Richard Pipes Team B What was Team B? Team B, composed of civilian experts and retired military officers What was Team B for? as an antagonist force to a group of CIA intelligence officials known as Team A.
What was the goal of Team A?
What was the goal of the CIA's Team A?
Pipes was head of the 1976 Team B, composed of civilian experts and retired military officers and agreed to by then-CIA director George H. W. Bush at the urging of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) as a competitive analysis exercise. Team B was created at the instigation of then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as an antagonist force to a group of CIA intelligence officials known as Team A. His hope was that it would produce a much more aggressive assessment of Soviet Union military capabilities. Unsurprisingly, it argued that the National Intelligence Estimate on the Soviet Union, generated yearly by the CIA, underestimated both Soviet military strategy and ambition and misinterpreted Soviet strategic intentions.  Team B faced criticism. The international relations journalist Fred Kaplan writes that Team B "turns out to have been wrong on nearly every point." Pipes's group insisted that the Soviet Union, as of 1976, maintained "a large and expanding Gross National Product," and argued that the CIA belief that economic chaos hindered the USSR's defenses was a ruse on the part of the USSR. One CIA employee called Team B "a kangaroo court".  Pipes called Team B's evidence "soft." Team B came to the conclusion that the Soviets had developed several new weapons, featuring a nuclear-armed submarine fleet that used a system that did not depend on active sonar, and was thus undetectable by existing technology.  According to Pipes, "Team B was appointed to look at the evidence and to see if we could conclude that the actual Soviet strategy is different from ours, i.e. the strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). It has now been demonstrated totally that it was". In 1986, Pipes maintained that Team B contributed to creating more realistic defense estimates. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
Richard Edgar Pipes (; July 11, 1923 – May 17, 2018) was an American academic who specialized in Russian and Soviet history. He published several books critical of communist regimes throughout his career. In 1976, he headed Team B, a team of analysts organized by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who analyzed the strategic capacities and goals of the Soviet military and political leadership. Pipes was the father of American historian Daniel Pipes.

Pipes was born to a Jewish family in Cieszyn, Poland, which fled the country as refugees after it was invaded by Nazi Germany. Settling in the United States in 1940, he became a naturalized citizen in 1943 while serving in the United States Army Air Corps.
From 1958 to 1996, Pipes worked at Harvard University.

Early life
Richard Pipes was born in Cieszyn, Poland to an assimilated Jewish family (whose name had originally been spelled "Piepes"). His father Marek was a businessman and a Polish legionnaire. By Pipes's own account, during his childhood and youth, he never thought about the Soviet Union; the major cultural influences on him were Polish and German.  When he was age 16, Pipes laid eyes upon Adolf Hitler at Marszałkowska Street in Warsaw when Hitler made a victory tour after the Invasion of Poland.  The Pipes family fled occupied Poland in October 1939 and arrived in the United States in July 1940, after seven months passing through Italy.  Pipes became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1943 while serving in the United States Army Air Corps. He was educated at Muskingum College, Cornell University, and Harvard University.

Career
Pipes taught at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1996. He was the director of Harvard's Russian Research Center from 1968 to 1973 and later Baird Professor Emeritus of History at Harvard University. In 1962 he delivered a series of lectures on Russian intellectual history at Leningrad State University. He acted as senior consultant at the Stanford Research Institute from 1973 to 1978. During the 1970s, he was an advisor to Washington Senator Henry M. Jackson. In 1981 and 1982 he served as a member of the National Security Council, holding the post of Director of East European and Soviet Affairs under President Ronald Reagan. He also became head of the Nationalities Working Group.  Pipes was a member of the Committee on the Present Danger from 1977 until 1992 and belonged to the Council of Foreign Relations. He also attended two Bilderberg Meetings, at both of which he lectured. In the 1970s, Pipes was a leading critic of détente, which he described as "inspired by intellectual indolence and based on ignorance of one's antagonist and therefore inherently inept".

