I have a confession to make: For more than a decade, I’ve been addicted to Canadian football. It’s not the slick, polished product you see on Sunday afternoons in the NFL. No, this is a grittier, quirkier version of the game that feels like it was cooked up by a mad scientist. Even though it’s July, the CFL season is already in full swing, and if you haven’t been paying attention, you’re missing out on one of the most entertaining spectacles in sports. With only nine teams in Canada’s largest cities, it’s incredibly easy to follow the entire league. Games are played Thursday through Sunday. And the best part? It’s all free to watch on TSN+. The CFL YouTube channel even posts excellent 10-minute recaps of each game for those of us with short attention spans.

But why should you care about a league that, at least for the better part of the past three decades, seemed perpetually on the brink of extinction? For starters, the games are fascinating. The rouge point, or single, is just one of many funky Canadian rules that exemplify the CFL’s charm. It’s awarded when a team kicks the ball into or through the opponent’s end zone and the receiving team fails to return it out. This rule adds many layers of strategy, especially in the close games that are far more common in the CFL than in the NFL. Imagine a team purposely conceding a single point to gain better field position — it happens more often than you’d think. This is riveting sport: 12 men on the field, lightning-fast pre-snap motion that would make an NFL referee’s head spin, and quarterbacks who run like their lives depend on it (because, given the crushing hits they take, they might).