Arena football in the context of "Football"

Gridiron football (/ˈɡrɪdaɪ.ərn/ GRID-eye-ərn), also known as North American football, or in North America as simply football, is a family of team sports derived from rugby football (and football, by extension) primarily played in the United States and Canada.

American football, which uses 11 players, is the form played in the United States and the best known form of gridiron football worldwide, while Canadian football, which uses 12 players, predominates in Canada. Other derivative varieties include arena football, flag football and amateur games such as touch and street football. Football is played at professional, collegiate, high school, semi-professional, and amateur levels.

Kicking is a skill used in many types of football, including:

• Association football
• Australian rules football
• Gaelic football
• Gridiron football
  • American football
  • Arena football
  • Canadian football
• International rules football
• Rugby league football
• Rugby union football

Kicking is the act of propelling a ball by striking it with the foot or, depending upon the sport, the shin. Kicking is most common in Association Football, where only the two goalkeepers are allowed to use their hands. It is also the primary method of transferring the ball in Australian rules football and Gaelic football. Whereas most sports allow points to be scored by methods other than kicking, in Australian rules football kicking for goal is the only method allowed to score a goal and get the maximum six point score. Kicking is used less frequently in Rugby League, Rugby Union, American football, and Canadian football, and may be restricted to specialist positions, but it is still an important tactical skill in each sport.

The rectangular field of play used for American football games measures 100 yards (91.44 m) long between the goal lines, and 160 feet (48.8 m) (53.3 yards) wide. The field may be made of grass or artificial turf. In addition, there are two end zones on each end of the field, extending another 10 yards (9.144 m) past the goal lines to the end lines, for a total length of 120 yards (109.7 m). When the "football field" is used as unit of measurement, it is usually understood to mean 100 yards (91.44 m), although technically the full length of the official field, including the end zones, is 120 yards (109.7 m). The total area of the field is 57,600 sq ft or 5,350 m. There is a goal centered on each end line, with a crossbar 10 feet (3.0 m) above the ground and goalposts 18 feet 6 inches (5.64 m) apart (in college and the NFL) extending at least 35 feet (11 m) above the crossbar. Between the goal lines, additional lines span the width of the field at 5-yard intervals. This appearance led to the use of the term "gridiron" in the 1880s. For a few years in the early 20th century, lines perpendicular to the lines at 5-yard intervals spanned the length of the field, giving it a checkerboard-like appearance.

This article mainly describes the field used in the National Football League, college football, and other leagues playing the standard form of outdoor 11-man football. Other variants of American football such as nine-man or arena football typically use smaller fields with smaller end zones.

James Foster is an American former football executive and innovator. He invented the game of arena football, and was the founder and first commissioner of the Arena Football League (AFL). Foster was also a National Football League (NFL) and United States Football League (USFL) executive. and was later the managing owner of both the AFL's Iowa Barnstormers and the AF2's Quad City Steamwheelers.

The Arena Football League (AFL) was a professional arena football league in the United States. It was founded in 1986, but played its first official games in the 1987 season, making it the third longest-running professional football league in North America after the Canadian Football League (CFL) and the National Football League (NFL) until the AFL closed in 2019.

The AFL played a formerly proprietary code known as arena football, a form of American football played indoors on a 66-by-28 yard field (about a quarter of the surface area of an NFL field), with rules encouraging offensive performance, resulting in a typically faster-paced and higher-scoring game compared to NFL games. The sport was invented in the early 1980s and patented by Jim Foster, a former executive of the United States Football League (USFL) and the NFL. Each of the league's 32 seasons culminated in the ArenaBowl, with the winner being crowned the league's champion for that season.

The AF2 (styled as af2, and short for arenafootball2) was the Arena Football League's developmental league; it was founded in 1999 and played its first season in 2000. Like its parent AFL, the af2 played using the same arena football rules and style of play. League seasons ran from April through July with the postseason and ArenaCup championship in August. The af2 continued to operate while the AFL suspended operations for its 2009 season. The league was effectively disbanded in September 2009 when no team committed to playing in 2010, but several of the stronger franchises transferred into the reconstituted AFL.

Like most other minor sports leagues, the af2 existed to develop football players and also to help players adapt to the style and pace of arena football. In addition, the af2 was similar to other minor leagues because af2 teams played in smaller cities and smaller venues. While the AFL was played in cities like Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Chicago, the af2 fielded teams in cities which are part of metropolitan statistical areas ranging in size from Milwaukee (with 1,739,497 residents) to Albany, Georgia (with 164,000 residents). Also in common with other minor professional sports leagues, players also earned less than in the AFL, with each player making $200-$500 per game, with a minimum $50 victory bonus.

The China Arena Football League (simplified Chinese: 全国美式室内橄榄球职业联赛; traditional Chinese: 全國美式室內橄欖球職業聯賽; pinyin: Quánguó Měishì Shìnèi Gǎnlǎnqiú Zhíyè Liánsài), often abbreviated as the CAFL, was a professional arena football league that played its games in the People's Republic of China. It featured players from the now-defunct Arena Football League (AFL) and other indoor football leagues' rosters while also using players from China or who are of Chinese descent, The six team, eight-on-eight football league consisted of four Chinese players and four "foreign" players on the field at a time. The league began play in the fall of 2016 and held two seasons, one in 2016 and another, heavily abbreviated, schedule in 2019. It was the first professional American football league to play in China. The CAFL was not directly affiliated with the AFL, instead owned by AFL Global, LLC, a company that was created by Martin E. Judge Jr.