AMERICA AT LARGE:It may look a cushy number, but life as a place-kicker in the professional game comes with its own hazards, writes GEORGE KIMBALL

“ In a position defined by the axiom ‘you’re only as good as your last kick’, any indication a place-kicker’s gifts are going sour will result in a mass audition of unemployed kickers at the team’s training facility the next Tuesday

ALTHOUGH THEY have been mistrusted by coaches since the days of the Canton Bulldogs and Pottsville Maroons, NFL kickers weren’t always disrespected by their team-mates. There was a time when they were welcomed into the huddle as “real” football players.

George Blanda, who died a few months ago, played for 26 seasons for the Bears, Oilers and Raiders, and was professional football’s all-time scoring leader when he retired in 1976. Blanda also started 109 games at quarterback (he once threw seven touchdowns in a single game), and threw his last TD pass when he was 47.

His contemporary, Lou “The Toe” Groza, who spent his entire 21-year career kicking for the Cleveland Browns, was an all-league selection as an offensive tackle on seven occasions.

The concept of the kicking specialist is of a more modern vintage, and the lines of locker-room demarcation are traceable to the emergence of soccer-style kickers. At the outset they were often European-born, which set them even further apart from the domestically-bred behemoths who were their team-mates.

In those early days a kicker who performed his job satisfactorily could count on the traditional slap on the hindquarters, but one who didn’t was as likely as not to find himself duct-taped to the goalpost after a practice session the following week.

In a position defined by the axiom “you’re only as good as your last kick”, any indication that a place-kicker’s gifts may be going sour is apt to result in a mass audition of unemployed kickers at the team’s training facility the following Tuesday. (Tuesdays are traditionally an off-day, ensuring that the trials can be conducted under conditions of intimacy.)

Garo Yepremian, the Cypriot-born kicker remembered for his comical attempt to throw a ball following a botched snap in Super Bowl VII, understood that the gulf between himself and his team-mates extended beyond the disparity in size and the language barrier.

“What they really didn’t like,” Yepremian once noted, “was that my uniform was as clean at the end of a game as it was when it started.”

Which isn’t to say kickers aren’t sometimes injured. The most famous example came in 2001, when Arizona’s Bill Gramatica leapt into the air to celebrate a successful field goal with such enthusiasm that he tore the ACL in his business leg upon his descent to earth and missed the rest of the season.

This past Tuesday was particularly busy at three NFL training facilities. In the space of literally one hour on Sunday afternoon, kickers were knocked out of action in three venues.

In Houston, San Diego punter Mike Scifres injured his left leg and hip making an awkward landing after a swarm of Texans turned him into a helicopter on what was the Chargers’ fifth blocked punt of the season. Unlike those of the two other injured place-kickers, Scifres’ team won the game, and with San Diego facing a bye this weekend it remains possible he won’t miss playing time at all.

Less fortunate were the Patriots’ Stephen Gostkowski and the Lions’ Jason Hanson. Two of the NFL’s more reliable performers in their exotic jobs, Gostkowski and Hanson were both knocked out of action in losses to, respectively, the Browns and Jets.

The right quadriceps pull that put Gostkowski on the sidelines may have originated in pre-game drills. He left the game in the second period. Jack-of-all-trades wide receiver Wes Welker was pressed into service and kicked an extra point as the Patriots, who had entered the game with the league’s best record, were drubbed 34-14 by the lowly Browns.

Hanson suffered a left knee injury when he was mauled by New York’s Trevor Pryce on a field goal attempt. The Jets were flagged for roughing the kicker, but Detroit’s penalty was more severe. The Lions lost starting quarterback Matthew Stafford in the same game, but on Sunday afternoon Hanson’s absence was even more critical.

With Hanson on the sidelines, 6ft 4in, 307lb rookie defensive tackle Ndamukong (A Boy Named) Suh attempted an extra point following a third-quarter touchdown. Suh’s kick hit the right upright and bounced away, turning what would have been a four-point Detroit lead into a three-point margin.

The single point proved critical in the outcome, since it allowed the Jets’ Nick Folk to tie the game with a 36-yard field goal with no time on the clock, and the Jets went on to win in overtime.

Suh has a soccer pedigree (his sister plays for the Cameroon national team), and, according to Detroit coach Jim Schwartz “he’s done it in practice.

“I probably should have called a timeout and given him time to get ready,” lamented Schwartz.

The supply of unemployed place-kickers always exceeds the demand, and the members of this vagabond fraternity renewed acquaintanceships in Foxboro, Massachusetts, and Allen Park, Michigan, on Tuesday.

Theirs is a bizarre world, an existence not unlike the migratory patterns traced by the rodeo cowboys of Larry McMurtry's Moving On.

“You go somewhere for a work-out, look around, and there are three or four other guys trying out. You go to work out for some other team a week or so later and the same guys are there, too,” said retired kicker Todd Peterson, who compared the ritual to “a travelling road show”.

As Indianapolis kicker Adam Vinatieri once noted, “it’s kind of a profession for renters.”

Following Tuesday’s auditions, the Patriots wound up signing former Bengals kicker Shayne Graham to fill in pending Gostkowski’s recovery, which is expected to be at least two games down the road.

The Lions signed Dave Rayner, who had earlier auditioned for the Patriots, to replace Hanson, whose prognosis is less optimistic.

While Graham and Rayner have thus joined the ranks of the employed, they are all too aware of how transitory it can be. A few years ago Olindo Mare, who bounced around from camp to camp when the Dolphins cut him loose after a 10-year career in Miami, noted that “even when you get a job, you still might not want to unpack your bags. This isn’t the most secure livelihood, you know.”