For those of you who are old enough, American football kickers used to kick place kicks (field goals, extra points, kickoffs) in what is still called by some announcers “conventional” style. The kicker would stand squarely in front of the ball and then try to swing his leg (usually with a special shoe with a square toe on it) straight back and kick the ball through the uprights.
As most football fans know, nearly every kicker, especially those at the highest levels, kick the ball pretty much like people do in the rest of the world, i.e., like a soccer player. The change over started in the 1960s.
Why did American evolve a different kicking style from other games where the ball is kicked? The straight on kicking style is very hard to learn and is less tolerant of errors in style than kicking like a soccer player. And wouldn’t you think that if most of the world kicked a ball in one way, it would make sense for the relatively small subet of athletes who were kickers in American football, to kick in the same way?
Did rugby ever have a history of kicking in such a strange way? Forgive my ignorance, but I don’t believe rugby has many kicks that are placed on the ground.
I do know that in American football when the ball was rounder, there would be drop kicks instead of place kicks, which is yet another style of kicking, but those are almost nonexistent today (Doug Flutie dropkicked a PAT last year in an NFL game, the first one of its kind in over 50 years.)
Funny you see the conventional style as “unusual.” Running straight up and kicking the ball head on seems the most natural, default way to do it to me. That sideways soccer kick looks and feels completely unnatural and I’ve never undersood how anybody can get anything on the ball swinging the leg sideways like that.
When my brother adopted a 6-year old boy from Guatemala, I gave him an American football for his first Christmas present. He tried to kick it like a soccer ball before throwing it.
"Soccer’ style gives you more contact area and more control once you learn how to do it. Technique is more important than power initially, then the power comes. Straight on you can kick it a ton right away and it gets up faster simply because you’re more or less toeing the ball, but it is very unforgiving of errors.
Try it with a soccer ball. It’s pretty much the same thing when you get down to the basics, and a soccer ball will respond much the same way.
Which may be due in part to artificial turf, domed stadiums, and overall better-
maintained fields. I know the old Cleveland Stadium was often in bad shape, with
the baseball infield inhabiting one end of the field-try kicking off of dirt.
From what I can feel, you get more power from bringing your leg a bit sideways. I had a kid in my elementary class that I taught who couldn’t kick the ball fair in kickball because he wanted so much to kick it far, and that meant he went left (using the right leg).
After a penalty, the non-offending team can chose to punt the ball out of bounds and retain posession when the ball, tap and go to run with the ball, or placekick for goal from the point of infraction. Also, at anytime during the course of play, a player may attempt a drop goal through the uprights. Also, after a try is scored, a placekick can be attempted for an extra 2 points (for a total of seven) from a point perpendicular to where the try was touched down.
I’ve also noticed that most kickers who play soccer use the side of their foot, while those who haven’t use the front. The soccer-style is more consistant.
In rugby league here in Australia, up until the mid-to-late 80s most kickers were straight on style, sometimes called toe-pokers. But because the ball isn’t quite so pointy, rather than standing it straight up, the ball was placed with one end pointing toward the goal at about 45 deg. The kicker would then strike the other end of ball with the toe.
Then the soccer style became more prevalent, called round-the-corner, where the ball was placed perpendicular to the ground, and struck with the instep.
By the the 90’s the toe-pokers were all but gone, and most kickers now use a hybrid style, where the ball is angled like the straight on style, but struck with the instep round-the-corner style.
I sort of feel the opposite. Whether it’s swinging a bat, a golf club, throwing a punch. . .the power comes hip rotation, not strength.
The “soccer style” involves a rotation around your other leg.
Straight on, the only additional power would be from rocking your upper body backwards.
The only way I can believe straight-on kickers got any appreciable power was from some kind of bump you must have got from having a pointed toe deliver the blow, instead of the instep. Although, the guy who kicked a 63 yarder (tied with Jason Elam for longest NFL field goal ever) had a stump for a foot. His shoe was squared off.
Pulsifer’s story is pretty much how I recall it went in Rugby Union, too. I suspect that the superiority of the “round the corner” style became clearer as pitch quality improved, as John DiFool suggests.
Americans of an earlier era were almost completely unfamiliar with soccer, and would have had no opportunities to see it or to imitate its kicking styles. Folks from the rest of the world who grew up playing soccer had kicked around the ball so much that good kicking style became intuitive. Not so for Americans.
Conversely I suspect some Europeans never developed good throwing techniques, whereas Americans who grew up playing throwing games like baseball (or other nationalities who played cricket) know how best to throw for distance and accuracy. I am reminded of a description I read somewhere (maybe on these boards) of the awkward style of French soldiers throwing hand grenades during World War I. Sounded something like a side-arm hook shot.
The last one was Rich Karlis, who retired 16 years ago. Barefoot kicking doesn’t hurt as much as you think it might and the bare foot doesn’t have any obstructions like the shoelaces to potentially effect the impact with the ball.
I believe no one kicks barefoot in American football because it’s prohibited by the rules at the college level. So no one is going to try it at the pro level if they’ve never done it before.
I think that’s the key right there. American place-kicking evolved via the drop kick, and for the drop kick, so far as I know, toe kicking really is better. Even today, when soccer goalies drop kick the ball, I believe they toe-kick it.
(Soccer fans, correct me if I’m wrong.)
So when Americans switched to the place-kick, because of the pointier ball, it seemed natural to keep doing it the same way. It isn’t easy to switch, once you’ve learned toe-kicking and strengthened the appropriate muscles.
To be sure, there was a lag of roughly 40 years between when the place-kick (largely) displaced the drop-kick and when the soccer-style place-kick began to displace the toe-place-kick. At least some Americans played soccer during this interval, and in hindsight, it’s hard to understand why somebody didn’t wander over from a soccer field and say, “Crikey, I can kick better than these yokels.” It’s always hard to give a reason why something didn’t happen. Never underestimate the power of inertia.
I’m not really sure what it’s like for professionals who have been doing a lot of kicking all their lives. But playing soccer in pick-up games and through jr. High, a toe-punch just had a lot more power. It was highly disliked by coaches because you have a very small point of impact, and much less control.(also there is there is the problem of breaking your toes pretty regularly). But al least on our level, you could kick it a lot harder.
I have no problem imagining that the old players learning to kick noticed that the toe kick is stronger while your learning(and did something to fix the broken toe problem), and didn’t have the soccer background to know that there is much better control with the soccer style instep sweep kick, because of the extra contact points, and time of contact.