The Kicker
I’m a kicker. That’s my job title and job description. Kicker. That’s it. I work at a place called the National Football League.
My co-workers think I’m a joke. They bust their rear ends running around smashing into other guys, sometimes at speeds you wouldn’t let your kids ride their bikes at. And some of these guys are the size of sumo wrestlers! It’s freaking dangerous. They do this for a whole game. And for months of hellacious practices.
On Sundays, my half of the team risks brutal injuries trying to move a little oblong ball to the end of the field, because half the other team literally beats up, bludgeons, and pummels my guys trying to stop them. Then, if my team gets close but not all the way, they get no points for that.
Instead, I get called in. For one measly play. All I have to do is kick the thing though a couple of poles. That’s it. If I make it, I get the credit. If I don’t, my team gets nothing. They even look bad for not getting it all the way to the end of the field.
If I’m successful, 80,000 screaming fans and a dozen coaches love me. If I’m not, I might get booed or even lose my job. But either way, there’s not much chance of me getting hurt. They even have special rules to protect me. It’s crazy.
All I have to do to keep my job is make about 4 out of every 5 kicks. And even if I lose my job, I’ll probably get an offer from another outfit. Everybody wants a kicker who’s perfect. But nobody’s perfect, so sometimes we play musical teams.
If you ask me, my job shouldn’t even exist. It’s a dumb part of a fairly complicated game. I’ve never understood this. Why have a game where so much depends on one guy who’s almost never even on the field? A guy who does nothing that the rest of the team does?
And here’s something else amazing: I’m not even the only kicker on my team. There’s another guy who does a different kind of kick. He’s called a punter. These teams can’t even find one guy to do both kinds of kicks! The punter is my only real friend on the team. To the other guys we’re like vultures who swoop down for a free meal after the lions have done all the dirty work. He doesn’t risk much injury either. One of his jobs is catching and holding the ball the ball for my kicks, so I guess he could get a dislocated finger if I kick him in the hand, but that’s about it.
But rules are rules, so they need us.
The thing is, stats show that our jobs don’t even make sense. Statistically, teams do better if they almost never use either one of us. Kicking or punting, instead of keeping the ball and trying to move it forward, is a waste of resources, almost every time.
But the coaches will never change because they have too much riding on their careers to try anything radical. These coaches have no balls. (Sorry — bad pun.) Not when they’re getting paid 50 times what your average worker makes. No way they’re gonna risk losing that.
One more thing. My career can last five times as long as some of these guys. They get so beat up some of them have to stop playing in their 20s. Some of them never walk right again. Some of them never think right again, either. Kickers can keep going into our 40s if we take care of ourselves. That’s a lot of easy money compared to the rest of the guys.
So I’ll take the money. Just because the rules are stupid doesn’t mean I have to be.
© 2010 Greg Tamblyn
