50 posts & 50-yard line = Canada Day football!

This is my 50th blog post of the year so let's celebrate! Easy enough - as today is Canada Day! At this pace I would hit 100 posts for the year...

Which sport features a 50 and posts? That, of course, would be football. The center of all the action would be the 50-yard line
while each end has goalposts. That is for American football.

But in Canada we have a larger field: 110 yards to be precise. The middle is the 55-yard line. The American field is 53⅓ yards wide. Here it is 65 yards wide. Canada has three downs, not four. The goalposts for kicking are placed at the goal line in Canadian football and the end line in the American game. Our season starts sooner too: professional football starts in Canada today! And the NFL Network is carrying 14 games - including the season opener today at 7:00 PM ET featuring the Montreal Alouettes and Saskatchewan Roughriders in a rematch of last year's Grey Cup championship game.

Marv Levy coached the Montreal Alouettes from 1973 - 1977. He won two championships in the CFL. Marv would end up as the winningest coach in Buffalo Bills' history, putting together a 112-70 regular season record and going 11-8 in the playoffs. Below is his first Bills' game as head coach in 1986 against the Pittsburgh Steelers. This clip (with my voiceover) ran on the final edition of the season's "Thurman Thomas Show" on January 9/10, 2010:

Marv Levy was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in 2001. Thurman Thomas was inducted in 2007. Click here to see Marv introduce Thurman.

And here is the fast-paced opening we had for the final edition of the  "Thurman Thomas Show" earlier this year. *Editor's note July 3: This link appears to go to recent Bills' stories from training camp. Plan B: On the bottom left of the page, click on "Thurman Thomas Show" and then select Week 18 at the top (Offseason Outlook).*

Catch up with me and the Bills again in two months!