#HASH MARKS PROFESSIONAL#

Situated for hockey rather than football, the playing area was only 80 yards long and much narrower than usual, with hockey boards acting as sidelines. The championship game was scheduled to be played at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, but brutal weather forced the game indoors, to the NHL’s Blackhawks home, Chicago Stadium. REALLY NOW, WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH HASH MARKS? Unable to determine a champion on paper, the NFL blazed a trail college football would follow a scant 80 years later, and held a playoff.

Forget that the Bears played to 6 ties and the Spartans 4, including two against each other. What the heck does all that have to do with hash marks? Well, the 1932 season ended with the Chicago Bears and Portsmouth Spartans tied with 6 wins and 1 loss. The 1932 season brought this mishmash to a pinnacle. Adding confusion was a crazy agreement to disregard ties when determining the NFL champion. Some teams played more games than others, and the team considered to have the best overall record was declared champion, sans playoff. A Canadian football field width is 65 yards (195 ft 59 m), 35 feet (11 m) wider than in the American game.In the NFL’s early years, there were no formalized scheduling rules. The Canadian Football League formerly used this spacing, but narrowed the hash mark spacing to 9 yards (8.2 m) in 2022. The Canadian standard for amateur play is 51 feet (16 m) in width, 24 yards from each sideline. Previously, the college width was the same as the high school standard (with the exception of Texas, which currently uses the current college width), at one-third of the width of the field ( 53 + 1⁄ 3 feet ). The college football standard, which was the previous standard in the NFL ( 1945– 1971), is 40 feet apart, (20 yards from the sidelines) introduced in 1993. High school football, college football and Canadian football have hash marks significantly wider than the goal posts.

#HASH MARKS PROFESSIONAL#

In most forms of professional football in the U.S., including the National Football League and most forms of indoor football, the hash marks are in line with the goal posts, both being 18 feet 6 inches apart in the NFL and between 9 and 10 feet (2.7 and 3.0 m) in indoor football. It was increased to 45 feet (14 m) from the sideline (70 ft apart) in 1935, 60 feet (18 m) from the sideline (40 ft apart) in 1945, and to the current 70 feet 9 inches (21.56 m) from the sideline ( 18 + 1⁄ 2 ft apart) in 1972. The hashmarks in that indoor 1932 playoff game were originally 30 feet (9.1 m) from the sideline, and that width was adopted by the NFL for the 1933 season. Prior to the adoption of hash marks (which were first utilized at the first NFL playoff game in 1932), all plays began where the ball was declared dead, including extra point attempts. That is, if the ball is downed in between a hash mark and the nearest sideline, it must be placed on that hash mark for the next play. All plays start with the ball on or between the hash marks. These small lines (4 in wide by 2 ft long) are used to mark the 1-yard sections between each of the 5-yard lines, which go from sideline to sideline.

In American football and Canadian football, the hash marks are two rows of lines near the middle of the field that are parallel to the side lines.

Hash marks