Team B

Pipes was head of the 1976 Team B, composed of civilian experts and retired military officers and agreed to by then-CIA director George H.W. Bush at the urging of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) as a competitive analysis exercise. Team B was created at the instigation of then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as an antagonist force to a group of CIA intelligence officials known as Team A. His hope was that it would produce a much more aggressive assessment of Soviet Union military capabilities. Unsurprisingly, it argued that the National Intelligence Estimate on the Soviet Union, generated yearly by the CIA, underestimated both Soviet military strategy and ambition and misinterpreted Soviet strategic intentions.

Team B faced criticism. The international relations journalist Fred Kaplan writes that Team B "turns out to have been wrong on nearly every point." Pipes's group insisted that the Soviet Union, as of 1976, maintained "a large and expanding Gross National Product," and argued that the CIA belief that economic chaos hindered the USSR's defenses was a ruse on the part of the USSR. One CIA employee called Team B "a kangaroo court".

Pipes called Team B's evidence "soft." Team B came to the conclusion that the Soviets had developed several new weapons, featuring a nuclear-armed submarine fleet that used a system that did not depend on active sonar, and was thus undetectable by existing technology.

According to Pipes, "Team B was appointed to look at the evidence and to see if we could conclude that the actual Soviet strategy is different from ours, i.e. the strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). It has now been demonstrated totally that it was". In 1986, Pipes maintained that Team B contributed to creating more realistic defense estimates.

Writings on Russian history
Pipes wrote many books on Russian history, including Russia under the Old Regime (1974), The Russian Revolution (1990), and Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime (1994), and was a frequent interviewee in the press on the matters of Soviet history and foreign affairs. His writings also appear in Commentary, The New York Times, and The Times Literary Supplement. At Harvard, he taught large courses on Imperial Russia as well as the Russian Revolution and guided over 80 graduate students to their PhDs.

Pipes is known for arguing that the origins of the Soviet Union can be traced to the separate path taken by 15th-century Muscovy, in a Russian version of the Sonderweg thesis. In Pipes' opinion, Muscovy differed from every other State in Europe in that it had no concept of private property, and that everything was regarded as the property of the Grand Duke/Tsar. In Pipes' view, this separate path undertaken by Russia (possibly under Mongol influence) ensured that Russia would be an autocratic state with values fundamentally dissimilar from those of Western civilization. Pipes argued that this "patrimonialism" of Imperial Russia started to break down when Russian leaders attempted to modernize in the 19th century, without seeking to change the basic "patrimonial" structure of Russian society. In Pipes's opinion, this separate course undertaken by Russia over the centuries made Russia uniquely open to revolution in 1917. Pipes strongly criticized the values of the radical intelligentsia of late Imperial Russia for what he sees as their fanaticism and inability to accept reality. Pipes stressed that the Soviet Union was an expansionist, totalitarian state bent on world conquest. He is also known for the thesis that, contrary to many traditional histories of the Soviet Union at the time, the October Revolution was, rather than a popular general uprising, a coup foisted upon the majority of the Russian population by a tiny segment of the population driven by a select group of intellectuals who subsequently established a one-party dictatorship that was intolerant and repressive from the start.

In what was meant to be an "off-the-record" interview, Pipes told Reuters in March 1981 that "Soviet leaders would have to choose between peacefully changing their Communist system in the direction followed by the West or going to war. There is no other alternative and it could go either way – Détente is dead." Pipes also stated in the interview that Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher of West Germany was susceptible to pressure from the Soviets. It was learned independently that Pipes was the official who spoke to Reuters. This potentially jeopardized Pipes' job. The White House and the "incensed" State Department issued statements repudiating Pipes' statements.

