"It's like the conquest of Everest or the four-minute mile," says the Giants' Jeff Feagles, who was flirting with the figure this year until a couple of returns did him in. "And when someone finally achieves it, all the punters around the league will give him a silent salute and raise a glass to him. But it'll be a very quiet celebration. No one on the outside will even be aware of it."

I first became fascinated with the punting game, and especially hang time, 46 years ago. I was working at my first newspaper job, on the Sacramento Bee, and every Sunday we used to go up to Kezar Stadium to root for the 49ers. We'd sit in the East end zone and take our shirts off, drink beer and cheer our heads off. And watch Tommy Davis, the greatest punter in history, although we didn't know it at the time, booting high hangers out of the worst end zone in the league.

The murderous Kezar winds blew eastward, in from the ocean. When the Niners were backed up, Davis would be standing in his own end zone, buffeted by those Pacific gusts, sometimes without the full 15-yard distance from the center. And he'd send out 45 and 50-yard rockets. Never have I heard a punter cheered as loudly as Davis was. I had heard the expression "hang time," and I figured, why not see what Davis was hitting, especially since I had such a good, close-up view, when he was kicking them out of the end zone.

Well, he hit a lot of 4.6's and 4.8's, into that wind, a truly outstanding achievement. He did it for 11 years and ran up the third-best gross average in history, behind the Raiders' Shane Lechler and Hall of Fame QB Sammy Baugh, whose numbers were padded by third-down quick kicks, when the ball would roll forever. No one, though, had to face the conditions Davis did. I have mentioned him, from time to time, for Hall of Fame consideration. Blank looks all around.

The highest lifetime average in history, though, belongs to a guy better known as a run-pass, single wing tailback, Glenn Dobbs, a 6-4, 220-pound super star for the Brooklyn Dodgers and L.A. Dons of the All-America Football Conference. His name, and the league itself, which spawned many subsequent NFL stars, has now faded into history, but gosh, how well I remember the fireworks this guy provided on the field. A true triple threat -- actually a quadruple threat if you count his punt returns (for a 13.9 average). And in four years worth of punting, he averaged 46.4 yards.

A sad footnote: When I did my all-decade teams for Sports Illustrated's big coffee-able book that came out this fall, he was obviously my punter for the 1940s. Unfortunately, for space reasons, the category was eliminated for that period, so poor Glenn Dobbs remains anonymous.

But once again, for the umpteenth time, Ray Guy appears on the Hall of Fame ballot. His lifetime gross average was an unimpressive 42.4. I got a letter on his behalf from some lobbying agency that tried to cover this number by explaining that he made up for it by pinning the enemy deep with coffin-corner kicks. This is a flat out lie written by someone who probably spells football with a pf. Guy's big weakness was that he didn't go for the edges. He was a middle of the end zone punter, although he had the livest leg in the game and when he caught one it really hung.

At one of our Hall of Fame selectors meetings, Peter King, who had meticulously gone through years of play-by-play sheets, presented the research he had done on what Guy's net would have been, had it been kept in those days. It was in the low 30, mediocre indeed. But every time you get John Madden talking about Guy, whom he had coached in Oakland, he'd mention his hang time, "regularly in the high-5.0 range, sometimes as high as six seconds."

This is, of course, nonsense. Never in history has there been a six-second hanger. But I do know what one looks like. How could this be? Well, when I used to be the New York Post's beat man, covering the Jets, I got to know the ball boys pretty well. One day, after practice we were messing around with the machine used by the return men, which simulated punts. I asked them to set it at the max, and let's see what the hang time would be.