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Super Bowl XLIV 2010


Tegis

Pick a winner  

29 members have voted

  1. 1. Pick a winner

    • New Orleans Saints
      18
    • Indianapolis Colts
      11


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Wish Moonie was still here, he would have livened this up a little bit.
They got Ringo Starr's kid up there these days. Zak Starkey can actually say "I was a drummer in The Who and Oasis" :shock:

Yeah hes quite good imho, they just dont let him off the leash. I love the ooh, but that was awful, nice payday for them though im sure.

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American football and Canadian football originate in rugby union, and so does the onside kick. In rugby, while the forward pass is prohibited, the ball may be advanced by the team in possession on a kick, provided that the receiver of the kick was onside when the kick was made (i.e., level with or behind the kicker.)

Since at least 1923, the onside kick has been subject to additional constraints in most forms of American football, and the term is now something of a misnomer in American football. The restrictions that must be met in order for the ball to be recovered are:

* The kick must be a free kick (a kickoff, or free kick after a safety, but not the rare fair catch kick)

* The kick must cross the receiving team's restraining line (normally 10 yards in front of the kicking team's line), unless the receiving team touches the ball before that line.

* The kicking team may only recover and retain possession of the kicked ball, but not advance it

* The kicking team must not interfere with an attempt by a player of the receiving side to catch the ball on the fly.

In essence, an "onside kick" in American football is the same as any other kickoff or free kick, except that it is kicked in a particular way in order to give the kicking team the best chance of fielding the ball and retaining possession--typically in a diagonal direction and as close to the advancing players from the kicking team as possible.

Once the ball has hit the ground there is no chance of a catch and hence no possibility of interference. Thus the kicking team generally attempts to make the ball bounce early and be available around 10 yards in front of the spot of the kick. One technique, useful especially on a hard field such as one with an artificial surface, is to kick the ball in a way that it spins end-over-end very near the ground and makes a sudden bounce high in the air. The oblong shape of an American football can make it bounce off the ground and players in very unpredictable ways. This unpredictability has the additional benefit for the kicking team of increasing the probability that the receiving team will muff the kick.

Traditionally, the onside kick had its own formation, in which all ten players on the kicking side of the field would line up on one side (left or right) of the kicker, in an effort to get as many people as possible into one area of the field. This is still popular in high school football; however, the NCAA (and later the NFL) have since added a requirement that at least four players line up on each side of the kicker. To combat this, some teams (including the Buffalo Bills, who pioneered this strategy) have developed a "cluster formation" in which all of the players line up behind and immediately next to the kicker in what is effectively a moving huddle. This, too, was eventually banned in the NFL rule books with a 2009 rule change that states that "the kicking team cannot have more than five players bunched together;" the rule change has been considered a gratuitous targeting of Bills special teams coach Bobby April, as the ostensible reason for the ban (injury risk) had negligible evidence to support it.

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