Throwback Thursday: How Pete Gogolak Changed the NFL
Before Hall of Fame and Giants Ring of Honor linebacker Lawrence Taylor revolutionized how the game was played at linebacker, another Giants player and fellow Ring of Honor member revolutionized the game not only on the field but off it as well.
Kicker Pete Gogolak grew up playing soccer with his brother Charlie, who also went on to kick in the NFL for Washington from 1966-68 before ending his career with New England from 1970-72.
After settling with his family in Ogdensburg, New York following their migration from their native Hungary, at the time embroiled in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Gogolak soon learned about American football.
“Once he was in the U.S., he starts watching American football on TV. Gogolak sees a lineman kicking a ball through the upright and instantly became intrigued by the concept,” said Randy Williams, the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, America’s Game: The NFL at 100.
For the early part of NFL history, kickers were typically linemen because they were some of the largest players on the team.
The game also had a conventional “straight on” kicking style, impacting the toes which the European soccer player Gogolak went about differently. Instead of approaching the ball straight on, Gogolak went at it from an angle using his instep.
Gogolak went on to endure a record-setting career in college as an Ivy league kicker at Cornell. Once he got to the pros, Gogolak spent two seasons with the Bills from 1964-65, helping them capture back-to-back AFL championships.
He scored 115 points in the 1965 season, which landed him on the Sporting News All-AFL Player list.
Meanwhile, the Giants (7-7) had rookie kicker Bob Timberlake who was abysmal in his first season going 1-of-15 on his kicks.
Giants owner Wellington Mara, frustrated by the lack of production from his team’s kicking game, decided he’d seen enough and, after taking note of Gogolak’s production in Buffalo, where the wintery weather was even more brutal than that of the New York area at times, broke the “gentleman’s agreement” in which teams agreed not to poach players from the other league.
In 1966, Mara signed Gogolak away from the AFL. That signing sparked an increase in similar moves and was a catalyst in the eventual AFL-NFL merger that went into effect in 1970.
Gogolak played nine seasons with the Giants, from 1966-74, finishing as the Giants’ all-time leading scorer with 646 points, and the owner of various other franchise records including most points after touchdowns (268), most points after touchdowns during a single game (8).
At the time of his retirement, he held records for most consecutive PATs made, and most field goals attempted and made, all of which have since been broken.
Gogolak was inducted into the Giants Ring of Honor in 2010.