In 1992, Pipes served as an expert witness in the Constitutional Court of Russia's trial of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Reception and criticism
His writing have provoked discussions in the academic community, for example in The Russian Review among several others. Criticism of Pipes's interpretation of the events of 1917 has come mostly from the revisionist school of Soviet experts, who under the influence of the French Annales school, have tended since the 1970s to center their interpretation of the Russian Revolution on social movements from below in preference to parties and their leaders and interpreted political movements as responding to pressures from below rather than directing them. Among members of this school, Lynne Viola and Sheila Fitzpatrick write that Pipes focused too narrowly on intellectuals as causal agents. Peter Kenez, a former PhD student of Pipes', argued that Pipes approached Soviet History as a prosecutor, intent solely on proving the criminal intent of the defendant, to the exclusion of anything else, and described Pipes as a researcher of "great reputation" but with passionate anti-communist views.

Other critics have written that Pipes wrote at length about what Pipes described as Vladimir Lenin's unspoken assumptions and conclusions while neglecting what Lenin actually said. Alexander Rabinowitch writes that whenever a document can serve Pipes' long-standing crusade to demonize Lenin, Pipes commented on it at length; if the document allows Lenin to be seen in a less negative light, Pipes passed over it without comment. Following the demise of the USSR, Pipes charged the revisionists with skewing their research, by means of statistics, to support their preconceived ideological interpretation of events, which made the results of their research  "as unreadable as they were irrelevant for the understanding of the subject" to provide intellectual cover for Soviet terror and acting as simpletons and/or Communist dupes. He also stated that their attempt at "history from below" only obfuscated the fact that "Soviet citizens were the helpless victims of a totalitarian regime driven primarily by a lust for power." Pipes' critics argued that his historical writings perpetuated the Soviet Union as "evil empire" narrative in an attempt "to put the clock back a few decades to the times when Cold War demonology was the norm."

Honors
Pipes had an extensive list of honors, including: Honorary Consul of the Republic of Georgia, Foreign Member of the Polish Academy of Learning (PAU), Commander's Cross of Merit of the Republic of Poland, Honorary DHL at Adelphi College, Honorary LLD at Muskingum College, Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Silesia, Szczecin University, and the University of Warsaw. Honorary Doctor of Political Science from the Tbilisi (Georgia) School of Political Studies. Annual Spring Lecturer of the Norwegian Nobel Peace Institute, Walter Channing Cabot Fellow of Harvard University, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Guggenheim Fellow (twice), Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies and recipient of the George Louis Beer Prize of the American Historical Association. He was a member of the Board of Advisors of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. He served on a number of editorial boards including that of the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence.  He received one of the 2007 National Humanities Medals and in 2009 he was awarded both the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize by the William & Mary Law School.
In 2010, Pipes received the medal "Bene Merito" awarded by the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs. Since 2010 he belonged to the Russian Valdai Discussion Club.

He was a member of the advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Personal life
Pipes married Irene Eugenia Roth in 1946; the couple had two children, Daniel and Steven. Their son Daniel Pipes is a scholar of Middle Eastern affairs.

Pipes died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on May 17, 2018 at the age of 94.

Works
 
Author
The Formation of the Soviet Union, Communism and Nationalism, 1917–1923 (1954)
Social Democracy and the St. Petersburg Labor Movement, 1885–1897 (1963)
Struve, Liberal on the Left (1970)
Europe Since 1815 (1970)
Europe Since 1500 (1971) With J.H. Hexter and A. Molho 
Russia Under the Old Regime (1974)
Soviet Strategy in Europe (1976)
Struve, Liberal on the Right, 1905–1944 (1980)
U.S.-Soviet Relations in the Era of Détente: a Tragedy of Errors (1981)
Survival is Not Enough: Soviet Realities and America's Future (1984)
Russia Observed: Collected Essays on Russian and Soviet History (1989)
The Russian Revolution (1990) (Audiobook)
Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime: 1919–1924 (1993)
Communism, the Vanished Specter (1994)
A Concise History of the Russian Revolution (1995)
The Three "Whys" of the Russian Revolution (1995)
Property and Freedom (1999)
Communism: A History (2001) (Audiobook)
Vixi: Memoirs of a Non-Belonger (2003)
The Degaev Affair: Terror and Treason in Tsarist Russia (2003)
Russian Conservatism and Its Critics (2006)
Scattered Thoughts (2010)
Russia's Itinerant Painters (2011)
Uvarov: A Life (2013) (In Russian)
Alexander Yakovlev: The Man Whose Ideas Delivered Russia from Communism (2015)

