Kickoff

Good morning --Orange Bowl -- Can you reschedule the kickoff so Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno can make the early bird special? Question of the day Do you expect the Orioles to make any moves during the winter meetings? Not unless the room service is really bad at the hotel they're staying in. Tom Grey Towson As long as the seats are filled at Camden Yards, the Orioles have no real incentive to spend what is needed to improve. Angelos and company only care about the bottom line. If winning mattered, wouldn't they have done something over the last seven years?

Pittsburgh Central Catholic teammates Perry Hills and Anthony Nixon will play for Maryland next season, and they gave local fans a peek at their abilities Friday night. Hills, a quarterback, ran for 81 yards in the first quarter and threw a touchdown pass that was set up by a Nixon interception as the North jumped in front early and rolled to a 28-17 victory over the South in the second Chesapeake Bowl at South River. Hills, who committed to Maryland earlier this year, helped the North offense score 21 points in the first quarter.

Yes, if you like touchbacks Peter Schmuck Baltimore Sun No doubt the NFL had its heart in the right place when the owners decided to move the kickoff line up 5 yards and reduce the take-off distance for the kickoff coverage team. That should lead to fewer injuries on special teams, so who could possibly be against it? Well, er, me. The kickoff used to be one of the most exciting plays in football. Now, they might as well just place the ball at the 20-yard line and cut the game-day rosters to 40 players.

Nic Vasilchek knew that the fortunes of his Luella (Ga.) High football team were intimately tied to cornerback Alvin Hill . With that in mind, the Lions coach decided to play the Maryland commitment sparingly on offense and not at all on special teams, which would theoretically preserve Hill's health and allow him to focus his attention entirely on defense. Vasilchek's strategy in using Hill lasted up until Luella's season finale against Newton. “We didn't move the ball all game,” Vasilchek said.

Thanks to the Tennessee Titans' 27-13 loss to the Indianapolis Colts and the Oakland Raiders' 28-27 loss to the Detroit Lions, the Ravens are officially in the 2011-12 NFL playoffs. The Ravens, who will be making their fourth straight playoff appearance, will be joined in the postseason by the Pittsburgh Steelers, who also clinched a berth Sunday. If the Ravens beat the San Diego Chargers tonight and the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals the next two weeks, they will clinch the AFC's No. 1 overall seed.

If the reigning Super Bowl champions Pittsburgh Steelers have an Achilles' heel, it might be their poor kickoff coverage. The Steelers have allowed an NFL-high four kickoff-return touchdowns in five games this season, including in the past two contests. Pittsburgh's sudden vulnerability sounds enticing to a Ravens squad that ranks eighth in the NFL in average start on kickoffs (28.2-yard line). "We look to break a kick every week," said rookie Lardarius Webb , who returned a kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown against the Denver Broncos on Nov. 1. "It doesn't matter if they haven't had a kick broke on them ever or if they've had two or three.

The good news for the Ravens is that they enter the bye with a 5-2 record and five of their remaining nine games at home. But the bad news is that problems on kickoff returns continue to haunt the team, which is tied with the Miami Dolphins for 23rd in the NFL with a 21.3-yard average. The Ravens are tied with 10 other teams with zero returns of 40 yards or more, and they are tied with four teams for the most fumbles on kickoff returns with two. The unit's troubles were punctuated Sunday when Josh Wilson was stripped of the football, and the Buffalo Bills converted the turnover into a field goal to take a 10-3 advantage with 2:01 left in the first quarter.

This has nothing to do with the Ravens or the Steelers, so I apologize for that. But we found out Thursday night that touchdowns on kickoff returns are still indeed possible. It just takes a perfectly-timed barrel roll over a defender. Here is proof in the form of Randall Cobb's "Matrix"-like return in Green Bay's win over New Orleans.

There shouldn't be any doubts that improving the Ravens' kickoff return game has become a priority. At the start of Wednesday's practice, Ravens coach John Harbaugh stood beside each returner before the kick came. Judging by the way he was moving his hands, it appeared that Harbaugh was telling his players where to run according to the blocking up front. Returning kickoffs has been a major weakness for the Ravens this season. Their average starting field position is at the 22.3-yard line, which ranks last in the NFL. "We do need to get the return game going, there's no doubt about it," coach John Harbaugh said on his weekly radio show on WBAL.

Because of the expected heavy snowfall, the Ravens announced that Sunday's game time at M&T Bank Stadium will move to 4:15 p.m. Officials from Baltimore City cited safety reasons in recommending the time change to the team and the NFL, the Ravens said. "That gives the city more time to clear the streets and other passageways around the stadium," Ravens president Dick Cass said. "It also gives us more time to clear the stadium of snow." The Ravens have 700 workers at the stadium ready to help clear the snow before game time.

