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Former American Press sportswriter Carl Dubois blogs about the games people play, in and out of sports, and the people you meet between and outside the lines.

Carl is an award-winning reporter and columnist living in the Willamette Valley in northwest Oregon, near Portland. He is sports editor of the News-Register newspaper in McMinnville, Ore.

Wait, there’s no foot in football?

Posted September 21, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Filed Under Sports | Leave a Comment

BATON ROUGE — Something in the Sept. 21 issue of Sports Illustrated caught my eye. If you haven’t seen it, check out this story about a high school football coach who’s stopped punting and instead goes for it on fourth down — all the time.

I don’t have much to add, except to say this is probably my favorite quote in the piece: “It’s like someone said, ‘[Punting] is what you do on fourth down,’ and everyone did it without asking why.”

Call me crazy (well, call him crazy first, then me), but I like people who aren’t afraid to challenge conventional wisdom. I’ve spent too much time around so-called leaders who live within the comfort zone of such phrases as “We’ve never done that before” and “That’s not how we did it last year” and other uninspiring sentences meant to justify stifling new ideas and doing as little thinking as possible.

I’m sure he’s keeping everyone at the games on their toes. Everyone, that is, except the punter he doesn’t have.