A new nAtionAl PAstime While baseball is traditionally regarded as America’s national pastime football has been the country’s most popular sport for some time Millions of people in the United States consider autumn to be football season Football is a very popular sport that is played by people of all ages from grade-schoolers to trained professionals It involves running passing kicking and body contact Vocabulary Professionals are people who are paid to perform an activity 4
The Saskatchewan Roughriders with green helmets and Edmonton Eskimos are two Canadian football teams A football game is played between two teams of eleven players each A team scores points by moving a ball across the other team’s goal line or kicking a ball through the other team’s goalpost The team that scores more points wins This game sometimes called American football is played mainly in the United States Canadian football is similar to the US game In most countries the word football refers to the sport of soccer The New York Jets in green jerseys and Miami Dolphins are two professional football teams in the United States 5
PlAying Field And equiPment Football is played on a grassy rectangular field The field is 120 yards 110 meters long and 160 feet 49 m wide White lines called end lines and sidelines mark the edges of the field A football field has many markings that help officials players and viewers follow the game 6
Officials who wear black and white uniforms sometimes use special equipment to measure how far a ball has been moved Each end of the field has a goal line The goal lines are 100 yards 91 m apart The 10-yard 9 1 m areas between the goal lines and the end lines are called the end zones A pair of goalposts connected by a crossbar stands at the back of each end zone Most of the action in a football game takes place between the goal lines White lines run across this part of the field every 5 yards 4 6 m These lines help to show how far a team has moved the football Two sets of short lines called hash marks cross these Think About It Why do you think a football field is so long 7
