Chapter 18
The stunned crowd sat in silence. For fully three minutes the only sound in the stadium was the hum of the lights.
Then, while the Patriots trudged head down to the tunnel leading to their locker room, pandemonium broke loose on the field. The Rams players, coaches, trainers rushed at Max, pummeling him to the ground until Marv Jones, fearing serious injury to his prize possession pulled them off. Max was hoisted to the shoulders of a pair of players and carried into the stadium tunnel while the air was filled with high-fiving palms.
In the dressing room, Max, drenched with champagne, stood on a locker room bench. Reporters fired questions at him, but the din prevented him from hearing any until someone rapped for silence. A voice shouted, “Horace Hansen wants to say something.”
The mob parted to allow an old man hobble on a cane to where Max stood. Eighty-nine year old Hansen was dean of the sports reporters. He had been retired for years but occasionally wrote a column for his former paper, the New York Post-Tribune. In a creaky voice barely audible, he said, “Where’d you learn to drop kick son? Last time I saw one was in 1931 when Albie Booth of Yale drop-kicked a field goal.”
Max said, “Thank you, sir. I actually learned to do it when I was preparing for this game by going over some movies of old Patriot plays. I saw Doug Flutie drop kick for an extra point in a game against the Dolphins. I think it was in 2006.”
He went on to say that for the past week, he had been going over to a high school athletic field in the afternoon when no one was around and practice dropkicking. “I did it because it looked like fun. I’m glad I had a chance to use it.”
Next day, in his guest column, Horace Hansen explained that dropkicking went out of favor because the shape of the football had changed. “The older ball was rounder than the modern football. The pointier ball used today made it more difficult to have it bounce straight up. Besides, a kicker with a running start at a ball held on the ground could get more leg into it and kick it farther. But seventy yards! If I hadn’t seen it, I’d never believe it.”