Unraveling the Evolution of Football’s Extra Point Play

It happens in a football game after every touchdown, the extra point attempt.

But what's the history of this extra point or extra points?

Timothy p. Brown of FootballArchaeology.com joins us.

Today to tell us the history and.

Evolution of the extra point play.

Tim's up in a moment to tell us all about it.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren.

He's of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal deposit of football history.

And welcome to another edition where we get to talk to Timothy b.

Brown of footballarchaeology.com about one of his recent tidbits.

Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Hey, Darren, looking forward to chatting and this, it's possible this will be the first time that I make a point.

Yeah, I hope you don't go for two.

That's not all I'm saying.

No.

I was taught at an early age not to do that.

Well, we are having some fun with the title of Tim's recent tidbit that was he named A Brief History of Football's Extra Point.

So, Tim, what can you tell us about this story?

Yeah, you know, so this is one of, you know, I, I really like, you know, kind of story situations where the things that we just think are settled, you know, that there's no doubt how this process is going to work or what it should be.

Like.

We think of the extra point.

It's like, oh, okay, yeah, going to kick the extra point, or, you know, maybe you go for two.

But it's such a straightforward process and no one thinks about how it might have been in the past.

And, you know, it really, I mean, if I kind of tried to identify what were the top 10 controversies in the history of football, you know, the things people argued about endlessly.

One of them was what to do about the point after a touchdown.

And I say point, but that's even an incorrect statement.

So, you know, it, it all comes down to, you know, it's pretty much settled now or has been, you know, for 113 years.

But there a big controversy at the beginning of the game is which acts should earn scores.

What do you have to do in the game of football to earn a score?

And then secondly, what's the relative value of those acts?

And so, so like, you know, at the beginning, football, you know, coming from rugby, the only way you could score was to kick a goal.

And you could kick a goal either by kicking it from the field, which we now consider to be a field goal, or by scoring a touchdown.

So if you kicked it from the field, it was a contested kick.

If you scored a touchdown, then you had an opportunity.

And how you did that varied over time, but you had an opportunity to kick an uncontested goal.

So that was the real value.

I mean, initially, that was the main value of, of scoring a touchdown was to be able to kick an uncontested goal.

And so, you know, when.

So initially just a kicked goal, no matter what was worth a goal, there weren't really point values.

But if you kick both, if you score the touchdown and you kick the goal from field, you get six points.

Right.

It kind of made sense, you know.

Yeah.

And then the, the kick afterwards went from four points down to two and then 1, 1, 1.

And so, I mean, we don't think about it that way, but it's, it's all, it was all an argument about which X should get, you know, points and what's the relative value.

And so it was, it was mostly an argument about do players, who do you, do you award?

Should the game be about awarding skilled players or team play?

I mean, that was really the fundamental argument.

And so team play got you to score touchdowns, whereas you could not be that great a team and you, you could move the ball or the other opposite team fumble.

And so you got some guy who can kick a drop, kick it from 40 yards out and you score four points or three points or however much it was worth.

And so, you know, that was the big argument.

Six points for touchdown, one for the extra point and three for field goal.

And then, you know, you had safeties and you know, the other things.

It's just a waste of time.

And people, they took both sides of the sides of the argument.

Sometimes they say everybody makes them.

But if you, if you had a bad, you know, if you didn't have a good kicker, it'd be like, well, liquidy makes them, you know, so there was always this argument.

It was a free kick.

So then they made it.

You could.

You got the ball at the five and you could run, you could pass it or you could kick it.

So.

But you still got one point no matter what, right?

And then, then finally in 58, that's when they, you know, they kind of felt like they had too many ties and they wanted to add some excitement to the game.

They're trying to compete with the pros and stuff like that.

And so they added the two point conversion by running or passing.

Right?

I mean, in the past you could do that.

You just only earned one point for it.

So it's one of those things where just there's this whole series of changes over the years that was all based on really fundamental questions about what is this game?

About what should we reward and by how much.

And so again, we're so focused now.

It's such a settled issue, right?

Nobody argues about it anymore.

But sometimes really fundamental things change.

Like kickoffs.

Right?

The NFL is doing.

I don't even understand what they do.

It's.

They do some strange process for kicking, for kicking off.

The dynamic kickoff they call it.

