Today's bizarre high school football score

We had a coach in Mississippi some years ago who took advantage of the rule. He had a field goal kicker with a cannon leg, but not a good punter. So when it was time to punt, no matter where the ball was, he would kick a field goal instead. I think the rule is that if it doesn't reach the end zone it's the other team's ball wherever it goes out of bounds, so he'd just have his kicker kick it deep toward the sideline and give them the ball 50 or 60 yards down the field rather than the 30 or 40 he might net from a punt. His team (which was a very good 6A program, BTW) would often line up on their own 30 or 40 for a field goal try.

 

At various times in my junior HS and HS careers back in the mid-seventies, I played all the following positions:

1) Long snapper
2) Nose tackle right on top of the long snapper
3) Punter
4) Placekicker (at first straight on, then switching to soccer style)

Our coach actually had our QB do long snaps for a while, then he got dinged on the head and the coach needed somebody else to do it, and I happened to be standing there.

In the first half dozen or so snaps I tried, i launched three or four over the punter's head. Quickly it was deduced it was better to skip a two bouncer at the punter's feet than it was to launch it over his head.

Playing the nose rusher on the punting or placekick defense team was fun; in those days, there was no rule against it, so you could just demolish the long snapper as soon as they flexed to make the snap. The idea was to dump them on their ass so hard they'd mess up the snap (or maybe the next one).

For some reason, at least in those days, it wasn't really uncommon to have the long snapper go both ways as the nose rusher too. In a way it kinda makes sense. Actually it usually led to some informal mutual deescalation agreements; after you'd knocked each other on your asses a couple times, you'd just say, "jesus, dude," and you'd each throttle back a bit.

When I started kicking in junior high school, it was common to have big legged offensive linemen do the placekicking. When I got to HS, soccer style was taking over. I had much better range soccer style, but kicked lower line drives more subject to getting blocked. Kicking straight on, my kicks tended to slice and spin off to the right; soccer style I'd more often hook 'em to the left.
Between the adventures with long snappers and holders, it was only even money we'd get the kick off anyway.

I remember one time I was lining up to kick an extra point, I was concentrating and everything, head down, the center snapped it, and very much not according to plan, the snap -- a bullet spiral in contrast to the wobbling ducks we usually got -- hit me right in the crotch.

I collapsed groaning face down on the ground and laid there for a few minutes. Then I was helped to my feet to find out while I had been lying there, the loose ball had somehow bounced around up into the end zone to be recovered by the center for the game winning 2-point conversion. (Supposedly one or two players on each team took turns picking up the ball, taking a step or two, then fumbling it again, all while I was lying with my face in the grass, and somehow it ended up in the end zone, where the center fell on it.)
The coach said it was the best goddamn PAT play we ran all year.

 

I was very fortunate to learn from an upperclassman who knew long-snapping is a science. And many don't understand the most elementary concepts of it, because it's not the way you would naturally think you would long-snap. In some ways, it's like isometric exercises, because you're using your two arms, your two hands to create tension.

It also helped to have a good small college in town. On Saturdays, I'd be in there watching early warmups and saw all the team's long-snap possibilities shooting 12-yard bullets at each other from a standing position.

I spent a lot of time messing around with placekicking, but never got it to a competitive point. At my school, the coach was absolutely averse to any placekicking over the final 10-12 years of his career. He just wouldn't do it. Nothing but two-point conversions.

I did "jam" a 45-yarder through -- twice -- and could be fairly consistent from 35. But soccer-style ... I tried my ass off and could never do anything but slice the ball away or pull it to the left. I just had no clue.

More than once, I've wished that I still had my original hips so I could at least try to use what I know now. Just for the feel of it.

 

Ohio has seven divisions of football, from Division I for big schools to Division VII for small schools, with four regions per division.
For several years, the top eight in each division made the playoffs, with their inclusion determined by a computer poll. The state athletic association upped that to the top 16 teams this year.
The biggest discrepancies came in Division I, where the regions only have 16 to 19 teams. A winless team actually made the playoffs in one Division I region while several teams with .500 records or losing records made it elsewhere.
The format is typical — 1 vs. 16, 2 vs. 15, 3 vs. 14, etc. The higher seed hosts during the first two weeks, with neutral sites after that.
There were 33 upsets out of 224 games in the first round, and I don't mean just 9s beating 8s. Wins by 9s accounted for just 10 of the upsets. Double-digit seeds won the other 23 upsets, and all seven divisions had at least one double-digit seed win.
Those upsets included a 16 beating a 1 (one of our local teams in Division IV took that hit) and a 15 beating a 2.
Three teams that wouldn't have made the playoffs under the old format reached the regional semifinals (third week of the playoffs) and lost in close games — one by five points, two by seven.
We held the regional finals this past week, with the state semifinals next.
Normalcy has returned somewhat as the playoffs moved along — 11 No. 1 regional seeds remain, and eight unbeaten teams are left, including all four in Division III.
But there are a few Cinderellas out there — two of the Division V semifinalists are 5 seeds, both remaining 7 seeds face off in a Division II semifinal, and six of the 28 semifinalists have three losses (a 1 seed, two 3 seeds, a 5 seed, and two 7 seeds).

 

I covered Ohio preps for 17 years during the eight-team era and found eight to be perfect. There were some instances where some 9 and 10 seeds deserved a spot, especially in western Ohio small schools where some of those MAC schools with two wins were better than eight-win teams in other divisions, but for the most part, you should have to win seven games to get in.

I’m glad they didn’t expand while I covered it so I didn’t have to cover an extra weekend of two 66-0 games despite a running clock, like I always did the first weekend of the playoffs.

The big-school division was laughable given the population drain in the state and the means by which the private schools were collecting the top recruits. Nobody even cares about who wins anymore. It’s just seeing who has the most players headed to Ohio State.

 

One of the years I did radio, I covered a juco game in which a kid picked up the second-half opening kickoff in the end zone, took about three steps out, and then stepped back into the end zone and kneeled down thinking that would be a touchback.

 

If I'm understanding it correctly... Were there 10 guys at the top, kind of muddling around the ball, and their movement distracts the other team from the fact than an 11th sneaks on toward the bottom sideline? Kicker then basically just kicks a lazy fly out toward him, and he recovers it and runs it down the sideline. Seems legal to me, although I don't know off the top of my head if there is a rule about the number of players on each side of the ball. (Besides, because of the "muddling" action, they could have been legal in that regard anyway.)

 

I thought the kicking team wasn't allowed to advance the ball once it recovered on onside kick. Did the rule change or is it different in high schools?