Editor
The Russian Intelligentsia (1961)
Revolutionary Russia (1968)
The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (1996)

Contributor
"The National Problem in Russia." In: Readings in Russian Civilization (1969)
"The Communist System." In: The Soviet System: From Crisis to Collapse (1995)

Essays
"The Russian Military Colonies, 1810–1831." The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 22, No. 3, September 1950, pp. 205–219. .
"The First Experiment in Soviet National Policy: The Bashkir Republic, 1917-1920." The Russian Review, Vol. 9, No. 4, October 1950, pp. 303–319. . .
"The Trial of Vera Z." Russian History, Vol. 37, No. 1 , 2010, pp. v, vii-x, 1-3, 5-31, 33-49, 51-82. .

Filmography
 War and Peace in the Nuclear Age (documentary mini-series). Episode 12: “Reagan Reagan’s Shield”. WGBH, 1989.
 History’s Mysteries (documentary series). “Killer Submarine”. History Channel, 2001.
 Beyond the Movie - The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. National Geographic, 2003.
 The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear (documentary mini-series). Episode 1: “Baby It’s Cold Outside”. Written and directed by Adam Curtis. 2004.

References

Further reading
Bogle, Lori Lyn, "Pipes, Richard", pp. 922–923, in The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing edited by Kelly Boyd, Vol. 2, London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishing, 1999. online
Daly, Jonathan, “The Pleiade: Five Scholars Who Founded Russian Historical Studies in America,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 18, no. 4 (Fall 2017): 785–826.
Daly, Jonathan, ed., Pillars of the Profession: The Correspondence of Richard Pipes and Marc Raeff (Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston, 2019).
 Firestone, Thomas. "Four Sovietologists: A Primer." National Interest No. 14 (Winter 1988/9), pp. 102–107 on the ideas of  Zbigniew Brzezinski, Stephen F. Cohen Jerry F. Hough, and Richard Pipes.
 Malia, Martin Edward, "The Hunt for the True October", pp. 21–28, from Commentary, Vol. 92, 1991.
Pipes, Richard, "Vixi: The Memoirs of a Non-Belonger", 2003.
Poe, Marshall, "The Dissident", Azure (Spring 2008).
Somin, Ilya, "Riddles, Mysteries, and Enigmas: Unanswered Questions of Communism's Collapse", pp. 84–88, from Policy Review, Vol. 70, 1994.
Stent, Angela, "Review of U.S-Soviet Relations in the Era of Détente", pp. 91–92, from Russian Review, Vol. 41, 1982.
Szeftel, Marc, "Two Negative Appraisals of Russian Pre-Revolutionary Development", pp. 74–87, from Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 1980.

External links

 
 

1923 births
2018 deaths
American historians
Polish historians
Polish male non-fiction writers
Cornell University alumni
Muskingum University alumni
Harvard University alumni
Harvard University faculty
Historians of communism
Polish emigrants to the United States
Jewish American historians
American male non-fiction writers
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
Historians of Russia
People from Cieszyn
United States National Security Council staffers
Stalinism-era scholars and writers
United States Army Air Forces soldiers
National Humanities Medal recipients
Commanders of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland
Historians of the Soviet Union
A goal kick, called a goalie kick in some regions, is a method of restarting play in a game of association football. Its procedure is dictated by Law 16 of the Laws of the Game.

Award
A goal kick is awarded to the defending team when the ball goes out of the field of play by crossing, either on the ground or in the air, the goal line, without a goal being scored, when the last player to touch the ball was a member of the attacking team. If the last player to touch the ball was a member of the defending side, a corner kick is instead awarded to the attackers.