Okay, fine, it's dynamic, you know, so it's just one of those things where it's been such a settled issue that we just don't doubt anything about it anymore.

But just the change in the kickoff that the NFL implemented demonstrates that you can.

These are all arbitrary rules.

You can change them whenever you want, you can do whatever you want with them.

And, you know, there may be a day where somebody says, let's get rid of this extra point process.

So, yeah, definitely.

Interesting.

I mean, can you imagine what, how much strategy has changed?

I mean, let's say they never change that in the.

The kick from field is still worth more than the touchdown and you're still playing with those.

I mean, the whole strategy of the game.

But I love how you put it in both the story and telling us tonight, you know, the basic fundamental was that it was the team play versus the individual athlete.

And I think they got it right by making it the team game because it's the ultimate team game.

I think many experts, and I agree with them, and that's why it's such a fun game, because there's so much complicated competition going on, you know, both man on man.

And you know, what.

What you're doing as individuals and what you're doing as.

As a unit to move the ball or stop the opponent from moving the ball.

It's just a beautiful game.

And so many things can vary off it.

Yeah.

You know, and even here's.

Here's another.

You know, I mean, you mentioned the team versus the individual.

So in.

Right.

And that was mostly because, I mean, it's some of the same motivation they're.

They're trying to.

They wanted to enhance the ability for teams to score by throwing the forward pass.

And before you couldn't throw the pass over the goal line.

So they wanted to.

By adding an end zone, it allowed them to throw the ball over the.

Over the goal line, but still within some constrained space.

And.

But it really was a way to allow teams to score a touchdown rather than kick a field goal when they got inside the 20, you know, so it was.

It was.

Allow them to use team play rather than that individual kicker, you know, being the dominant player.

So I don't know, it's.

It's kind of an.

It's an interesting.

I mean, so many things tie in like that, but team play versus individual.

And now, you know, I mean, obviously team individuals are vital and you know, there are dominant players and they're still, you know, back then.

There still are.

But.

But you're right.

I mean, it's.

The pendulum definitely swung in the favor of team play.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You think about that.

You know, that rule doesn't change that.

You just said with the end zones and teams get inside to 20, defenses are really only have to defend 20 yards now.

You know, not the 30 yards that they're doing it.

I mean, that really opens up a lot.

Yeah.

Plus throws that cross the goal line, whether it's bounced or flew over, it became touchbacks, you know.

So you lost.

Oh, yeah.

So, I mean, it was.

The pass was really heavily restricted.

So, you know, it's.

Anyway, you know.

Yeah.

Very, very interesting.

Yeah.

So.

But, Tim, you have a lot of these different, interesting facets from football yesteryear that, you know, our generations and, you know, we've forgotten about and we don't appreciate.

But you bring those back to light with your T tidbits and your writings and tell us about them and bring them into the, you know, the reality of what people were thinking at the time and why things changed the way they are.

So, so interesting.

And maybe you could share with the listeners where they can share in your tidbits.

Yep.

You know, footballarchaeology.com it's a substack site.

So just go out there, subscribe to, get an email every time I publish something which is, you know, I don't know, three, three, three or four times a week plus, you know, the podcast that you and I do and, or alternatively, just go out there whenever, you know, bookmark it, go out there whenever you want or, you know, download the substack app or just subscribe, subscribe.

Or you can follow and subscribe and just not get emails, but just you'll get like a bank of notices, you know, that are available to you whenever you, whenever you do go to the site.

So, yeah, that's it.

Well, we certainly appreciate you helping to get this story over the goal line with us tonight and filling our football brains with a little bit more information to ponder around a water cooler in the coming days.

So appreciate you and love to talk to you again next week.

Very good.

Thanks, sir.

That's all the football history we have today, folks.

Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.

We invite you to check out our website, pigskindispatch.com not only to see the daily football history, but to experience positive football with our many articles on the good people of the game, as well as our own football comic strip, cleat.

Marks comics, pigskindispatch.com is also on social.

Media outlets, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and don't forget the PigSkindiSpatch YouTube channel to get all of your positive news and history.

Special thanks to the talents of Mike and Gene Monroe, as well as Jason Neff for letting us use their music during our podcast.

This podcast is part of the Sports History Network, your headquarters for the yesterday of your favorite sport.

You can learn more@sportshistorynetwork.com.