![120107-LA-USC-UCLA05-TDMcKnight](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/120107-LA-USC-UCLA05-TDMcKnight.jpg)
The end zone is the
scoring area on the field, according to
gridiron-based codes of football. It is the area between the end line and
goal line bounded by the
sidelines
The "sidelines" are the white or colored lines which mark the outer boundaries of a sports field, running parallel to each other and perpendicular to the goal lines. The sidelines are also where the coaching staff and players out of play ope ...
. There are two end zones, each being on an opposite side of the field. It is bordered on all sides by a white line indicating its beginning and end points, with orange, square pylons placed at each of the four corners as a visual aid (however, prior to around the early 1970s, flags were used instead to denote the end zone). Canadian rule books use the terms ''goal area'' and ''dead line'' instead of ''end zone'' and ''end line'' respectively, but the latter terms are the more common in colloquial Canadian English. Unlike sports like
association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
and
ice hockey
Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...
which require the ball/puck to pass completely over the goal line to count as a score, both Canadian and American football merely need any part of the ball to break the vertical plane of the outer edge of the goal line.
A similar concept exists in both
rugby football
Rugby football is the collective name for the team sports of rugby union and rugby league.
Canadian football and, to a lesser extent, American football were once considered forms of rugby football, but are seldom now referred to as such. The ...
codes, where it is known as the ''in-goal area''. The difference between rugby and gridiron-based codes is that in rugby, the ball must be touched to the ground in the in-goal area to count as a
try
Try or TRY may refer to:
Music Albums
* ''Try!'', an album by the John Mayer Trio
* ''Try'' (Bebo Norman album) (2014) Songs
* "Try" (Blue Rodeo song) (1987)
* "Try" (Colbie Caillat song) (2014)
* "Try" (Nelly Furtado song) (2004)
* " Try (Ju ...
(the rugby equivalent of a touchdown), whereas in the gridiron-based games, simply possessing the ball in or over the end zone is sufficient to count as a touchdown.
Ultimate frisbee
Ultimate, originally known as ultimate Frisbee, is a non-contact team sport played with a frisbee flung by hand. Ultimate was developed in 1968 by AJ Gator in Maplewood, New Jersey. Although ultimate resembles many traditional sports in its ath ...
also uses an end zone scoring area. Scores in this sport are counted when a pass is received in the end zone.
History
The end zones were invented as a result of the legalization of the
forward pass
In several forms of football, a forward pass is the throwing of the ball in the direction in which the offensive team is trying to move, towards the defensive team's goal line. The forward pass is one of the main distinguishers between gridiron ...
in gridiron football. Prior to this, the goal line and end line were the same, and players scored a
touchdown
A touchdown (abbreviated as TD) is a scoring play in gridiron football. Whether running, passing, returning a kickoff or punt, or recovering a turnover, a team scores a touchdown by advancing the ball into the opponent's end zone. In Ameri ...
by leaving the field of play through that line. Goal posts were placed on the goal line, and any kicks that did not result in field goals but left the field through the end lines were simply recorded as
touchback
In American football, a touchback is a ruling which is made and signaled by an official when the ball becomes dead on or behind a team's own goal line (i.e., in their end zone) and the opposing team gave the ball the momentum, or impetus, to trav ...
s (or, in the Canadian game,
singles
Singles are people not in a committed relationship.
Singles may also refer to:
Film and television
* ''Singles'' (miniseries), a 1984 Australian television series
* ''Singles'' (1992 film), written and directed by Cameron Crowe
* ''Singles'' ...
; it was during the pre-end zone era that
Hugh Gall
Hugh Gall (c. 1888 – May 19, 1938) was a Canadian football player considered to be one of the best runners and punters of his era.
After playing half-back in Toronto for Parkdale Collegiate, Gall joined the University of Toronto varsity te ...
set the record for most singles in a game, with eight).
In the earliest days of the forward pass, the pass had to be caught in-bounds and could not be thrown across the goal line (as the receiver would be out of bounds). This also made it difficult to pass the ball when very close to one's own goal line, since merely dropping back to pass or kick would result in a
safety
Safety is the state of being "safe", the condition of being protected from harm or other danger. Safety can also refer to risk management, the control of recognized hazards in order to achieve an acceptable level of risk.
Meanings
There are ...
(rules of the forward pass at the time required the passer to be five yards behind the line of scrimmage, which would make throwing the forward pass when the ball was snapped from behind one's own five-yard line illegal in itself).
Thus, in 1912, the end zone was introduced in
American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...
. In an era when professional football was still in its early years and
college football
College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States.
