CFL will play with slightly different footballs during the 2018 campaign

TORONTO — The CFL will use a slightly different football this season.

The new ball will be made of slightly harder leather and upon inflation could be up to an eighth of an inch larger. But it will sport the same laces and stripes as usual.

“The new ball is virtually identical, to the eye, to the old one,” Ryan Janzen, the CFL’s senior director of football operations, said in a statement. “It has the same laces and markings including our stripes.

“But it is made of a slightly harder leather. Our partners at Wilson say that allows it to hold its pebbles better.”

The league said last season clubs were given the opportunity at mini-camp and training camp to test the Wilson ball used in the NFL. The CFL added quarterbacks indicated they preferred the traditional laces but the leather of the NFL footballs.

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As a result, CFL GMs proposed the league adopt a new ball featuring the traditional laces, stripes and markings but the leather and size of the NFL ball. The league’s board of governors discussed the change over the winter and the new balls were subsequently ordered.

The Canadian Press