Dempsey’s kick into history
THE SNAP, the pass, the hit, the block, the sack, the touchdown.
American football is a sport of explosive action, an hour’s worth of three-second plays all with an action-hero conclusion. Boom! Bosh!! Kapow!!!
No matter that US network television likes to drag this weekly blockbuster out over three or four hours, this staccato, high-octane, sudden impact game is the lifeblood of American sports fans that relatively few outside of its borders care to get to grips with.
Today, November 8, however, marks the anniversary of a landmark in the sport that deserves appreciation not so much for the bare statistics that make it a landmark but the triumph of human spirit over adversity.
This was the day 37 years ago that Tom Dempsey kicked a 63-yard field goal in the National Football League, outdistancing the previous NFL mark of 56 yards, set by the Baltimore Colts’ Bert Rechichar in 1953.
Dempsey’s kick in the now demolished Tulane Stadium, propelled the hometown New Orleans Saints to a last-second 19-17 victory over the Detroit Lions and has not been bettered since, though it was equalled in 1998, at altitude in Denver, by the Broncos’ Jason Elam.
By rugby penalty-goal kicking standards, 63 yards is pretty long but not record breaking. In 2006, New Zealand fly-half Dan Carter recorded one of the longest successful penalty goals in All Blacks history when he launched his kick 66 yards (61 metres) during a 45-26 win over South Africa.
The record, though, is widely recognised as being the 70-yard, eight-inch monster landed by Wales full-back Paul Thorburn between the Scottish posts at Cardiff Arms Park in 1986.
Dempsey’s kick, however, was special. Not because it was completed on a humid, Louisiana night off a churned-up mudpatch of a surface and into a swirling wind. And not because it was what the Americans like to call “clutch”, delivered under pressure, two seconds from the end of a still undetermined game, one that would either seal an unlikely victory or consign the Saints to defeat.
All of those add up to a dramatic set of circumstances, though Dempsey was trying not to take them on board.
“I knew it was a long way because we were on our side of the 50-yard line,” Dempsey, now 60, recalled. “I kicked it from our 37. There wasn’t a lot to think about. I just told myself, ‘Keep your head down and rip it’.
“It was not the kind of kick you try every day. Something like that had to be a game-winner. We had played a pretty good game for the first time all season. They just sent me in. I tried not to think about it.”
What did make Dempsey’s kick was that he was on the field at all because he had been born without any toes on his right, kicking foot, and also with just one finger on his right hand.
Playing in the NFL with such disabilities is remarkable in itself, doing it for 11 years incredible, particularly in less sensitive times when crowds, anticipating Dempsey’s arrival on the field to take a field goal, would begin to chant “Stump! Stump! Stump!”
That was the cry that greeted him this night in 1970 when the Saints called a timeout, echoing around a stadium that at kick off had held 60,000 spectators but had long since been vacated by thousands of disgruntled New Orleans fans.
Born and raised in Southern California, Dempsey had begun his kicking career at Palomar College in 1964, turning up at open trial and dispatching both his attempts bare-footed between the posts and beyond the end zone — the posts were at the front of the end zone in those days.
“We used to have trouble warming up before games, because when he kicked the ball the noise was amazing,” said former Palomar Comets coach Mack Wiebe. “It was a splat. He had such powerful strength. He wasn’t that accurate in college, but he really worked on it.”
By 1967, Dempsey had worked sufficiently hard on his kicking technique to be signed by the Green Bay Packers but he was shipped out of Wisconsin after just one year and returned to the west coast to the San Diego Chargers.
It was there, under the guidance of an offensive line coach called Joe Masdro, that he first was given formal goal-kicking instruction.
“Before that, I just ripped it and didn’t think about it,” Dempsey said. “Joe coached me, and (head coach Sid) Gillman helped develop my shoe. I have really fond memories of my time there. That year with the Chargers was a big part of me making it in the NFL. I owed them a lot.”
While the Chargers helped Dempsey become a successful kicker, they never saw the fruit of their efforts, trading him after one year to the Saints.
The shoe went with him, with its flat-faced front making it appear as if a guillotine had sliced down through the boot, foot and all.
Dempsey, who still lives in New Orleans and coaches local high school kickers in his spare time, recalled recently to the New York Times how the combined effect of the adapted boot and his record-breaking kick had led to a backlash against him.
Dallas Cowboys president Tex Schramm claimed Dempsey’s disability was actually giving him an unfair advantage and speculation began that the boot was fitted with wooden or steel blocks to enhance kicking distance.
Dempsey said that then NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle had ordered Schramm to make a personal apology. “But he didn’t really apologise,” Dempsey said. “He still thought I had an unfair advantage. I guess if not having any toes is an unfair advantage, I have an advantage.”
And “everyone said I had steel in it but they X-rayed it. It was just a thin piece of leather.”
Justice may be done. No-one will remember Schramm, but Dempsey still has his place in the annals of gridiron history.
“I made a lot of big kicks, but all anyone wants to talk about is that one,” Dempsey said, mentioning a recent encounter with a stranger who wanted to talk with him about his record-breaking kick.
“And he said to me,” Dempsey recalled. “’You’re really nothing but a one-kick kicker’. And I thought: ‘Yeah, but I kicked it once. What the hell did you do?’”
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