Editing End zone (section)

== The goal post ==
[[File:Angelo State vs. Texas A&M–Commerce football 2015 22 (A&M–Commerce field goal).jpg|thumb|right|Goal post at one end of a [[college football]] field]]
The location and dimensions of a goal post differ from league to league, but it is usually 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 (resembling a slingshot), and reside just outside the rear of both end zones; such goalposts, first seen in 1966, were invented by Jim Trimble and Joel Rottman in [[Montreal, Quebec]], Canada.<ref name=tdfcan>{{cite news |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=CmwmAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-VQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1734%2C836099 |newspaper=En Ville |location=(Montreal, Quebec, Canada) |title=Touchdown for Canada! |date=March 18, 1967 |page=3 |access-date=August 5, 2019 |archive-date=January 22, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220122002654/https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=CmwmAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-VQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1734%2C836099 |url-status=live }}</ref>

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, and also because the larger end zone and wider field makes the resulting interference in play by the goal post a less serious problem.<ref>{{Cite web |title=5 questions we have about that weird Canadian Football highlight |url=https://www.nfl.com/news/5-questions-we-have-about-that-weird-canadian-football-highligh-0ap3000000876550 |access-date=2025-03-04 |website=NFL.com |language=en-US}}</ref>

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 [[association football|soccer]] net at the bottom; these are usually seen at smaller schools and in [[multi-purpose stadium]]s 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.<ref>Penta, F.; Amodeo, G.; Gloria, A.; Martorelli, M.; Odenwald, S.; Lanzotti, A. Low-Velocity Impacts on a Polymeric Foam for the Passive Safety Improvement of Sports Fields: Meshless Approach and Experimental Validation. Appl. Sci. 2018, 8, 1174. https://doi.org/10.3390/app8071174 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231024014549/https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/8/7/1174 |date=2023-10-24 }}</ref>