Skip to footer

The NFL: 16 ways the game has changed in the Super Bowl era

Forty-seven years after the first Super Bowl was played in Los Angeles before a less-than-capacity crowd, let’s look back at some of the ways the NFL has changed.

12. Kickoffs: the search for a solution

  • By Ross Atkin Staff writer

The NFL has long known that kickoff returns are among the most dangerous, if not THE most dangerous, play in the game.  One attempt to address this came in 1975, when the league adopted a rule to prohibit a player on the receiving team from blocking below the waist on kickoffs, as well as on punts and field-goal attempts. Then in 2009, the use of a blocking wedge involving three or more players on kickoff returns was banned.

Of course, a well-executed return rates as one of the most exciting plays in the game and annually produces some of its longest plays, so to lessen the number of touchbacks, the league has actually moved the spot of kickoffs back twice. In 1974 it was moved from the 40-yard line to the 35-yard line, where it stayed for the next 20 years. In 1994, kickoffs were again moved, this time to the 30 yard-line.  

This season, however, the spot was returned to the 35 in an effort to actually increase the number of touchbacks, lessening the runback plays that lead to so many injuries. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has gone so far as suggest kickoffs might be eliminated altogether in the future. A possible alternative he has mentioned is to give the team that would normally be kicking off after scoring possession of the ball on its own 30-yard line, but in a 4th -and-15 situation. A team could risk going for it, but more than likely would choose to punt, which is considered a less injury-riddled alternative to kickoffs.

12 of 16
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.