On Sunday, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Calgary Stampeders will play in the 102nd Grey Cup. Here’s what you need to know before the big game

It’s Canada’s biggest party and the nation’s most watched sporting event of the year – the Grey Cup, or as it’s known in Quebec and parts of New Brunswick, Coupe Grey.

The game that decides who becomes champions of the Canadian Football League has been played out for more than a century and is high stakes sport. If you’ve never followed the CFL, well, the Grey Cup is a great place to start. And luckily, this coming Sunday, the Guardian will have live minute-by-minute coverage of all the action between the Western champions Calgary Stampeders and the Eastern champs, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats starting at 5.30pm eastern time or 10.30pm over in the UK (or at 7pm in St John’s, Newfoundland).

We realize that this could be a new endeavor for some of you and that there may be some questions. So we’ve put together this handy guide to help bring some context to the event before it all kicks off in Vancouver.

How did Canadian football begin?



The sport played today evolved from a hybrid of rugby and soccer. In fact, both the American and Canadian versions of the game can trace their roots back to an 1874 series between Cambridge’s Harvard University and McGill University of Montréal. By then, the Canadians were picking up the ball and running with it while the Americans were mostly using their feet. It seems that Harvard were quite taken with McGill’s playing style and began to adapt their own version of the sport – from that moment on the two codes continued to evolve on separate paths.

The Canadians created a unique version of the game they called rugby football, and it actually wasn’t until 1960 that the term “rugby” was dropped entirely.

How is the CFL different to the NFL today?

Well, as we said, it’s evolved separately from the NFL, but as the American league is the unchallenged mothership of the genre, comparisons are inevitable. The CFL features different rules than the NFL. Here are a few of them:

CFL

150-yard long field including 20-yard endzones



65 yards wide

12-a-side

Three downs

20 seconds between plays

A one-point play called a “single” or a “rouge”

The clock stops after every play inside three minutes

All kicks are live, no fair catches but the returner gets a five-yard buffer

Receivers can run towards the line of scrimmage prior to the snap

Linemen are separated by a full yard at the line of scrimmage

NFL

120-yard long field

53.3 yards wide

11-a-side

Four downs

40 seconds between plays

No one-point plays

Two minute warning

Fair catches can be called for on kicks

Receivers may move before the snap parallel to the line of scrimmage

Linemen are separated only by the line of scrimmage

How do these changes make the game different?

To the casual viewer, it may seem like the games resemble each other closely, but the CFL version is much faster. Consider this – with a shorter play clock teams have just half the amount time to get a play off. With much more real estate to cover on a CFL field, linemen need to be much quicker on their feet while chasing offenses that feature more option play and wide receivers who get a running head start.

Let’s just say there’s a lot going on.

CFL historian Larry Robertson told the Guardian that it can take some American players upwards of two-and-a-half years to adapt to the game and some struggle to ever adjust. Some Americans just fit right in though, such as quarterbacks Doug Flutie and Warren Moon, who won eight Grey Cups between them.

Others never quite get it going north of the border. Former Heisman trophy winning quarterback Troy Smith was released in October by Montréal after being roughed up in his first six games. Back in 1981, Vince Ferragamo was an established NFL quarterback with the Los Angeles Rams who moved to Montréal after being offered a hefty pay raise by the Alouettes. Ferragamo never caught up to the CFL speed, getting smoked by the locals and throwing 25 interceptions before being demoted.

It couldn’t have helped that Ferragamo had just three downs instead of four to gain a first down, one reason why kicking is a bigger part of the CFL game. A single, also known also as a rouge, allows you to score a point on a kick or a punt. Here is how it’s done:

The defense/receiving team are unable to return a punt or a missed field goal out of the endzone.



The defense/receiving team allow a punt or a missed field goal to roll out of the endzone and out of bounds.



That means CFL games can at times look like a pitching duel - midway through the second quarter of a recent Eastern playoff game, the Alouettes actually held a slim, 1-0 lead over the BC Lions.

There are other differences such as salaries – the average CFL pay is roughly $80,000, in stark contrast to the $1.9m average salary an NFL player gets. That’s one reason why one of the best CFL players around, Calgary Stampeders running back Jon Cornish, also works as a banker.

What is the Grey Cup?

The Grey Cup is both the name of the big game and the trophy awarded to the winners, donated by the fourth Earl Grey, who also happened to be Canada’s Governor General. With a few exceptions the holy grail of the game has been awarded since 1909.

The trophy was played for through the amateur era, which featured multiple power struggles between various Canadian rugby football unions regarding rules. It wasn’t until the 1935 Grey Cup that the game, complete with trendy forward passing, actually started to look less rugby-ish and like something we would recognize today. Finally, in 1958, the CFL was born and the rules of the game were unified.