A goal kick is awarded to the defending team when the ball goes directly into the goal, having last been touched by the attacking team, from a situation in which the laws do not permit an attacking goal to be scored directly.  These are:

 an indirect free kick
 a throw-in
 a dropped ball
 a ball thrown by the attacking goalkeeper from within his/her own penalty area.

Procedure

 The referee signals a goal kick by pointing downwards towards the goal area from which the kick is to be taken.
 The ball must be stationary and on the ground within the kicking team's goal area (also known as the six-yard box). All opposing players must be outside the penalty area until the ball is in play. The ball must be kicked (a goalkeeper may not pick up the ball).
 The ball becomes in play as soon as it is kicked and clearly moves.  The player taking the goal kick cannot touch the ball a second time until another player touches the ball.
 A goal can be scored directly from a goal kick against the opposing team. An own goal cannot be scored from a goal kick; in the highly unlikely circumstance that the ball enters the kicker's own goal before being touched by another player, a corner kick is awarded.
 A player may not be penalized for offside directly from a goal kick.

Goal kicks are most often taken by goalkeepers, but this is not compulsory under the laws of the game.

Infringements
If the kick is taken with a moving ball, or from the wrong place, the goal kick is retaken.

Opponents must attempt to leave the penalty area before the goal kick is taken.  However, if a "quick" goal kick is taken while an opponent is attempting to leave the penalty area, that opponent may touch or challenge for the ball once it is in play.

If an opposing player deliberately remains inside the penalty area, or enters the penalty area before the goal kick is taken, the goal kick is retaken.  If this happens a number of times, the opposing player is booked for persistent infringement of the Laws of the Game.

A player who excessively delays the restart of play is cautioned.

If the kicker touches the ball a second time before it has been touched by another player, an indirect free kick is awarded to the opposing team from the place where the offence occurred, unless the second touch was also a more serious handling offence, which is punished by a direct free kick (or a penalty kick if within the penalty area and the kicker was not the goalkeeper) for the opposing team.

History

Before 1863

Analogues of the goal kick are found in early codes of football.  The first published set of rules for any code of football, that of Rugby School (1845), featured a "kick out" from ten yards or twenty-five yards after a team touched the ball down in its own goal area.  This was the ancestor of the 22-metre drop out in modern rugby union.  A similar 25-yard "kick out" was found in the first version of the Sheffield rules (1858).
  The Cambridge rules of 1856 provided for a kick-out from "not more than ten paces", while the Melbourne Football Club rules of 1859 stipulated a 20-yard "kick off".  Published laws of the Eton field game (1857) and Harrow football (1858), meanwhile, provided for a defensive kick-off from the goal-line itself whenever the ball went behind the goal without the attacking team scoring.

1863 FA rules

The original FA rules of 1863 defined the "free kick from the goal line", the ancestor of the goal-kick, thus:

There are several differences between this "free kick from the goal line" and the modern goal-kick:

 It was awarded when the defensive team was the first to touch the ball down after it had crossed the goal-line. This contrasts with modern association football, which awards the goal-kick against the last team to touch the ball before it went out of play.
 It was taken from the goal line itself.
 It was taken in line with the spot where the ball was touched down.
 It could be taken "in such manner as the kicker may think fit"—i.e. as a punt, drop-kick, or place-kick.

It was not possible for a player to be offside from such a kick, a feature of the laws that has remained constant to the present day.

1866–1873 developments
In 1866, the law was changed to award a goal-kick to the defending team regardless of which team touched the ball.  (If the attacking team touched the ball down, it was awarded a "touch down", which served as a tie-breaker if the match ended level on goals; however the defending team was still awarded a goal-kick.) 
In 1867, following an amendment proposed by Wanderers FC, the law was simplified;  both the requirement for a touch-down, and the short-lived "touch-down" tiebreaker, were completely removed from the laws.  The goal-kick could now be taken from any point "within six yards from the limit of [the] goal", and the opponents were forbidden from approaching within six yards of the ball.

