[pests]

I would lean towards the former. I really don't think people are trying to compare the width to the length when discussing football fields casually.

If I told you parking spots are about two bowling lane's wide... I'm obviously not trying to say they are 120ft wide.

[thfuran]

I don't think that's obvious at all if you're talking about the length and the width and not describing something I know to be much smaller in any dimension than the length of a lane.