What does the event mean to Canadians?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alex Dan of the Musqueam first nation preforms a traditional blessing on the Grey Cup in Vancouver, British Columbia. Photograph: BEN NELMS/REUTERS

The Guardian asked that question to CFL head statistician/historian Steve Daniels, who said:

It is a really important part of the culture of our country because it’s so uniquely ours.

No wonder then that parts of the 101st Grey Cup was seen on English and French television networks by approximately 11.5m people, or roughly one in three Canadians.

Calgary resident Jessica Nash says:

It’s like a baby Super Bowl...all the bars have Grey Cup events. The grocery stores have stuff for Grey Cup and there is a lot of stuff geared towards having parties.

For those who gather in February to watch hours of commercials and a bit of the Super Bowl, this all sounds very familiar.

Who is playing?

Lots of Canadians. CFL rules require that at least half of the 44 players on the sideline hail from the home nation and seven of those players must be starters. The rest of the players can come from the United States, Jordan, Fiji, Mars or anywhere really.

More specifically, it’s the Stampeders who will face the Tiger-Cats in the 102nd edition of the game. Since the Stamps haven’t hoisted the Cup since 2008 and the Ticats have had no luck since 1999, whoever wins on Sunday will be the fifth different champion in five seasons, meaning that the CFL has something that NFL fans know well – parity.

Here’s a brief look at the teams:

Calgary Stampeders

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Calgary quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell and running back Jon Cornish are at the core of the Stampeders offense. Photograph: TODD KOROL/REUTERS

The Stamps were founded in 1945 out in Canada’s wild west and have won six Grey Cups.Before the 1948 game the Stamps traveling cowboy fans decided to make their presence known by riding horses into the swish Toronto Royal York Hotel lobby. While the infamous incident did little to impress the more refined Eastern locals, it did set a precedent for partying in the host city that’s alive and well today.

On the field, head coach John Hufnagel’s modern-day Stampeders team have won 29 games over the previous two seasons, none of which will mean a thing if they can’t finish and win the big one on Sunday.

Heading into the post-season, there were concerns over their inexperienced quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell, but after the 24-year-old torched the Edmonton Eskimos for four touchdowns while running in for a fifth, well, that factor is less cause for concern. Mitchell heads up the most skilled offense in the league, including Canadian running back Cornish - the former Most Outstanding Player had 174 yards and two TDs in the Western Final. When it comes to their defense, Steve Daniels says:

They are versatile, extraordinarily athletic and have a whole series of interchangeable players...absolutely anyone of their defenders can blitz the quarterback, pass cover, run stop - they have this kind of prototype 220lb guy who can play anywhere.

That’s one reason why they are favoured to win by some 7.5 points on Sunday. Still, because of some recent failures in big spots, their fans will be on edge.

Hamilton Tiger-Cats

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hamilton Tiger-Cats quarterback Zach Collaros played mistake free football against the Montreal Alouettes in the Eastern Final. Photograph: FRED THORNHILL/REUTERS

The team was born out of a 1950 merger between the Hamilton Tigers and the Wildcats, who went on to form a CFL dynasty across the 1950s and 60s, playing in 10 Grey Cups and winning five.

Like those old Hamilton teams who enjoyed a reputation for physically punishing

football, the 2014 version are also a bruising bunch who have the best run defense in the CFL.

Hamilton are also the youngest club in the league, and like Calgary, have an inexperienced quarterback running the show. Zach Collaros didn’t put up the sort of sparkling numbers that Mitchell did in the regional final, but managed the game well and played mistake free football. The team seems to getting better every game under head coach Kent Austin, who took Hamilton to the Grey Cup last season and, like Calgary, went 8-3 down the stretch.

Return artist Brandon Banks is certainly worth watching - the former Washington special teams man had two touchdowns last week, including this ridiculous play that broke the back of Montréal.

Where are they playing?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hamilton Tiger Cats place kicker Justin Medlock warms up in BC Place. Photograph: TODD KOROL/REUTERS

The 102nd Grey Cup will be played in Vancouver, whose CFL fans are a little bit bummed because it’s the first time in four seasons that a home team isn’t playing in the final game. BC Place is hosting the game for the ninth time and has become one of the most stunning venues in North America since a renovation transformed it from a nasty, Seattle Kingdome type joint to a state of the art stadium with a retractable roof. Sure, the place is nice, but the roof means weather won’t play a part like it did in the 1950 mud bowl in Toronto, or in 1970 when it was -15C in Winnipeg.



Who is performing at halftime?

Somewhat controversially, Imagine Dragons, who are Grammy Award winning artists, but not Canadian, a disappointment to some who want to see homeboys and homegirls perform during an event that is all about Canada. Two years ago in the Grey Cup Centennial, Canadian Justin Bieber was booed at Toronto’s Rogers Centre during half-time. Bieber also took a load of stick for wearing overalls during a meet-up with the prime minister, Stephen Harper. Fair enough.