for both squads at BMO Field in Toronto.

The Arena Football League, a four-down, indoor variant on American football, relocated a team to the Greater Toronto Area with the Toronto Phantoms ahead of the 2001 season. The club’s majority ownership was none other than Rogers Communications. The team played two seasons in Canada before suspending operations, never again to take the field. 

From 2001-2017, the Montreal Blitz were the lone Canadian entrant in the Independent Women’s Football League and Women’s Football Alliance, and therefore played American rules. After a five year hiatus, the Blitz were revived as a member of the Central Canadian Women’s Football League one of three top-tier women’s leagues alongside the Maritime Women’s Football League and Western Women’s Canadian Football League, all of which play unmodified, three-down, 110-yard football.

In 2012, the Lingerie Football League (LFL) created a companion league it dubbed LFL Canada. Hamilton hosted the 2011-12 LFL All-Fantasy Game as a test run for the proposed venture. Initially announced as a six-team circuit, five of the original markets bailed or were dropped, leaving the LFL scrambling to eventually secure a total of four teams active for the August 2012 debut. A proposed Calgary expansion team was in the works for 2013, but the entire league went on pause to restructure, rebrand, and attempt a continental merger, at which time LFL Canada was deemed no longer viable. The LFL, as it originated in the states, was played as a four-down league.

A second attempt to bring arena ball to Canada was cut short, when in 2017, the Hamilton-based Niagara Spartans, had to cease operations in the Can-Am Indoor Football League due to cross-border travel issues. 

Toshiki Sato, the first Japanese player to appear in a CFL game, is a product of the league’s 2021 Global Draft, which streamlined the previous concepts of drafting players from Mexico’s Liga de Fútbol Americano Profesional (LFA) as well as European players in two separate 2019 events. The LFA, as well as Japan’s X-League (in which Sato played for IBM Big Blue) also utilize 100-yard fields and have rulebooks that are near copies of those used in American college and pro leagues.

Currently, the Greater Toronto Indoor Football League (GTIFL) uses a four-down system because it does not play on a gridiron field surface, instead opting to play using the indoor turf at its facilities to set the distance to go, meaning drive starts usually look like first and 20 or first and 25. The greater distance to go (and lack of field goals) necessitates the extra down.

Conversely, select indoor American football leagues (such as the IFL and AF1 currently) use the interchangeable terms rouge, single, or one to indicate a one-point score when a free kick or kickoff is booted to the receiving team and the returner fails to get the ball out of their own end zone before being downed. The term and basis are modeled off of the Canadian rouge/single, which can occur on any kicking or punting play, and as stated above, has been modified to occur less frequently.

Meanwhile, Football Canada oversees all amateur levels of football in Canada from grassroots/youth through high school, while U Sports governs collegiate football play. Both of these bodies maintain near-identical rules, although Football Canada does permit four-down football when preferred, which some high school leagues do. However, following the CFL’s announcement and months of anticipation, Football Canada and U Sports uniformly stated they would not be adopting the changes, thus creating a split between the highest level of Canadian football and its foundation.

All this to say, what makes Canadian football great can truly only be found in Canada.