Just about everybody would have a candidate for greatest clutch kick. My choice was by the late Pat Summerall, as much for what it meant.
Better remembered for his many years as a broadcaster, Summerall was the New York Giants' kicker when they faced the Cleveland Browns in the final 1958 regular season game. The Browns led the Giants by one game in the Eastern Conference, so the Giants needed a win to force a one-game playoff.
Played during a snowstorm, the game was tied 10-10 with two minutes left. Regular season overtime did not exit then so a tie would give the Browns the conference title.
Summerall lined up for a 49-yard field goal attempt. This was six years before Pete Gogolak became the NFL's first soccer style kicker. Summerall, like all kickers at the time, was a straight on kicker who made contact only with the toe. Forty-five was a long field goal, 50 and longer very rare.
I grew up in Connecticut, 50 miles from New York City as part of the New York television market. The NFL's blackout rule at the time meant games could not be televised in the market of the home team, so I had to listen on radio.
My mother asked my father if Summerall could make it from 49 yards. He said no, the logical answer considering the distance, weather conditions, and that Summerall had missed from 33 earlier in the fourth quarter.
But he booted it through the falling snow and through the uprights, giving the Giants a 13-10 win. A week later, the Giants beat the Brown again for the conference title.
And a week after that, the Giants met the Baltimore Colts in the championship game, the game that made Johnny Unitas a legend. With the Giants leading 17-14, Unitas led the Colts down the field in the final minute, connecting on sideline passes to preserve time, resulting in a tying field goal in the final seconds to set up the first overtime in NFL history.
Unitas led another drive culminating in a one-yard TD run by Alan Ameche for a 23-17 Colts victory.
What has been called “The Greatest Game Ever Played” would never have occurred if Summerall had not made good on his clutch kick.
A couple of asides to the story.
Peter Gogolak joined the Buffalo Bills in 1964 and his brother Charlie the Washington Redskins two years later, ushering in soccer style kicking that made 50-plus field goals common place. They left their native Hungary with their parents when the Soviet Union violently suppressed a 1956 democratic revolution. Pete kicked for Cornell, Charlie for Princeton before they moved on to the pro ranks.
Until 1973, the NFL maintained its blackout rule meaning that the first six Super Bowls were blacked out in the cities where they were played. That included Super Bowl I at the L.A. Coliseum, preventing the game from being televised in the nation’s second largest market.
Under pressure from the media and Congress, the NFL liberalized the rule in 1973, allowing games to be televised locally if 85 percent of tickets were sold 72 hours before kickoff. The blackout was completely dropped in 2014.
I had to listen to “The Greatest Game Ever Played” since it was also at Yankee Stadium.
