Football is a game, of course, but to hear McLeod Bethel-Thompson tell it, it’s also an art form.
And the erudite quarterback of the New Orleans Breakers has painted on many different canvases.
“It’s very different football, really, having played all three from arena ball to the CFL to NFL football, or American football,” said Bethel-Thompson, who has experience in the National Football League, Arena Football League, United Football League and most recently the Canadian Football League. “You can see the different sides of the game, because the game is coming from different aspects.”
The NFL represents classicism, followed by the CFL, which has been an abstract genre unto itself since 1958 (with roots that date back more than a century).
The two-year old United States Football League and the XFL, which wraps up the first regular season of its third incarnation this weekend, make up what I’ll call the avant-garde.
While salaries vary dramatically, the common thread among the gridiron art forms is that their players play for pay.
But the rules?
Depending on where you hang your helmet, there are some significant differences that create their own special flair.
The NFL has an extra point and two-point conversion.
The USFL has a standard PAT kick, two-point conversion and three-point conversion.
The XFL also has tiered conversions worth one, two and three points, but all must be attempted via run or pass – there are no kicks.
In football’s biggest league, the ball is placed down at the 35-yard line for kickoffs with a standard onside kick option.
The USFL has kickoffs from the 20-yard line and no player can line up more than a yard back from the kicker; XFL kickoffs place the kicker at his own 30 while the rest of the kicking team lines up at the receiving team’s 35 and the return team at its own 30.
The USFL has an onside scrimmage option, which is a fourth-and-12 play from the offensive team’s 33, while the XFL features regular onside kicks plus a fourth-and-15 scrimmage play option from the 25, but that can be used in the fourth quarter only.
The Triple A leagues have added several other tweaks, such as “shootout” format to settle overtime games and double forward passes – all designed to add a little excitement to games and all that are, to me, quirky and fun.
But while those innovations require some adjustment, they pale in comparison to switching from Canadian to American rules (and vice versa). It’s like transitioning from impressionism to realism.
Bethel-Thompson is fresh off a 302-yard, one touchdown performance in the Breakers’ 22-15 victory over the Pittsburgh Maulers on Sunday.
Before coming to the USFL, however, he spent the past seven seasons in the CFL, helping the Toronto Argonauts win two Grey Cups and throwing for 4,731 yards and 23 touchdowns in Toronto’s 2022 championship season.
The CFL gives offenses only three downs to make 10 yards; there are 12 players to a side; the field is 110 yards long and 65 yards wide; the end zones are 20 yards deep; offensive and defensive teams must line up one yard apart on scrimmage plays; and teams can score a single point when the return team fails to advance the ball out of the end zone (even on a missed field goal).
Following a preseason scrimmage at Legion Field, Bethel-Thompson discussed some of the changes he had to make to his game after leaving Canada.
“So, the three-down game is a totally different ballgame, designed for bigger fields,” he said. “And the first thing I noticed walking out here, obviously, was the size of the field. This field is tiny compared to what I was used to. And the end zones are different and you go from three downs to four downs, so among other things your timing is different. You have to time up your feet with your eyes.”
Before talking with Bethel-Thompson I already had a defensive player’s perspective – in reverse.
Bryant Turner Jr., a former CFL All-Star who spent most of his career with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, was a defensive lineman by trade. The former UAB Blazer had played by American rules his entire life until heading north of the border.
“The biggest change for me is the yard off the ball,” Turner told me a while back during an episode of the From the 55 Yard Line podcast hosted by Greg Smith. “As a defensive lineman in the CFL you have to be a yard off the ball at the snap but honestly, I think that actually worked out better for me. I came in as a defensive end but was quickly moved to defensive tackle because of my speed.
“The yard off the ball allowed me to use my quickness. I could set up different plays to help me take advantage of that.”
Playing by three-down rules was something of a double-edged sword.
“The three downs versus four can be a good thing because basically you can be out there and then back on the bench in two plays,” Turner said. “Of course, the bad thing is if your offense is out there for just two plays then you’re right back on the field. Honestly, you can get tired running on and off the field.”
And the difference in size of the field?
Yeah, that’s a biggie.
“It might not sound like much until you’re running full speed, then that 65-yards wide feels like 80-yards wide when you’re a defensive lineman trying to run down a screen,” Turner said. “The rules are made for the offense to score, so as a defensive player who has to run to the ball, you always have to be running.”
As for Bethel-Thompson who – at age 34 – hopes to make it back to the NFL, football is an artistic endeavor regardless of the style.
“It’s like learning how to ride a bike a little bit, because I did play American football first so that’s what I first knew,” he said. “But playing the different kinds, and having played all three, it really shows how beautiful the game of football is and how bodies and minds work together to kind of orchestrate this piece of art on a different tapestry.
“So, based on my experience, this is a medium-sized tapestry.”
