he NFL owners met in San Francisco this week for their annual spring meetings and, in between hug sessions, voted to change the distance for extra-point attempts. 

Three proposals were heard by the owners, with the idea to move the extra point back from the two-yard line to the 15-yard line – the modification favored by the league's competition committee – being the change voted into NFL law by the owners, 30-2. But why are we settling on a small tweak to the extra-point? Let's get rid of the kicking game entirely. Full stop. In the words of the great American philosopher Mike Ehrmantraut: "No more half measures." 

The approximately 128 people worldwide who watch the NFL for the kicking game are likely outraged at this idea. (The 128 figure is reached by multiplying the 32 NFL kickers by four to account for their parents and each kicker's wife or girlfriend.) Everyone else is likely fine with the half-measure. But NFL football would be a significantly better and safer product without kickers. Hear me out, Mrs Vinatieri.

A good way to decide whether a sports rule makes sense is to think about whether it would be put in place if the sport was invented now. So we're all in a room inventing American football in 2015, right? We've decided our new sport will feature giant men with other-worldly speed and strength running and colliding all over the field. We've decided the ball can be advanced down the field by running or throwing. And we've decided that six points will be awarded when a team advances the ball past a goalline at the end of the field. Hey! Sounds awesome! This could be really popular! 

Then some guy pipes up with: "Hey, and what if every so often we have a tiny guy who couldn't play any other position on the team run onto the field and kick the ball through some metal sticks for a point or three?" This person would be banished from the room, and the open bar at our sport-inventing soirée would be cut off. 

Football, despite its name, puts foot to ball for just a few brief moments each game. The very idea of kicking in the sport is contrived, unnecessary and unnatural to the sport (Ndamukong Suh's post-whistle activities included). Soccer doesn't interrupt play after every goal to have a rostered player with no soccer skills run onto the field and try to throw the ball off the crossbar from midfield for an extra fraction of a goal. Basketball free throws aren't attempted by players kicking the ball at the hoop – although that might be an approach Dwight Howard should try. Yet both would be as natural to their sport as kicking is to American football. 

Doing away with the kicking game gives football fans more of what we want: actual football. After touchdowns, teams can have the option of going for a one-point conversion from the two-yard line or a two-point conversion from the five. Want to add a three-point conversion? Sure! Let's do it! Try for three points from the 20. But all of these options are, again, actual football plays involving real football players, not a sudden departure from everything else with single-play specialists.