The Great Ball Court is 168 meters long and 70 meters wide.

The walls flanking the playing field bear elaborate carved reliefs that include scenes of decapitation — a motif connecting the ball game to sacrificial practice and to the mythological themes of death and transformation that permeate both the Popol Vuh narrative and the broader Mesoamerican sacrificial complex.

The specific form of sacrifice most prominently associated with Chichén Itzá in popular imagination — the throwing of individuals into the Sacred Cenote — is supported by archaeological evidence from the cenote itself, though the character of that evidence is more complex than the simple narrative of live sacrifice that often appears in popular accounts.

The objects recovered from the cenote include human bones alongside a remarkable variety of other materials, and the human remains show a demographic profile that includes adults and children of both sexes, as well as evidence of processing and treatment of remains that complicates any single interpretive framework.