Jim Reese, who has been writing for both CompuSports and Florida newspapers for ten years, recently published a book entitled, “Sports Stories-Old School.”

Jim, a former quarterback at the University of Minnesota and a past high school and college coach, reminisces about the times and people he has met in a fifty-five year journey through sporting fields, locker rooms and lives, ranging from his relationship with Vince Lombardi, to an unheralded second-stringer on a losing high school football team who was determined to play college football.

Jim’s book Sports Stories-Old School is available now in eBook and paperback format. His past articles can be found under the Inside the Hash Marks category, and his ebook How to Win at Flag Football is available here.

Below is one of the stories from his new book.

The Kicking Game
Jim Reese

Nothing has confused members of my family more than the kicking game in football. Invariably, I will receive looks of incredulity from them as they try to figure out what just happened. Therefore I offer the following hints to clarify things.

There are five kinds of kicks: punts, place kicks, free kicks, drop kicks and kick-offs. In catching a punt, the receiver may elect to fair catch the ball to avoid getting tackled, or he may not. The receiving team may let the ball roll without touching it, or they may not. The kicking team may catch its own kick, or it may not. The kicking team may let the ball roll, or they may not. If the punt goes into the end zone, it comes out to the twenty-yard line but not if it is caught and run out of the end zone. If the punt goes out of bounds, it is put in play at the spot where it crossed the sideline. Especially puzzling is the punt receiver signaling for a fair catch and then getting out of the way so the ball will bounce into the end zone. Sometimes when this happens, a man on the kicking team may run behind the player making the fair catch signal and catch the ball before it goes into the end zone. Go figure. When a punt is received in the field of play, the receiver often hands the ball to another team member, or he may not. I hope that clears up the punting game.

Now on to place kicks. Place kicks are attempts at either a one-point conversion or a three-point field goal. Mammoth linemen take aim at each other on the line of scrimmage and grunt for all their worth as a great seismic shift ensues upon the snap of the ball. Meanwhile, swifter smaller men on the outside fly in towards the kicker in an attempt to block the kick. It has been mathematically proven that a proper snap, a good hold and an excellent technique in kicking and follow-through will always lead to success because the linemen, even if unimpeded, lack the sense of direction to make the seven-yard burst to the ball while those outside rushing missiles just can’t get to the kicker in time. Extra point attempts are sort of like fielding practice in baseball. Everybody hates to do it but somebody has to. Field goals are a different story. The further from the goal line the kick is attempted, the lesser the chance of success. Fat linemen still perform their same mating ritual but some smaller faster rushers are employed to find little creases to sneak through because the kicker has to take just a fraction longer to get under the ball and give it both the arc and the distance it needs. Because of their derring-do, these smaller rushers are called nut jobs. To further confuse you, attempted field goals that fall short may be returned, or not, depending upon the size of the crowd.

Free-kicks may be either punts or kick-offs. No one really knows why. Either kick takes place from the twenty-yard line, or perhaps not. In the case of a fair catch being made, the receiving team may attempt a free-kick from the spot of the catch. If the ball then goes through the goal posts, three points are awarded as in a field goal and the stupid coach of the other team gets fired for not kicking the ball out of bounds in the first place.

Drop-kicks are seldom used in today’s game. The kicker drops the ball on the ground and then kicks it on its upward bounce towards the goal posts. The last successful attempt in the NFL was by Doug Flutie on a lark in 2006. Before that it was 1941. Many, many years ago, George Gipp of Notre Dame—yes, The Gipper—drop-kicked the longest field goal in college history, a gigantic sixty-three yarder. Never able to match it, he expired but soon arose from the dead to become Ronald Reagan. Here’s another twist on the drop kick. Somebody running toward the goal line, his team trailing by two points with the clock winding down and opponents in his way, may stop and drop-kick the ball. If it goes through the goal posts, his team wins by one point and he will be memorialized forever because nobody has ever done it.

That leaves us with the only remaining kick, the kick-off. This gets real tricky so pay attention. Kick-offs may be deep, poached, squibbed or on-side. The intent of each is the same-minimize the chance for a return for a touchdown. Deep is exactly what it says-kick the ball into the third row behind the goal posts so the only one who can return it is an overweight businessman from North Jersey who has had end zone seats for forty-one years. Hardly a threat. A poached kick is a different story. Its intent is to force a fair catch and therefore no advancement by the receiving team. The ball is kicked short and high in an attempt to make a less than agile lineman catch it. As much fun as it is to watch linemen eat, wait until you see them trying to catch something. It is sad, sort of like a big hairy dancer in a tutu catching a leaping ballerina. The lineman becomes confused and doesn’t know what to do. He can signal for a fair catch but the only thing he has ever signaled for were more potatoes at the training table. If the ball bounces to the ground, it’s every man for himself because whoever recovers it gets possession. A real ugly grouping of testosterone charged manhood takes place in attempting to recover the ball, the victor generally emerging from the bottom of the pile broken of limb but not of spirit while the referee, or the zebra as he is referred to, stumbles out of the melee, hat askew, wildly pointing to the goal line in the direction of the vanquished.

The on-side kick is similar to the poach or squib kick in that the goal is to recover the ball. Most of the time, it is tried late in games by a trailing team. It generally rests on the ability of the more athletic members of “the hands team” to make the initial catch and secure the ball while swift, stealth-like members of the kicking team fly in like rockets to get there first. Referees diving into the snarling, groping, punching, biting and clawing pile to determine who has the ball have often disappeared never to surface again.

A word here about those brave souls who are the wedge-breakers. Stupid beyond measure, these members of the kick-off team have, as their sole duty, to run straight down the field as fast as they can and break up the wedge by flying headfirst into it after it has been formed by their opponents on the other end of the field. The meeting takes place on about the twenty-yard line. It is here that the rubber meets the road. Two-hundred-and-fifty pound men of limited mental dexterity thrust at each other like sumo wrestlers in a winner take-all contest. Careers have been made and livelihoods terminated at this crossroad of gridiron Armageddon.

I admit I have been playing, coaching and watching football for over sixty-years now and I still don’t know all the rules of the kicking game.