Long- awaited convert change welcome
Change encourages more two- point attempts
It took the Canadian Football League more than 60 years since the first grumblings about the one- point convert kick after a touchdown being too “automatic” to change its rules and make it more difficult.
They finally got the point — and the desired effect — this year.
The CFL moved the ball placement back 20 yards to the 25- yard line, so the ball is now kicked from 32 yards out for one- point converts. If the team opts to go for the two- point convert, by running or passing, it is scrimmaged from the three- yard line.
That extra 20 yards added on to the kick has so far taken away the automatic element of the play.
Through the first 16 games of the 2015 season, kickers have already missed 12 of 60 convert attempts for a success rate of just 80 per cent. Over the past 15 years, by comparison, the aggregate success rate was 99.4 per cent and there were never more than four miscues — on an average 374 kicks per season.
The rule change has also encouraged more two- point attempts on runs or passes, with 15 already successfully made in 22 attempts compared to 12 made all of last season.
“It’s spruced up the kicking game and it’s great for the fans,” said Larry Robinson, Canadian Football Hall of Famer and former Calgary Stampeder defensive back and kicker from 1961- 74. “It used to be pretty automatic. I like the changes. In fact, if I was a coach I wouldn’t even kick it anymore. I’d go for two.”
Because of the large 20- yard end zones in the CFL, Robinson said it is harder to defend against a threeyard pass for a two- point convert.
He also said the rule change will force teams to adapt their strategy to whatever the other team is doing. If the opposition makes a twopointer, he would have to do the same to keep pace. If they kicked for one, he’d do that, as well.
J. T. Hay, the Stamps’ kicker from 1979- 88, says moving the ball to the 25 for 32- yard kicked converts makes the game more challenging and more exciting for the fans.
“It’s for the entertainment of the game and the fans and it doesn’t hurt. It was a boring play to kick it in the middle of the uprights from the 12. And for the offence, there is a good chance of moving it in for a two- pointer. It is not that difficult for a running back to run in from the three compared to the five,” said Hay.
“I don’t think it’s as automatic anymore. The coach is thinking, ‘ do we go for one, if it’s not so automatic, or go for two?’ It’s automatic from the 12, but not from the 32. I like the change and it hasn’t hurt the integrity of the game.”
In an article in The Canadian Football News on Oct. 17, 1953, entitled ‘ Is convert waste of time?’, National Football League commissioner Bert Bell said what we were already thinking up north — that we should give the convert the boot.
“The extra point, in my opinion, is a waste of time,” Bell proclaimed to a predominantly Canadian audience.
“Through coaching techniques, practice and concentration, this all adds up to expensive specializations — our kickers have become so skilled they make the play look easy. Understandably, sportswriters have labelled it the ‘ automatic point.’”
Bell’s rationale was that the extra point “has little spectator appeal, kickers have become so proficient it is virtually an automatic score and it is not nearly so much a team effort as it is the effort of three men: the centre, the ball holder and the kicker.” As history will show, the NFL never scrapped the extra point after touchdowns, either. Like the CFL, they also added the two- point option.
Interestingly, the success rate of converts in Canada’s West Division during the year that article was published did not make them seem as automatic as they would later become. It was 87.6 per cent, the highest mark in four years of record keeping, on kicks scrimmaged on the 10- yard line and hoisted from the 17. It was not until the next year that the East began keeping official statistics.
There was no change in the way converts were kicked in Canada until 1975, when the ball was moved in to the five- yard line for kicks and the two- point convert was added by the rules committee. But the two- point option was used sparingly and many fans would shift their attention off the field while the kicker was doing his duties.
A few exceptions to that came in the 1954 Grey Cup, when Bob Dean hoofed the winning point after Edmonton Eskimos’ Jackie Parker rambled 90 yards to tie Montreal, and in 1991 and 1992 when Calgary’s Mark McLoughlin booted the winning points in Western finals after Peewee Smith and Doug Flutie, respectively, scored dramatic late- game- tying touchdowns against Edmonton.
No doubt, all eyes were on the field for those dramatic converts.
As a statistician and historian for the Stampeders, I proposed to the CFL after the 2006 season to move the ball on converts to the threeyard line and included a statistical analysis to support such a change.
In my proposal, the scoring team could run or pass from there but, if it kicked, it had to do so from the sharp angle of the ball being pinned on one of the hash marks on the 10yard line — depending on the side the touchdown was scored, as in traditional rugby.
Unfortunately, my proposal did not make it past the CFL’s rules committee’s first stage and no further changes were made until this year, other than mandating twopoint converts be tried in overtime.
No doubt, kickers aren’t as thrilled with losing potential points on their resumes, but it’s better for the game.