A novel idea in 1968

[Bob Gill]

I stumbled across something this weekend that I’d never known before. In 1968 the Midwest Football League did something the WFL tried a few years later: It banned kicking for extra points. Teams had to run or pass; the only jobs for a kicker were field goals and kickoffs. Unlike the WFL, they kept touchdowns at six points and didn’t have a name like action point for the point-after, but otherwise it was exactly the same thing.

The MWFL must not have been happy with the new system, because it went back to the old way in 1969. But I wonder if that’s where the WFL got the idea.

[JohnTurney]

it does beg the question of where WFL got it ... you very well could have found that.

[rhickok1109]

I wonder where the MWFL got the idea.

[Bob Gill]

I wonder where the MWFL got the idea.

Good question. It may have been simply because the kickers in that league were not very good. I just checked the line scores I have for 1967 -- just a small sample, no more than one-third or one-fourth of the games played that season -- and in those games, the teams missed more than half of their extra-point kicks. It's not hard to imagine somebody figuring that teams could do at least that well by running or passing, and the plays would be more interesting.

Well, let's see ... A quick check of about the same number of 1968 line scores indicates that teams were successful on about 60 percent of extra-point attempts in 1968. So whoever had that idea was right. Maybe the real question, then, is why they went back to kicking for extra points in 1969, when it seems like the 1968 rule change was a success.