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Some people think American football is better to watch than the CFL, but in fact Canada played a major part in developing the game played to the south of us.  
 
This instance happened in 1874, when two exhibition games were played between McGill University and Harvard. McGill lost both games, but together with Harvard they set a president that affected all subsequent games of football played in the United States.  
 
The McGill team arrived with only eleven players, and so instead of fielding the normal twelve-man team, Harvard dropped one man to keep the game even. Since that game, American football has only been played with eleven players.  
 
The team from McGill also played a style of football that was a combination of Rugby and Soccer, while Harvard played only a game of soccer. Harvard must have liked the Canadian hybrid style because they introduced it to all the Ivy League Colleges.  
 
The irony of this story is that the Canadian game is still played with the original 12-player team: the first standard professional game with twelve players in Canada was played in 1921.  
 
On occasions there have been friendly excursions by CFL teams to the States, and they have shown their superiority.  
 
The first such encounter took place on September 28, 1935, when a Winnipeg team, (before the Blue Bomber franchise) travelled to Minnesota to play the Minnesota All-stars. Winnipeg was the winner, and went on a few days later to play, and beat the North Dakota Freshmen 26 to 7.  
 
According to accounts written by Fritz Hanson, a CFL star from the thirties, he says these games were played using both Canadian and American rules.  
 
In the nineteen fifties a number of exhibition games were played between the CFL and NFL, but the only recorded match that CFL statistician Larry Robinson, has is when in 1950 the New York Giants defeated the Ottawa rough Riders 27 to 6.  
 
In 1961 a pre-season game was played in Hamilton under Canadian rules. It was between the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Buffalo Bills of the old American Football League. The Ti-Cats won 38 – 21, and after the game the AFL refused to sanction any more matches in Canada without their approval.  
 
On September 14, 1958, there was a dispute between the Ti-Cats and the Hamilton stadium officials, and so a CFL regular season game was moved to Philadelphia. Hamilton beat the Ottawa Rough Riders 24 to 18.  
 
The first goal posts used in football were in the ‘H’ shape placed on the goal line. In a BC Lions game at Vancouver late in the 1965 season the Lions all-star receiver went for a long pass and, looking over his shoulder to catch the ball as he entered the end zone, ran into the gaol posts, dropped the ball, and suffered an injury that put him of the DL for the rest of the season.  
 
Jim Trimble (born in 1918) was the coach of the 1965 Montreal Alouettes, and after three years with the team feared he was about to be fired. He also worked as a colour commentator for the Canadian radio/television company, and as such he was covering the above-mentioned Lions game.  
 
After the game Dave Scrine the Lions coach was fired, and while Trimble flew back to Montreal he was wondering how he could stop such serious accidents.  
 
He made several sketches of different types of goal posts and took his results to an engineer in Hudson, Quebec, named Cedric Marsh who was working for ALCAN, a Canadian aluminium company to see if his plan could be constructed.  
 
With Marsh’s engineering help they invented the revolutionary single base “slingshot” goal post.  
 
Trimble designed the goal posts for safety reasons: a single base set back apiece was less of an obstacle to the players at the end zone.  
 
To get anyone to install the first pair he had to donate them to the Montreal stadium in 1966. He found it less difficult to install the posts in the United States and the first pair was used in the Orange Bowl in Miami for the Runner-up Bowl game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys.  
 
The game was televised and the goal posts were widely accepted by the audience, and the officials of the game. The single base, set six feet back from the goal line did not obstruct the view of the plane of the goal line, which they could see unobstructed if the ball crossed over it scoring a touchdown.  
 
The National Football League became obsessed with the new style goalposts, and at its next annual meeting in 1967 the Slingshot Goalposts were unanimously approved for use in the league.  
 
Jim Trimble applied for a patent in 1966 at the U.S. Patent Office in Washington D.C. The application was initially rejected because it was considered a violation of an existing patent on the design of a curved lamppost.  
 
Trimble appealed the decision and was successful because of the safety considerations of his design.  
 
Source: http://www.mmbolding.com/BSR/CFL_NFL_CFL_History.htm