Should high school football ban the "wedge" on kick returns?

[Colonels_Wear_Blue]

The NFL banned them completely in 2009, and the NCAA followed suit in 2010, but the NFHS is yet to do so.

The "flying wedge" originally showed up in football in 1892, when Harvard Crimsons assistant coach Lorin Deland devised for the college championship game between Harvard and Yale. Deland, a military and battlefield history aficionado, was particularly fond of Napoleonic and ancient Norse military tactics, and was known for trying to assimilate their battlefield techniques into his football coaching. His flying wedge play was based upon an early Viking military formation, "Svinfylking," known to have first shown up around the first century BC.

With the different rules governing football at the time, the kicking team was not required to kick the ball any particular distance on kickoff, so it was regular practice for the kicking team to only tap the ball a few feet forward on the kickoff before picking it up and advancing it down the field, maintaining possession themselves. Coach Deland's new play would have his "wedge men" line up with arms locked, approximately 10 yards behind the kicker and a lone fullback so they were able to get a full running-start prior to the kick. That way the "wedge men" they would then be passing the line of play simultaneous to the kick taking place. The fullback would line up 5 yards behind the kicker so he could pick up the kicked ball (which had essentially only been nudged forward off of the kicker's foot), and the fullback would follow his blockers, already at full sprint, forward down the field. Harvard lost the 1892 championship in a 6-0 defeat, but the new play stuck around.




Through the 1890s and into the first decade of he 1900s, college football averaged about 26 on-field deaths, annually. With about 150 colleges fielding teams, averaging about 40 players to a team, that meant college football players had about a 1 in 200 chance of dying on the field each year. In 1893, the year after the creation of the flying wedge, there were 11 football deaths that were attributed to wedge plays. With the alarming death rates in the sport, the presidents of dozens of participating football colleges met in the spring of 1894 to discuss the upcoming season of football. Several of them chose to suspend their football teams indefinitely, while the majority agreed to revise rules to "reign in the violence of the sport." The flying wedge was one of the primary topics of discussion in the meetings. Beginning in 1894, the football had to be kicked at least 10 yards downfield on kickoffs, and they banned any group of 4 or more players on the kicking team from lining up behind the line of play. This curbed the wedge play as it was originally known, but soon thereafter the blocking technique was switched over for use by the kick return team instead of the kicking team.

By 1905, with the continued football carnage, orders came from Washington DC to clean up football, and rules were changed to ban any formations using blockers with interlocked arms. Wedge-shaped blocking formations continued to be used in college football and professional football, though, until over a century later when the NFL owners finally agreed to formally ban the formation beginning with thee 2009 season. The following year, the NCAA agreed to ban wedge blocking on kicking plays. But still, the NFHS, which governs high school rules, has still not banned using the wedge formation on kicking plays or on any other plays.

Should they? Shouldn't they? Are concussions fake news? Is this the wussification of America?

How many fingers am I holding up?

[New Colonel]

I am surprised Kickoffs in general are still allowed to be honest.

If we are really concerned with concussions and safety, then NFHS should outlaw kickoff but also field turf.  Turf causes more concussions than actual collisions, and let's not talk about the lower body injuries.

But safety just isn't the number 1 concern like everyone likes to say.

[R1 sports fan]

I think the XFL rule for kickoffs, every player lined up 1 yard apart from one another, is much better than standard kickoff, by far and away the most dangerous play in the sport.