Kick or Defer?

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by Berkut

It isn't really.

Would you let someone accept a penalty that would result in them losing a turnover without confirming? Do you ask if the defense wants to accept the false start penalty? Shouldn't you give them the chance to mess that up as well?

Heck, the rules actually make this accommodation, in that you automatically decline some penalties when accepting would result in losing a score, for example.

But you're making a judgment here that the choice of which team to have kick off is obvious like the choice of having an extra touchdown, and I'm saying it's not. That choice is there for a reason. Originally there was no such choice in the rules, and if you didn't get or want the choice of ends to defend, you would automatically kick off, because the rules makers thought it obvious that kicking off was better than having the other team kick off! It was only later that they saw that a team might prefer to receive, so they added that choice.

If they want to take out that choice, they can do so as the NFL did ~30 yrs. ago. I'll tell you that with very young players, if they allow kickoffs at all, that's about a 50-50 ball and the choice of kicking or receiving may favor kicking because a scramble for the ball on the other team's side of midfield is better than a scramble on your team's side. And I've written here that even in the pros within the past 25 yrs. I've seen the choice made to kick off taken, and that it proved to be the better choice.

I'll tell you what distorts judgments here: the use of the presumptuous term "receiving team" in the rules. There's no guarantee they actually will receive the ball! At a kickoff it's easy enough to ask which team a captain wants to kick off, but unfortunately I can't think of a better short term for "opponents of the kicking team" to use in the rules for free & scrimmage kicks, so until someone does, we're stuck with "team R". I'd like to call them "team L", because that's the letter after K (analogous to teams A & B), but there's no good word to go with that.