Touchdown: The Power and Precision of Football's Perfect Play
INTRODUCTION ne of the most thrilling plays in sports is the touchdown Few moments combine such power and emotion Scoring a touchdown is a reason for wild celebration Allowing a touchdown is a terrible feeling Whenever a player reaches the end zone it is usually the result of a great individual effort and tremendous teamwork Hour after hour football teams practice ways to score touchdowns At the same time they work just as hard I learning how to stop touchdowns A look inside a football playbook can tell you a lot about touchdowns On every play everyone on the field has a job to do If everything goes exactly as planned the player with the ball has a chance to score This is when football s superstars get their chance to shine Where did the touchdown come from How many different ways can a team score a touchdown Which players specialized in scoring touchdowns Who holds the most amazing touchdown records Who will break those records in the future This book not only answers these questions it looks at the touchdown in interesting ways you may never have considered Jerry Rice celebrates one of the 197 scoring catches he made during his career Two arms raised to the sky is the official signal for a
One DISTANT REPLAY THE HISTORY OF THE TOUCHDOWN ho scored the first touchdown The history books tell the story of a young man named William Webb Ellis He was a student at the Rugby School in Great Britain in 1823 A favorite of the Rugby boys was a game called football It was a rough game that had been played in England for many centuries Foot ball was similar to soccer with two important differences First a player was allowed to catch a long kick set it down and then boot it the other way A point was awarded to a team that kicked the ball over the goal line Second there was not a fixed goal with posts a crossbar and a net as there is in modern soccer All games at the Rugby School ended precisely at five in the evening One day as young William prepared to catch a long kick the school's bell began chiming out five gongs He knew he didn't have enough time to score a goal in the traditional way So William plucked the ball out of the air put his head down and ran right through his stunned opponents He crossed the goal line and touched the ball to the ground before the final gong had sounded William s classmates argued whether his play should count Some said yes and others said no Almost all agreed however that William s unexpected play might
