Discrimination In American Football

“Football kickers are like taxi cabs. You can always go out and hire another one.(Football)” This quote from Buddy Ryan is just one of many that ridicule kickers as worthless and easily replaceable. All of the time, this country, the United States argues about women or other races being scene as objects rather than real people. I would say that it is about time American football kickers are added into this mix of discrimination, and stand up against all of those who oppose kicking. For those who may not know much about football, kickers have been around since before 1930 where usually the biggest player with the strongest leg would hit the ball as hard as he could through the uprights. Though, in today’s world, kicking has become an art of

Billick, this comment may have seemed harmless, but it received immediate backlash from some of the NFL’s best kickers. Pat McAfee, punter and kickoff specialist for the Indianapolis Colts and well renowned comedian, fired back at the former coach on one of his radio segments from the Bob and Tom show. Pat brought up great points, asking Brian, “How would you classify a football player?”. Pat argued that a football player is not only the hardest hitter, or thrower, or receiver, but a combination of everything you can do on the field (Benbow). One thing that is very interesting, is that while some football players specialize in those position, Pat McAfee has literally done all of those things and more. There have also been some other big names in kicking such as unsigned free agent David Akers and the Vikings Jeff Locke who had major impacts on the game. When David Akers played for the Eagles, not only did he have one of the highest made field goal percentages, but David would be scolded by his coaches for running past the kickoff team and trying to make the tackles before anyone else could. Meanwhile, a newer face to NFL football, Jeff Locke ran a fake punt 42 yards to reach the placekickers field goal range which sealed the

That is the thing that always goes unnoticed, the technicalities of kicking. Being a kicker myself, there was a lot of hard work and mental discipline needed in just learning to kick the easiest of field goals. To start, there is the switch from your offensive or defensive positions, to the mindset of being calm and focused on perfection. The average training day would consist of twenty-five to thirty field goals, twenty punts, one hundred punt drops, and fifteen kick offs. Those are just some of the standard procedures during practice for kickers, not including team reps, and other technicalities. Picture this, tens of thousands of people surrounding you, screaming at the top of their lungs, and you have the chance to win the game with one kick, where if anything slightly goes wrong, your team loses. An article from ProFootballFocus said that seventy-five percent of overtime games end in a field goal, including four super bowls (Jahnke). Also on a more recent note, in the Colts win against the Jaguars this 2016 season, Adam Vinatieri, the Colts place kicker, scored 15 of the teams 29 points, where if one field goal was missed, or if the other team would’ve made one more, the Colts would have lost. So ask yourself this, how important are kickers to a football team? Because without a good kicker, four teams would not have super