Thanks to the Tennessee Titans' 27-13 loss to the Indianapolis Colts and the Oakland Raiders' 28-27 loss to the Detroit Lions, the Ravens are officially in the 2011-12 NFL playoffs. The Ravens, who will be making their fourth straight playoff appearance, will be joined in the postseason by the Pittsburgh Steelers, who also clinched a berth Sunday. If the Ravens beat the San Diego Chargers tonight and the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals the next two weeks, they will clinch the AFC's No. 1 overall seed.

Sam Koch's first kickoff of the season didn't go quite as well as he had hoped. “It wasn't pretty,” the Ravens punter conceded after filling in for kicker Billy Cundiff in the team's 24-10 victory over the Indianapolis Colts Sunday. “It's just one of those things about trying to meet the ball. With Billy, he always has that open foot, the soccer style. But as a punter, your foot is always parallel with your body or vertical. If I could work out on those a little bit more, it would probably help out my kickoff game and maybe add another five to 10 yards.” Koch was handling kickoff duties in the second half as a left calf injury that hobbled Cundiff last week began to rob him of distance in the first half.

It was only about six hours after the team charter had touched down from Seattle when Tom Zbikowski, who still hadn't gotten any extended sleep, drove to the Ravens' complex in Owings Mills, and headed to the practice field. The kick return job wasn't yet his, but after David Reed fumbled twice and got a costly penalty after another return, Zbikowski figured that he better be prepared for anything. "He took about 100 kickoff returns because he knew he was going to be back there and if he wasn't going to be back there, he wanted the coach to know that he was ready to take some kickoff returns the ensuing week against the [Cincinnati]

This year, the packed-house madness that is Black Friday had petered out well before dawn. With many stores opening at midnight Thursday and some starting sales hours earlier, thousands of Baltimore-area shoppers arrived - and left - in the wee hours. When nursing assistants Wendy Agusea and Christiana Anyajike walked into an hhgregg store in Hanover at 7:30 a.m. after working an overnight shift, they found none of the big deals they were hoping to get. Sony cameras for $50?

Annapolis Area Christian School's speed and big-play ability, especially in the second half, overwhelmed Boys' Latin, 46-13, in the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association B Conference championship at Towson University's Johnny Unitas Stadium on Friday night. Senior running back Joshua McPhearson rushed for 148 yards on 17 carries and had a 77-yard kickoff return for a score for the Eagles, who scored 46 unanswered points to claim the title in their first year in the B Conference after claiming successive C Conference crowns.

The second-Friday food truck rally known as the Gathering is on a hiatus, but trucks will be gathering on the Inner Harbor's West Shore Park as part of Saturday afternoon's Winter Wonderland event. The Silver Platter, the Gypsy Queen, Kooper's Chowhound Burger Wagon, Souper Freak, Creperie Breizh, Cazbar and Iced Gems are confirmed. The family friendly event will include pony rides and  live music. Crafts for children will take place under a heated tent. That's all from 1 to 5 p.m. At 5 p.m., a community lantern parade will proceed from the West Shore Park to the Harborplace amphitheater.

The TV Repairman:The real meaty stuff of ABC's coverage of Super Bowl XXX minus I will come at 5 p.m. Sunday when Brent "You are looking live at Joe Robbie Stadium" Musburger and Dick Vermeil move in for "Countdown to Kickoff," a program name dating back to the days of kinescope.The network says some of the first hour of its two-hour pot-boiler leading up to the 6:18 p.m. kickoff will be devoted to "late-breaking news." Reporters who have been to scads of these grid festivals insist they can not recall anything of any consequence happening in the stadiums just prior to kickoff, aside from maybe Thurman Thomas misplacing his helmet.

NEXT QUESTION Who do you think will win a major golf tournament first - Sergio Garcia or Chris DiMarco? Selected responses to today's question will be printed tomorrow on The Kickoff page. Please e-mail your answer (about 25 words) to sports@baltsun.com by 3 p.m. today. Include your name, address and a daytime telephone number for verification purposes.

District 13 City Council challenger Shannon Sneed plans to kick off her write-in campaign next week, her campaign said Wednesday. A political newcomer, Sneed lost narrowly to incumbent City Councilman Warren Branch in the September Democratic primary. "I simply went out and talked to the voters," Sneed said in a statement Wednesday about her 43-vote loss to Branch. "I knocked on almost every door in the district, and I listened to citizens' concerns. I think my message of a cleaner, safer East Baltimore with a responsive city councilperson really resonated with people.

With all the debate on the rule change that moved kickoffs up five yards to the 35-yard line this season, it was hardly surprising that 49 percent of kickoffs resulted in touchbacks over the NFL season's opening weekend. What wasn't expected was for three of the kickoff returns to be brought back for touchdowns, tying a league record for Week One. So much for the rule change helping only the team covering the kick. “I think it surprised a lot of people,” said Jerry Rosburg, the Ravens' assistant head coach and special teams coordinator.