TWENTY YEARS AGO this week, with about six minutes to go in a St. Louis Rams' blowout win over the Seattle Seahawks, Jeff Wilkins kicked what was, by nearly any measure, an irrelevant extra point.
But here's the thing: Wilkins kicked this meaningless extra point wearing only one shoe. His kicking foot in that moment was unsheathed, his toes wiggling freely, gloriously naked beneath the hot Sunday lights of the Edward Jones Dome. Wilkins was kicking barefoot, and that extra point -- on Oct. 20, 2002 -- actually was significant: It represented the final time in NFL history that a kicker scored points while his little piggies were fully capable of going to the market.