Cole Tracy to win it for LSU
Kick is up, line drive kick and it's good!
Tigers win! Tigers win!
So in principle kicking a field goal is fairly straightforward.
You have to launch the ball with a certain speed at a certain launch angle
and then the equations of physics take over.
Kick on the way and it is dead center.
So when I think about Cole Tracy's winning kick against Auburn, four points come to mind.
First is his approach to the ball.
And so if you watch the kick you can see how he positions his arms as he plants his foot. His arms are extended
away from his body, thereby increasing his moment of inertia and thus his stability during the kick, and then he loads his leg
using his hip and his leg muscles
creates angular momentum and rotational kinetic energy that he then transfers to the ball in order to give it that launch speed
A second important point is the launch angle,
because there are large athletic
defensive linemen who are rushing him and jumping as high as they can in order to try to block the kick. And so he has
to make sure that he's able to launch the ball high enough to get over their outstretched arms and
also, then still have enough distance in order to clear the goalpost to make the kick
A third important feature of the kick
is the launch speed, because ultimately the launch speed is going to determine what the maximum distance is in addition to launch angle
of the projectile.
And the fourth key point in kicking the field goal is the force. This is where the launch speed comes from.
And so as he extends his leg and he applies the force to the ball,
the ball's momentum changes. It achieves that launch speed, and we can use the impulse momentum theorem to just roughly estimate what the average
force is that's applied to the ball. The time is very short.
It's only about eight one-thousandths of a second, and for a kick, in this case with the launch speed of about 70 mph,
his average force is around 350 pounds, which is a significant amount of force
So, it's a great kick for Cole Tracy and a great win for LSU.
