FanHouse

Have you noticed, class, that American football is the only popular form of football in the world where kicking is not an important skill that every player must learn?

Take a look around. In association football, or soccer, kicking the ball is all there is. In Australian football, kicking is a vital part of the game, since any player who catches a clean kick can mark the ball and get a free kick from that mark. Gaelic footballers need to be able to kick the ball accurately down the field and through the uprights from a long distance. Even in rugby, the American game's forefather, kicking the ball forward to a teammate is still a vital means of advancing to the end zone for a try.

Indeed, they still call it a "try" in rugby, even though it now nets more points than a goal. This is a nod to the history of that game. When rugby football was first invented, only goals counted for points, and touching the ball down over the opposing team's goal line was only a means for setting up a goal kick. Otherwise, it didn't really count for anything.

This was also true in the earliest days of American football, but those rules changes very quickly...

Earl "Dutch" Clark is considered
the last of the great drop kickers
in American football
(Pro Football Hall of Fame)
Just days before the Massasoit Convention in 1876, where the first rules of American football were adopted, Harvard played Yale in a rugby match and agreed that only field goals would count toward the score. (This was the Rugby Union rule at the time.) Harvard made three touchdowns in that game, but they were unable to convert any of the goal attempts after touchdowns, while Yale managed one field goal during the game. Yale won, 1-0.

The Harvard wanted nothing of that, and Princeton agreed. So at the Massasoit Convention, they adopted a new rule:

"A match shall be decided by a majority of touchdowns. A goal shall be equal to four touchdowns, but in the case of a tie, a goal kicked from a touchdown shall take precedence over four touchdowns."

As you can see, kicking field goals was still a vital part of this new American game, but little by little, the emphasis began to shift to the touchdown.

By 1882, as Walter Camp's scrimmage and down-and-distance rules were adopted, the scoring rules changed to fit the game. Teams still needed to score four touchdowns to equal a field goal, and two safeties equaled a touchdown. This was beginning to confuse people, though, so in October of 1883, Camp introduced a new scoring system: 2 points for a touchdown, 1 point for a safety, 4 points for a successful goal after a touchdown, and 5 points for a field goal.

The schools like the idea, but they felt the recipe wasn't quite right. Two months later, they adjusted the numbers: 4 points for a touchdown, 2 points for a safety, 2 points for a goal after touchdown, and 5 points for a field goal.

You can see where this is going. Little by little, the emphasis of American football shifted away from kicking for goal and shifted toward scoring touchdowns. If you could get more points for a touchdown and conversion than you could for a field goal, then you worked harder at scoring those touchdowns. Still, a 5-point field goal made the kicking game important, especially since drop kicks from anywhere on the field were still legal.

However, as players and fans delighted more in touchdowns over field goals, the scoring emphasis kept shifting. In 1898, the touchdown was changed from 4 points to 5 points. Just six years later, field goals dropped from 5 points to 4 points, and by 1909, the field goal was only 3 points. The shift in emphasis to the touchdown was complete in 1912, when the rules were changed to make touchdowns 6 points.

It took three decades, but field goals, once the only method of scoring points, were relegated to last-resort scoring. If you couldn't get a touchdown, you could at least get something out of the drive. Still, in the 1920s and 1930s, drop kicking was still a vital part of the game. Teams that had trouble scoring in the red zone could always start drop kicking field goals as a means of catching up in a game. Guys like Jim Thorpe, Dutch Clark and Paddy Driscoll were all skilled drop kickers.

That all changed in 1934. That year, the shape of the football changed. It was made more pointed at both ends, which allowed quarterbacks to pass the ball much more easily. However, the pointier ball didn't bounce reliably like the more rounded ball, and as a result, drop kicking became all but impossible. Players gave up drop kicking in favor of placekicking, and from that point forward, kicking in American football became far less important than the running and passing games.

Of course, you can always ask Bobby Bowden just how important the kicking game really is, but we really should antagonize the elderly like that. The point is that American football used to rely as heavily on kicking as a form of advancing the ball and scoring, but the adoption of touchdowns for score and the legalization of the forward pass changed all that. Imagine for a moment, though, if in American football, like rugby, the only way to advance the ball was by running with it or by kicking it to a teammate. Can you imagine what kind of strategies coaches would adopt in a game like that?

I know, I know, you don't have to, because we have a forward pass, which you all want to see right now, don't you? Fair enough. Class dismissed. Enjoy the games today, everyone.

(Click here for links to previous Football History 101 posts.)