Just because I wanted to post something

There's a rule in high school football (I won't cite rule.section.article -- just trust me, it's in there somewhere) that goes like this:

The opponent of the scoring team shall determine who kicks off.

This has been in the rules book ever since I started officiating back in 1989, and it's still in there. And ever since that time, I've wondered, "Why is this in there?"

Even if you're a casual observer of the sport, you probably know that when the offense scores a touchdown or field goal, they then kick off to the other team. The scoring team ALWAYS kicks to their opponent. Well ... almost always ... there's that whole safety issue, but then you're being penalized for being stupid, and that's another issue. Anyway, score a TD or field goal, kick to your opponent.

I was talking about this with my crew one evening, and I think I finally have an answer as to why this is in the book and when it might be applied.

You may be familiar with a game where Team A was down by, oh, say 10 points with under 2 minutes to go in the game. Let's say that Team A scores a TD and kicks the PAT, so now they're down by 3 with 1:10 left on the game clock. What normally happens is that Team A will then try an onside kick, hoping to recover the ball with decent field position and get down the field to score a field goal (at a minimum) and tie the game, or score a TD to win the game.

In this scenario, say the head coach of Team B has read the rules book (Yeah .... like THAT's going to happen) and knows this odd-ball rule. He could indicate to the officials, "We want to kick." So, rather than risking Team A recovering a short kick with good field position, he could have the ball kicked deep and force Team A to go 80-some yards to score.

So, I may never see this rule enforced, but at least now I have a scenario where it could be applied. I feel better.