Unlike most ...
dominated the game, the resulting enlargement of the field was constrained by fact that many college teams were already playing in well-developed stadiums, complete with stands and other structures at the ends of the fields, thereby making any substantial enlargement of the field unfeasible at many schools. Eventually, a compromise was reached: 12 yards of end zone were added to each end of the field, but in return, the playing field was shortened from 110 yards to 100, resulting in the physical size of the field being only slightly longer than before. Goal posts were originally kept on the goal lines, but after they began to interfere with play, they moved back to the end lines in 1927, where they have remained in college football ever since. The National Football League moved the goal posts up to the goal line again in 1933, then back again to the end line in 1974.
![CFL Western Final 2007 (2197332902)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/CFL_Western_Final_2007_%282197332902%29.jpg)
As with many other aspects of gridiron football,
Canadian football
Canadian football () is a team sport, sport played in Canada in which two teams of 12 players each compete for territorial control of a field of play long and wide attempting to advance a pointed oval-shaped ball into the opposing team's sco ...
adopted the forward pass and end zones much later than American football. The forward pass and end zones were adopted in 1929. In Canada, college football has never reached a level of prominence comparable to U.S. college football, and professional football was still in its infancy in the 1920s. As a result, Canadian football was still being played in rudimentary facilities in the late 1920s. A further consideration was that the
Canadian Rugby Union (the governing body of Canadian football at the time, now known as Football Canada) wanted to reduce the prominence of single points (then called ''rouges'') in the game. Therefore, the CRU simply appended 25-yard end zones to the ends of the existing 110-yard field, creating a much larger field of play. Since moving the goal posts back 25 yards would have made the scoring of field goals excessively difficult, and since the CRU did not want to reduce the prominence of field goals, the goal posts were left on the goal line where they remain today. However, the rules governing the scoring of singles were changed: teams were required to either kick the ball out of bounds through the end zone or force the opposition to down a kicked ball in their own end zone in order to be awarded a point. By 1986, at which point CFL stadiums were becoming bigger and comparable in development to their American counterparts in an effort to stay financially competitive, the CFL reduced the depth of the end zone to 20 yards.
Scoring
A team scores a
touchdown
A touchdown (abbreviated as TD) is a scoring play in gridiron football. Whether running, passing, returning a kickoff or punt, or recovering a turnover, a team scores a touchdown by advancing the ball into the opponent's end zone. In Ameri ...
by entering its opponent's end zone while carrying the ball or catching the ball while being within the end zone. If the ball is carried by a player, it is considered a score when any part of the ball is directly above or beyond any part of the goal line between the pylons. In addition, a
two-point conversion
In gridiron football, a two-point conversion or two-point convert is a play a team attempts instead of kicking a one-point conversion immediately after it scores a touchdown. In a two-point conversion attempt, the team that just scored must run ...
may be scored after a touchdown by the same means.
In Ultimate Frisbee, a goal is scored by completing a pass into the end zone.
Size
![Baldwin Wallace Homecoming (48869911267)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Baldwin_Wallace_Homecoming_%2848869911267%29.jpg)
The end zone in American football is 10 yards long by yards (160 feet) wide. Each corner is marked with a pylon (four apiece).
A full-sized end zone in
Canadian football
Canadian football () is a team sport, sport played in Canada in which two teams of 12 players each compete for territorial control of a field of play long and wide attempting to advance a pointed oval-shaped ball into the opposing team's sco ...
is 20 yards long by 65 yards wide. Prior to the 1980s, the Canadian end zone was 25 yards long. The first stadium to use the 20-yard-long end zone was
B.C. Place in
Vancouver
Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...
, which was completed in 1983. The floor of B.C. Place was (and is) too short to accommodate a field 160 yards in length. The shorter end zone proved popular enough that the CFL adopted it league-wide in 1986. At
BMO Field
BMO Field is an outdoor stadium located at Exhibition Place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, which is home to Toronto FC of Major League Soccer and the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League. Constructed on the site of the former Exhibit ...
, home to the
Toronto Argonauts
The Toronto Argonauts (officially the Toronto Argonaut Football Club and colloquially known as the Argos) are a professional Canadian football team competing in the East Division of the Canadian Football League (CFL), based in Toronto, Ontario ...
, the end zones are only 18 yards.Like their American counterparts, Canadian endzones are marked with four pylons.
In Canadian football stadiums that also feature a running track, it is usually necessary to truncate the back corners of the end zones, since a rectangular field 150 yards long and 65 yards wide will not fit completely inside an oval-shaped running track. Such truncations are marked as straight diagonal lines, resulting in an end zone with six corners and six pylons. As of 2019, Montreal's
Percival Molson Stadium
Percival Molson Memorial Stadium (also known in French as ''Stade Percival-Molson''; commonly referred to as Molson Stadium in English or Stade Molson in French) is an outdoor football stadium in Downtown Montreal, on the slopes of Mount Royal, i ...
is the only CFL stadium that has the rounded-off end zones.
