Get :Your Kicks

Routine is boring. Ruts are efficient but dull. That's why we are always looking for ways to make things interesting. The National Football League has a plan: Spice up the extra point. For more years than I can remember, touchdowns have been seven points. Even though the rule book says that the actual crossing of the goal line with the football is worth six points, and the place kick through the uprights at the back of the end zone adds the additional one point, I spent my youth playing as if that little asterisk of a play didn't exist. Each score was seven points. It was part of the way I learned my sevens multiplication facts. They were touchdown facts. Five touchdowns equals thirty-five points. Even now, as an elementary school teacher, it's the quickest way into that recalcitrant sports-minded kid's head when it comes to getting those times tables into automatic. Now, the "No Fun League" wants to shake things up a little, and with it the very fabric of third grade mathematics.

Among the possibilities rumbling about in the rooms for of millionaires deciding how their teams will play the game in the coming season: moving the line of scrimmage back for Point After Touchdown kicks, placing the ball on the one and a half yard line for a two-point conversion; eliminating the PAT kicks entirely, requiring teams to run a play from scrimmage; and allowing the defense to score, as in college football, if the ball is turned over on a two-point try. Sounds exciting, right? I don't think they are thinking about all the ways this will disrupt my life. Like the way I tend to start easing out of the living room as the teams line up for that extra point, pretty confident that it is as high a percentage a play as exists in professional sports. I want to maximize my stop at the bathroom, then into the kitchen to check on the chip and dip inventory, maybe even refilling that big tumbler of iced tea on the way back to the comfort and safety of my couch. A sportscaster I once heard describing highlights of a football game said, "The only reason we show you an extra point is if something like this," insert embarrassing slo-mo footage of a kicker missing wildly or a holder bobbling the snap three feet over their head, "happens." That's why it's an extra point. It's the pause for sanity after the ninety-eight yard march to greatness. It's the free-throw of football. And just like lunch, there is no such thing as a free one. 

Go ahead, make the goalposts narrower. Move the ball back ten yards. Twenty. Don't allow kickers on the field at all. Make them kick from the instant replay booth. Or maybe even the press box.  I'll be back at school, trying to figure out how to score curling.