To complete the 1975 NFL season, the annual Pro Bowl game pitted the best players of both conferences, the AFC and the NFC. It also featured someone who was — and still is — considered to be the best punter in the history of the pro game, Oakland’s Ray Guy.
The Pro Bowl game at the Louisiana Superdome on January 26, 1976, also featured a very unique occurrence. The Superdome at that time had a six-sided gondola with scoreboard monitors on it, and it was situated just underneath the interior of the top of the stadium’s roof.
Fans looked at the gondola as another form of entertainment. Ray Guy looked at it as another challenge.
Another Ray Guy Challenge
Guy decided to intentionally try to punt a football during the game and hit the gondola. Now all punters know that kicking for distance is important, but kicking for hang time is even more important. Giving your punt coverage teammates more time to get downfield while the ball hangs in the air is one of the major factors in successful punting.
Guy was a great punter when it came to kicking the ball deep downfield. He had a very strong kicking leg, perhaps one of the strongest in NFL history.
But Ray Guy also loved to skyrocket his punts as high into the air as possible. Let’s face it…Guy was a great vertical punter. A very good punter will average around four seconds of hangtime on their punts. Not Ray Guy.
His punts would often reach the five-second mark in the air. To do that once or twice, or even a few times, is pretty good. To do that often is quite outstanding. Ray Guy was quite outstanding.
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Now during his pregame warmups, Guy noticed the gondola scoreboard, and on a whim, he tried to hit it with one of his practice punts. He succeeded. Then he tried it again. And again. He hit that gondola score board with practically every one of his practice punts.
He naturally thought to himself…what would happen if he tried to hit that thing with one of his punts during the game? And so, the idea was planted in Guy’s brain. He even talked to the members of the ABC-TV announcing team about trying to hit the gondola during the game.
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Always Up For A Good Story
Taking that as a cue, and always in search of a good storyline for a game that did not count for any team in the standings, the ABC-TV announcing crew mentioned Guy’s intention every time that he came onto the field to punt.
Now one must realize that attempting this feat in practice and attempting it during the actual game are two very different things. There is no pressure when booting a ball during practice. Actual game situations will almost always result in some amount of pressure from your charging defensive players who are trying to block the kick, or in this case, the punt.
But the Pro Bowl was a different type of game. The Pro Bowl rules stipulated that nobody on defense could rush the punter, so Guy knew that he had extra time on his side.
Guy's Take
“Any other game and I wouldn’t have even tried it,” Guy later said. “(Officiating crew member) Jim Tunney looked at me … he knew what I was going to do (but) I didn’t tell the guys up front.”
Guy’s attempt occurred in the third quarter, and he was at his own 10-yard line. Guy succeeded with his historic punt. The ball travelled more than 90 feet in the air and was still ascending when it ricochetted off the gondola. The result of all of this was that Referee Tunney declared the ball to be dead once it struck the gondola. He also made Guy and his AFC teammates punt the ball again.
Thanks to the battle of “Guy versus the Gondola,” the folks at the Superdome decided to raise the six-sided edifice an extra 50 feet…just in case Ray Guy tried to hit it again with a punted football at some later date.
Trivia Question:
Which team – the NFC or the AFC – won that particular Pro Bowl game?
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Host of Pro Football in the 1970s - Joe Zagorski
Throughout his days, Joe spent some time as a sportswriter and has been a member of the Pro Football Researchers Association since the mid-1980s. Joe is also a proud member of the Pro Football Writers of America.
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