Wikipedia actually uses "Gridiron football" as the title of its page on what we in the UK would call "American football".
It says, 'The term "gridiron" originated as a description of the sport's then–characteristic playing field, which, until the late 1910s–early 1920s, was marked with a series of parallel lines in a checkerboard (or grid) pattern, resembling a gridiron. The grid system was abandoned in favor of the system of yard lines and hash marks used today, but the term "gridiron" has survived.'
© Haydn Thompson 2017