Field Goal Kicking
in College Football:
Where is the best place
to kick from the hash?
By: Stephen Bismarck
Well before we answer the question,
lets first inform everyone on the dimensions of a college football
field.
A college footall field is 120 yds
in length, 100 in the playing field and 10 yards at each endzone,
and 53.5 yards in width.
The middle of the field is marked the
50 yard line and from the 50 yard line the yard markers start
to desend every ten yards to 40, 30, 20 ,10 on both sides of the
field.
There are shorter lines that indicate
each yard incrament, these are called the hash marks. The hash
marks are 20 yards from each sideline, so they are about 13.3
yards from each other.
At the end of each endzone there are
goal posts. These posts are 30 feet high and 18.5 feet apart (
6 and 1/6 yards).
Here is a picture of a football field
(not drawn to scale)
So lets figure out where is the best
place to kick a field goal from either hash mark.
Here is a football field drawn to scale
legend: 3cm = 10 yards
This is when the ball is at the goal
line. The angle of the kick is going to be 19.7 degrees.
Lets look at when the ball is further
down the hash.
This is when the ball is at about 17
yard line. The angle that the ball will be kicked is 11.68 degrees.
This is when the ball is at about the
36 yard line. The angle that the ball will be kicked is 7.19 degrees.
As you can see from the pictures provided,
the best place to kick the ball at is far from the goal line.
This is because you want to have the
smallest angle to kick from and as you go futher from the goal
line the angle to which the field goal would eb kicked decreases.
So if the ball is really close to the
goal line you might as well take a five yard penalty to make the
angle smaller.
Do you think which foot the kicker
kicks with might have have something to do with which hash mark
is earier to kick from?
You would have to check out the statistics
for that one.
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