Not enough time to comment, other than the author seems to

be misguided with several inflammatory quotes - such as

"vastly inferior athletes" and "CFL stars are at best role players."

Simple nonesense.

There is no denying that the NFL has outstanding athletes, but

the margin is not as wide as the author believes to be.

For instance, Warren Moon plyed his trade in the CFL many years

before moving on to the NFL (who didn't care for black quarterbacks

back then) and will now be inducted into the hall of fame.

You can add Joe Theisman from the CFL, as well as a host of

others. Him mentioning Flutie is faulty at best. Flutie moved

up to Canada and was never given a chance. When he did return,

he did so at an advanced age, and even when winning in Buffalo

was questioned for his height, etc. rather than his abilities.

Many players in the CFL are good enough to play in the NFL,

but for one reason or another (usually politics) they

are not given an opportunity and simply wait for

another chance to play in the NFL.

Finally, the best kicker today in the NFL is from the CFL - Mike

Vanderjact (sorry for the spelling error), morever, he

is a Canadian.

Long live the Grey Cup.

Anthony Smith

Seems that even if you do mention the Grey Cup you get publicly chided... Best to leave well-enough alone sometimes, I guess.

Tomorrow's Friday anyway.

My theory on why refs don't screw around with instant replay in Canada: who bets on these games? Bottom line is - NFL outcomes, scores included, are worth Billions to the league and its friends in Vegas. If there was no point spread betting I'd wager a small sum (taking the over of course) that we would not have instant replay in the NFL.

Also, it's friggin cold in Edmonton and Saskatoon for 340 days out of the year and who wants to be sitting around for 30 extra minutes a game waiting for a decision on a decision. I love how fans in Green Bay are lauded for turning out in the cold when Eskimo fans are practically sitting in the Northwest Passage stomping around.

Please give us the rule that says you can return a missed FG. Easy to implement and adds potential excitment to the most boring 3 seconds in sports ;)

Has anyone seen the Reggie Bush HS clips on NYT website. Simply unbelievable. If he stays healthy and is drafted by a team with even decent blocking, look out OJ...

Last unrelated question - any UK posters surprised at the level of post-humous deification going on with George Best? Obviously one of the all-time great talents, but also one of the all-time great wastes. Think if Mickey Mantle had his first 4-5 great years with the Yanks, won a couple of World Series and decided to drink and screw around full-time at that point, played in semi-pro leagues rather than deal with major league standards for conduct, showed up drunk on national TV...The only US football parallel I can think of is Joe Namath, who would certainly be missed but enshrined in the pantheon?

I don't get what the first letter meant about the rule about not allowing players to return missed field goals. That rule has existed in American football forever.

Essentially a missed field goal bouncing around the field is a punt. The difference is that if the defense leaves it alone they get the ball back at the line of scrimmage (college) or kick (NFL) or the 20 if it's a short kick.

The 3 downs rule would really confuse people in America. When I saw a CFL game this year for the first time in person, I kept getting fooled by seeing the punting team coming on the field more. I would think American defenses would adapt to 3 downs pretty well and games would turn into puntfests.

Below, the person writes this:

"Please give us the rule that says you can return a missed FG. Easy to implement and adds potential excitment to the most boring 3 seconds in sports ;)"

Um, Nathan Vasher did this to the tune of 108 yards and a touchdown for the Bears earlier this season.

It's misleading to proclaim the NFL's players vastly superior to the those in the CFL. For one thing, the different rules attract and produce different kinds of athletes. The plodding quarterbacking of someone like Drew Bledsoe would not survive in the CFL, which typically demands more mobile quarterbacks to handle the larger field and the loss of a down. In this sense, the CFL was ahead of its time, breeding scrambling QBs long before the NFL embraced this model (consider Argo great Condredge Holloway - http://www.argonauts.ca/Argos/History/HallOfFame/Condredge_Holloway.html, or Eskimo great Warren Moon).

Flutie, for example, was a legend in the CFL because he was built for that league, and because the NFL snubbed him after he chose to play in the USFL. Other, taller pivots, such as Jeff Garcia, have emerged from the CFL and become top quarterbacks in the NFL (a few years ago, Garcia was one of the best rated QBs in the NFL).

One thing the NFL does well to ensure people believe its athletes are the best in the world, and not simply the best suited for the NFL's rules, is promote the players as unparalleled. You almost never hear an announcer of an NFL broadcast say something critical about a player. Every player is described as the "best" at something, or the "most underrated" at something else. It's smart marketing, and it seems to work.

...we just punt on third to be polite.

Seriously though, to settle the confusion about returning field goals the difference is that the goalposts in the CFL are at the front of the endzone and the endzone itself is significantly bigger. So while in the NFL a short field goal can be returned, in the CFL a field goal that is short, wide left, wide right or two of the three will be returned. I've seen, I'd say, two or three returned field goals in my time watching the NFL, it happens every game in the CFL.

Arrrrrrrr-goooooooos.