If you played football in Hawaii, you played barefoot.
Sure, if you played football at the University of Hawaii, the manager issued you shoes with cleats.
But because the weather rarely gets colder than 80 degrees, because there’s not many who could afford football shoes, and because everybody grows up walking and running barefoot, why would a Hawaiian parent buy expensive football shoes?
The better to put your toe into an extra-point attempt, you might argue.
Hawaiian kickers solved that problem. They kicked with the side of their foot. As soccer players do. And soon the rest of the football world adopted a soccer-kicker’s approach to field goals.
Without cleats to dig in their feet, Hawaiian linemen learned to block to the right, to the left, and move rapidly. Works well when it snows somewhere, also.
One cold, 60 degree day, in Honolulu, I saw children shivering inside ski jackets. But barefoot.
Bare foot is comfortable unless you stub your toe
Jack would do well there – he hates shoes