Kevin Butler, who kicks for the Bears, made two tackles on kickoff returns in one game last season. The press asked him about the tackles and Butler replied, a bit indignantly, “My paycheck says I’m a football player.”
That surprised me. Not that Butler’s paycheck says he’s a football player, but that Butler gets a paycheck at all.
I had assumed each NFL kicker bought a season ticket to get into the stadium, maybe even paid extra for renting the uniform.
A field goal kicker is not a football player. If a kicker is very brave or very stupid, he might, on occasion, become involved in actual football action. But so might a stray dog.
The difference between a kicker and a stray dog is that a stray dog on the field can be mildly entertaining.
“Not a fair comparison,” you say. “Football kickers have a unique athletic talent.”
And dogs don’t? Ever try catching a Frisbee in your teeth?
Look, I’m not trying to dog kickers, or kick dogs. However, I do believe that courteous and well-armed security guards should be stationed at all games to keep both off the field.
The field goal is football’s greatest artistic weakness, a major flaw in an otherwise beautifully woven tapestry.
We have made the field goal an exciting play, but only by the circumstances. The kick itself, even if it’s a game decider, is no more exciting than a panel discussion on the Rooney Rule.
It would be no less exciting, and no less absurd, for each team to suit up a professional golfer who, using a large-bladed pitching wedge, would chip the football off a tee and attempt to land it in a vat of guacamole placed behind the endzone:
“…and with the score tied, the Rams are sending in Nick Faldo to try a 39-yard field goal chip-n-dip. He checks the wind, consults his caddy…”
Football, of all known sports of our solar system, Is unique in that the winner is often determined on a play that has absolutely no relation to the rest of the game, executed by a person who has been less involves in the game then the cheerleaders.
The NBA Finals are not marred by the presence of a figure-skater brought out during the closing seconds of game 7 to attempt a triple axel. The Indy 500 never comes down to a parallel-parking contest among the drivers mothers-in-law – though the idea has merit.
It’s bad enough when a great football game is decided by a field goal. What about the games in which the only scoring the whole damn game is done by a guy names Flodgko Zimgrf, whisking the ball with the side of his foot while 20 large men beat one another senseless?
What I’m trying to say is that the field goal is stupid and annoying.
We put up with it because we are accustomed to it, like that bad spring in the cushion of our favorite chair. But we don’t like it.
When we gather around the water coolers on Monday morning and re-create Sunday’s great plays, do we ever act out a field goal? We do not, because regardless of its importance to the final score, every field goal is like every other field goal – as ordinary as black coffee.
Basketball has thrived by being unafraid to make significant change – shot clocks, the three point line, wider foul lanes.
Even baseball, the strongest of sports, has shown courage, first in adopting the DH rule and now by embracing interleague play.
It’s time for football to consider a big change, an alteration of its kicking game.
I have a few suggestions, any of which would be an improvement over the current system:
Install an upper crossbar, thus forming a rectangular target area. This would increase the difficulty of short yardage field goals, which must be kicked high to clear onrushing linemen and so tend to be rising when they reach the uprights. Inside the 20, the chip-shot field goal no longer a gimmie, coaches would be more prone to eschew the boot and go for the touchdown.
Put the goal post on the track and have it move back and forth, a moving target like the castle drawbridge at a miniature golf course.
Rule that all the field goals must be kicked by the head coach.
Eliminate the field goal entirely. And while we’re at it, kick out the PAT kick, absolutely the most boring non-play in sports.
With no field goal, overtime games could, in theory, stretch out too long, the players dangerously tired. So in overtime, award three points – and thus a win – for advancing the ball inside your opponent’s 10 yard line.
That way the Super Bowl is assured of being won or lost on a real play, requiring imagination and execution, and the hero will be Joe Montana or a Reggie White or a Deion Sanders – somebody whose uniform is dirty, whose brow is moist with perspiration.
What about the kickers? Screw them.
