Actually, they need to put in a rule. This "icing the kicker" thing is so completely absurd, and so maddening. It's like an ego trip for the coaches: 'ooh, that (fill in coach's name here) is such a cutting edge strategist, isn't he just so on top of not just the physical but every psychological aspect of this complex game we call football . . . Wow!!"

It's such nonsense. No professional kicker is going to be "iced." First of all, in most end-of-game situations, the kick is the climax of some sort of drive; the kicker has been warming up with his kicking net for a couple of minutes anyway. He knows the big moment is approaching. In addition to that, by this point, in any end-of-game situation they're now expecting the opposing coach to call a timeout as the play clock is running down. They don't care if they have to wait another 60 seconds or whatever it is. In fact, it probably helps them to relax more. The first kick, the one the coach tries to call his little timeout juuuuuust before the ball is snapped --as if the effectiveness of the icing depends on getting the timeout at 1 second left as opposed to 3 -- the kicker is probably completely relaxed for that first kick because he knows it's unlikely to count. So what, is he going to then get so freaked out that his first kick didn't count that he'll be unable to perform a second time what he just performed a minute ago? Silly.

All this thing does is stroke the egos of the coaches and disrupt the natural flow of the game, as well as screw with the emotions of the fans. If there are any stats that showed this "tactic" was in any way effective, I'd like to see them. In their absence, I'd like to see a rule instituted that says the defense cannot call a timeout on a kicking play if there are less than ten seconds left on the play clock. Done.