Why the SQUIB KICK must be banished from football

I find it cute how so many football coaches get SO scared about kickoffs ONLY when there’s a few seconds left in a half. (You'd think the chance of a TD return is the same at any time of the game...) But late in halves, coaches tend to throw out all their planning and opt for the awkward “squib kicks” that bounce down the middle of the field, giving far better field position than necessary.

It makes no sense.

We saw this yesterday at the crazy Rose Bowl. Oklahoma had just converted a neat trick play to take a 17-point lead with six seconds to go in the half. Then the coaches got weird. And did the one thing that could give a little pep to Georgia's step heading into halftime.

Though the Oklahoma kicker, Austin Seubert, sent five of seven other kicks through the end zone, they squibbed it. Georgia fielded it at the OU 45 (!), did a quick-quick pass play for eight yards, then booted a 55-yarder with no time on the clock.

Those three points should have never happened.

Coaches, if you're listening, I have some GOOD NEWS. The NCAA offers an apparently little-known 10-yard insurance policy that GUARANTEES a kickoff return will never happen against you.

Let me explain this, because I'm apparently the only person in the country that knows about it.

A decade ago, the NCAA moved the starting position after kickoffs from the 20 to the 25. Then at the same time – and this is that part that goes less noticed – they changed the penalty if you kick the ball out of the sidelines downfield, from the 40-yard-line back to the 35. So the difference between the penalty and a touchback suddenly changed from 20 to 10 yards.

I've been watching. And I've never seem a team cash in on this 10-yard fee. Why?

OU should have kicked the ball out of the sidelines around the 30. Georgia would have taken it at their 35 with six seconds ago. That's NOT enough to time to make a pass to get into FG territory. OU would have kept the momentum and gone to half with a three-possession lead. As it stood, the game never was the same.

I've never seen a squib kick go past the opponents' 35. Maybe once. So kick it out of sidelines.

Easy peasy, as they say.