No-Look, Behind-the-Back Fake Extra Point Defies Reality by Actually Working

Uncreative football announcers will, almost every time it happens, refer to even the simplest, most basic of trick plays as "playground tactics" or "one from the old schoolyard playbook" -- something like that anyway. Think of any time you've seen a flea-flicker. Can't you just hear Brent Musburger or Jim Nantz going on about how "Boy, that's just like they used to do it when they were kids in the backyard."

We'd love to hear them call this play, though, which involves the Division III St. Thomas Tommies (Wait, seriously? The Tommies? Come on, man...) lining up for an extra point. All pretty standard so far. But then the kicker starts running prior to the snap. It's a fake! But not your usual fake. The holder stands up and just straight-up chucks the ball behind his back way up into the air toward the back of the end zone, where his teammate awaits it with open arms. (He even gets shoved in the chest by a desperate defender, but no matter.) He catches it and everyone goes wild!

Well, not the Carleton College players. It always stinks to get fooled by a trick play, but this one's probably a bit worse, since there's no reason it should ever have worked, let alone attempted. There are myriad ways to pull off a fake kick, and just about every other one we've ever seen has a better chance of working than this one.

And while we're on the topic, why not just go for a straightforward two-point conversion? Your odds of executing that are a helluva lot higher than this one. That heave hung up in the air forever. Guess there's a reason Carleton is 1–8 this season. Ah, whatever, why are we complaining? They were just having some fun, like kids out there!

(In case you were wondering, St. Thomas won the game. It was a real nail-biter. The score was 80-3.)