The Goal Post
The location and dimensions of a goal post differs from league to league, but it is always within the boundaries of the end zone. In earlier football games (both professional and collegiate), the goal post began at the goal line, and was usually an H-shaped bar. Nowadays, for player safety reasons, almost all goal posts in the professional and collegiate levels of American football are T-shaped, and reside just outside the rear of both end zones.
The goal posts in Canadian football still reside on the goal line instead of the back of the end zones, partly because the number of field goal attempts would dramatically decrease if the posts were moved 20 yards back in that sport.
At the high school level, it is not uncommon to see multi-purpose goal posts that include football goal posts at the top and a soccer net at the bottom; these are usually seen at smaller schools and in multi-purpose stadiums where facilities are used for multiple sports. When these or H-shaped goal posts are used in football, the lower portions of the posts are covered with several inches of heavy foam padding to protect the safety of the players.
Read more about this topic: End Zone
Famous quotes containing the words goal and/or post:
“The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced—by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“A demanding stranger arrived one morning in a small town and asked a boy on the sidewalk of the main street, “Boy, where’s the post office?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, then, where might the drugstore be?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about a good cheap hotel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Say, boy, you don’t know much, do you?”
“No, sir, I sure don’t. But I ain’t lost.””
—William Harmon (b. 1938)