Football Goal Care and Maintenance

In addition to making sure that your football team has a neat and well-manicured field on which to play and practice, the maintenance of football goal posts is also important, if sometimes overlooked.

What regular maintenance should I be doing on my football goal post?

1) Never allow any individuals to climb goal posts–not even after a big victory over your conference rivals.

2) Keep organic material away from the base of the goal posts. Grass, litter and other similar debris could cause the goal post’s base to corrode or deteriorate.

3) Check the entire structure of the goal post for signs of corrosion. Repaint the posts with an exterior grade, rust-resistant enamel.

4) All connections should be kept water tight. Check the condition of the caulk wherever there is a connection. Repair or replace as required to ensure the water-tightness of every connection.

5) Check the structure of the goal post before each use. Look for loose or missing hardware, and repair before use.

It is also important to make sure that the in-ground mounting of the goal post is secure, and that the uprights are level and secure.

Football Goal Post Dimensions

Football goal posts are available for commercial and residential applications. The dimensions of the goal post will vary depending on the cost and size of the unit. Below you will find the three most common standards for regulation size football goal posts, as well as a size for a suitable premium-quality residential football goal post.

For high school use, the most popular post diameter is 4 ½”. A football goal post with a 4 ½” diameter post will typically be designed with anywhere from 48″ to 78″ of offset. Offset is the distance from the goal posts to the crossbar. First Team’s ALL STAR football goal posts are designed with an adjustable offset allowing it to be fined-tuned and adjusted to the lines on the football field. The ALL STAR’s offset can be set anywhere between 72″-78″ during installation.

For more competitive high school and standard collegiate football fields, football goal posts with 5 9/16″ diameter are most popular. Goal posts of this width typically have a 72″-96″ offset. The ALL AMERICAN is the unit First Team builds in this size. The goal post is designed with a telescoping offset feature, allowing the offset to be positioned anywhere from 81″-102″. The variable offset ability makes this unit extremely popular for multi-use fields where soccer, lacrosse and other sports are played, in addition to football.

The largest football goal post available features a 6 5/8″ diameter post. This size is typically used strictly for Division 1 or NFL football programs. This size is commonly available with a 96″ offset. First Team’s ALL PRO line of football goal posts also offers an adjustable offset. At time of installation, the ALL PRO is capable of any offset measuring from 81″-102″. This added offset ability not only adds an extra measure of safety to the field, but also provides the added versatility needed for multisport fields.

Each of the above sizes of football goal post is usually available with two crossbar widths: high school and collegiate/NFL. The official crossbar width for high school football is 23’4″, while the official crossbar width for the NCAA and NFL is 18’6″.

Football Field Lines and Markings

Football fields in the United States sport different dimensions than those in Canadian Football, which plays by different rules with a field that is both longer and wider. For the uninitiated, some of the lines and markings on an American football gridiron can be quite vexing, especially when considering that some dimensions are different in amateur football (college, high school and Pop Warner) than they are in the pros.

Standard Lines and Markings

What are standard football field lines and markings?

To start with, every football field is 100 yards long, at every level the game is played. The field, end zones included, is a rectangle that measures 360 feet long by 160 feet wide. In 1933, two rows of hash marks were added near the center of the field at 1-yard intervals so that at the end of every play, the ball would be placed on the nearest hash mark. Prior to the rule change, all plays began where the ball was declared dead. The midfield hash marks in high school and college football are further from the center of the field (and closer to the sidelines) on each side than they are in professional football, where they are located 70′ 9″ from the sidelines. High school hash marks are 53’4″ from the sidelines while NCAA hash marks are 60′ from sidelines. Sideline hash marks are individual yard lines running the length of the field in 1-yard increments.

The 6-foot wide white line surrounding the field of play is the sideline and represents the boundary for what is out of play. The yard lines on the football field are white vertical lines running the width of the field in 10-yard increments. The numbers run from 10 to 50 and then back to 10. Each yard line is numbered. In the NFL and in major college football, next to each number is an arrow, pointing towards the closest end zone. These arrows began appearing on NFL field in the late 1970s, by which time virtually every league game was on television. This is why many high school football fields still do not have the arrows – those games are generally not televised, so there is no need for the arrows.

Scoring Points

The line that separates the end zone from the field of play is the goal line. The team with the ball tries to cross it, the team without the ball tries to protect it from being crossed. Crossing the goal line with the football is worth six points. A field goal kicked from the field of play (usually on fourth down) through the goal post’s uprights is worth three points. High school goal posts are 23’4″ wide and 20′ tall from ground. NCAA goal posts are 18’6″ wide and 30′ tall poles from ground.

Choosing the Right Football Goal

The sport of football, ever evolving, has come a long way from the days when the goal posts were shaped like the letter “H” with a post beneath each side of the crossbar. While the “H”-shaped goal post still exists in some forms, you never see them in pro games or in major college football, and they have largely disappeared from the high school ranks, too.

Types of Goal Posts

When should I buy an “H”-shaped goal post?

Nowadays, the gooseneck goalpost is the standard shape. Still, there are fields and applications where an updated version of the “H”-shaped goal posts may still be the right choice. Specifically, some all-purpose fields that will host as many soccer games as they will football games might be better off with multi-purpose goal posts shaped like an “H” that can accommodate both a soccer net or field goal attempts through the uprights. “H”-shaped goal posts are available in rollaway form when a field needs to be converted from one sport to another, as combination football/soccer posts, as portable field goal kicking refiners specifically made for practicing that aspect of the sport, or classic single high school steel goal posts, which closely resemble the ones commonly used in the sport prior to the 1970s.

Coloring

The more modern gooseneck-shaped goal posts usually come in yellow or white although yellow is becoming increasingly the norm, and may come with or without padded bases beneath the crossbar. If you opt for the padded version of the gooseneck goal posts, it is likely to cost you more, but the tradeoff may be worth it in terms of safety. An inadvertent collision with a padded post may significantly reduce the likelihood of injury compared to the risk of injury with a gooseneck goal post that lacks padding. High School fields often choose the less expensive 6′ offset post, while college and professional fields typically have a 7-8′ offset. Post size is also a factor. Posts are available in 4 ½”, 5 9/16″ and 6 5/8″ diameters. First Team offers free lettering if you purchase a post pad with your goalpost.

There are also safer, more portable miniature-sized goal posts that are small enough for kids to use in the backyard. These are not regulation, but they might be perfect for younger kids just getting started in the sport.