During the CFL's
American expansion in the mid-1990s, several stadiums, by necessity, used 15-yard end zones (some had end zones that were even shorter than 15 yards); only Baltimore and San Antonio had the endzones at the standard 20 yards.
Ultimate Frisbee uses an end zone 40 yards wide and 20 yards deep (37 m × 18 m).
The goal post
The location and dimensions of a goal post differ from league to league, but it is usually within the boundaries of the end zone. In earlier football games (both professional and collegiate), the goal post began at the goal line, and was usually an H-shaped bar. Nowadays, for player safety reasons, almost all goal posts in the professional and collegiate levels of American football are T-shaped (resembling a slingshot), and reside just outside the rear of both end zones; these goalposts were first seen in 1966 and were invented by Jim Trimble and Joel Rottman in
Montreal, Quebec
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-pea ...
, Canada.
The goal posts in Canadian football still reside on the goal line instead of the back of the end zones, partly because the number of field goal attempts would dramatically decrease if the posts were moved 20 yards back in that sport, and also because the larger end zone and wider field makes the resulting interference in play by the goal post a less serious problem.
At the high school level, it is not uncommon to see multi-purpose goal posts that include football goal posts at the top and a
soccer
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
net at the bottom; these are usually seen at smaller schools and in
multi-purpose stadium
A multi-purpose stadium is a type of stadium designed to be easily used by multiple types of events. While any stadium could potentially host more than one type of sport or event, this concept usually refers to a specific design philosophy tha ...
s where facilities are used for multiple sports. When these or H-shaped goal posts are used in football, the lower portions of the posts are covered with several inches of heavy foam padding to protect the safety of the players.
Decoration
![XflNight](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/XflNight.JPG)
Most professional and collegiate teams have their
logo
A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wordma ...
, team name, or both painted on the surface of the end zone, with team colors filling the background. Many championship and bowl games at college and professional level are commemorated by the names of the opposing teams each being painted in one of the opposite end zones. In some leagues, along with bowl games, local, national, or bowl game sponsors may also have their logos placed in the end zone. In the CFL, fully painted end zones are nonexistent, though some feature club logos or sponsors. Additionally, the Canadian end zone, being a live-ball part of the field, often features yardage dashes (usually marked every five yards), not unlike the field of play itself.
In many places, particularly in smaller high schools and colleges, end zones are undecorated, or have plain white diagonal stripes spaced several yards apart, in lieu of colors and decorations. One notable use of this design in major
college football
College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States.
Unlike most ...
is the
Notre Dame Fighting Irish
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish are the athletic teams that represent the University of Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish participate in 23 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I intercollegiate sports and in the NCAA's Division ...
, who have both end zones at
Notre Dame Stadium
Notre Dame Stadium is an outdoor football stadium in Notre Dame, Indiana, the home field of the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team.
It was built in 1930 under the guidance of Knute Rockne, regarded as one of the greatest co ...
painted with diagonal white lines. In professional football, since 2004, the
Pittsburgh Steelers
The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh. The Steelers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) North division. Founded in , the Steel ...
of the NFL have the south end zone at
Heinz Field
Acrisure Stadium is a football stadium located in the North Shore neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It primarily serves as the home of the Pittsburgh Steelers of the National Football League (NFL) and the Pittsburgh Panth ...
painted with diagonal-lines during most of the regular season. This is done because Heinz Field,which has a natural grass playing surface, is also home to the
Pittsburgh Panthers
The Pittsburgh Panthers, commonly also referred to as the Pitt Panthers, are the athletic teams representing the University of Pittsburgh, although the term is colloquially used to refer to other aspects of the university such as alumni, facu ...
of college football and the markings simplify field conversion between the two teams' respective field markings and logos. After the Panthers' season is over, the Steelers logo is painted in the south end zone.
One of the major quirks of the
American Football League
The American Football League (AFL) was a major professional American football league that operated for ten seasons from 1960 until 1970, when it merged with the older National Football League (NFL), and became the American Football Conference. ...
was its use of unusual patterns such as
argyle in its end zones, a tradition revived in 2009 by the
Denver Broncos
The Denver Broncos are a professional American football franchise based in Denver. The Broncos compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division. The team is headquart ...
, itself a former AFL team. The original
XFL
XFL may refer to:
Sports
* XFL (2001), a defunct American football league that played its only season in 2001
* XFL (2020), a professional American football league
Vehicles
* Bell XFL Airabonita, a 1940 U.S. Navy experimental interceptor aircra ...
standardized its playing fields so that all eight of its teams had uniform fields with the XFL logo in each end zone and no team identification.
See also
*
*
Friend zone
In popular culture, the friend zone (or friendzone) is a relational concept, describing a situation in which one person in a mutual friendship wishes to enter into a romantic or sexual relationship with the other person, while the other doe ...
, a play on the term
References
{{American football concepts
American football terminology
Canadian football terminology