This Stupid Punt That Wouldn’t Stop Rolling Is the Best Football Play of the Weekend
I watched some really bad football this weekend—a little Wisconsin-Michigan (terrible), some Harvard-Yale (sloppy as hell), nearly the entirety of Chiefs-Giants (a nightmare) and a bit of Eagles-Cowboys (yawn)—a big mistake on my part. Nothing I saw on Saturday or Sunday was as exciting as this one punt from a high school game in Chicago.
It comes to us from Raby High School’s state semifinal game against Morris Community on Saturday. The Raby punter hits a respectable kick that first lands at his own 43-yard line. After a couple of bounces, it hits at the Morris 45 and starts rolling. And it keeps rolling. And it rolls some more. And it doesn’t stop rolling. And it rolls all the way down to the Morris 7-yard line.
It’s so inexplicable that one might almost be tempted to attribute the 40-yard roll to the Raby players Carlton Fisk-ing the ball along, or to a construction flaw that left the field sloping.
I’m more inclined to blame Hanson Stadium’s Reagan-era artificial surface that inspired a 1985 Chicago Tribune article with the headline “Artificial Turf Is Hard On Players.” (Plus maybe a little help from the wind.)