One problem with these early rules was mentioned at the 1867 FA meeting:

This state of affairs lasted until 1872, when the corner-kick law was introduced from Sheffield rules football.  Under the 1872 law, a goal-kick could be awarded only when the ball was kicked directly over the goal (by either side).  When the ball crossed the goal-line to the side of the goal, a corner-kick was awarded to either the attacking or defensive side, depending on which team last touched the ball before it went out of play.  
This law was rewritten the next year (1873) on the basis of a proposal by Great Marlow FC:  a goal kick was awarded when the ball was kicked out of play over the goal-line by the attacking side.  The kick had to be taken from within six yards of the nearest goal post.

The 1873 law ran:

Subsequent changes

Name
The phrase "goal kick" is recorded in general usage as early as 1867, but does not appear in the laws of the game until 1890. Before this, phrases such as "kick it off from the goal line" were used.

Position of the kick
The goal kick of 1873 was taken from "within 6 yards of the goal post nearest the point where the ball went out of play".  In 1891, pitch markings were added to define the six-yard radius from each goal-post. In 1902, the term "goal area" was introduced for the place from which the goal kick was taken; it assumed its modern dimensions as a rectangle extending six yards from each goal post.  The goal-kick had to be taken from the half of the goal area nearest to the spot where the ball went out of play.  This requirement was removed in 1992, when it was permitted to take the goal-kick from any point within the goal-area.  This change was made in order to "eliminate[] one of the common timewasting tactics".

Position of opponents
In 1913 and 1914, the distance opponents were required to retreat was increased from six yards to ten yards. In 1948, opponents were required to be completely outside the penalty area when the goal-kick was taken.

Putting the ball into play
In 1905, it was specified that the ball "must make a complete circuit or travel the distance of its circumference" before being in play.  In 1936, after a proposal by the Scottish Football Association, a new restriction was added: it was specified that the goal-kick must leave the penalty area before becoming in play;  if the ball does not leave the penalty area, the kick has to be retaken.  The goalkeeper was also explicitly forbidden from "receiv[ing] the ball into his hands from a goal-kick in order that he may thereafter kick it into play". In 2019, the requirement that the ball had to leave the penalty area was removed:  the ball became in-play as soon as it was kicked and clearly moved.

Scoring a goal from a goal kick
In 1890, it was forbidden to score a goal directly from a goal-kick. In 1997, the laws were amended to allow a goal to be scored directly from a goal-kick, but only against the opposing team.  The first goalkeeper to score directly from a goal kick in a professional match is said to have been Iñigo Arteaga, for Racing Ferrol against Moralo, on 2 November 1997.

Touching the ball twice from a goal kick
In 1890, the player taking the goal kick was forbidden from touching the ball a second time before it had touched another player.

Punishment for infringement
In 1890, an indirect free-kick was awarded to the opposition when the player taking the goal kick touched the ball twice.  In 1939, it was clarified that this penalty did not apply if the ball was touched twice before it had entered play by leaving the penalty area—in that case the kick was to be retaken instead.

In 1905, encroachment by the opposition at a goal-kick was also punished with an indirect free-kick.  This penalty was removed in 1937. In 1997, the laws explicitly stated that, in the case of encroachment by the opposition, the kick should be retaken.

Summary

This table describes all kicks awarded to the defending team after the ball goes out of play over the goal line, including the defensive corner kick from the 1872 laws.

Footnotes

References

Laws of association football Caleb James Sturgis (born August 9, 1989) is a former American football placekicker. He played college football at Florida, setting team records for field goals completed in a season and a career, and was recognized as an All-American. He was chosen by the Miami Dolphins in the fifth round of the 2013 NFL Draft.

Early years
Sturgis was born in St. Augustine, Florida. He attended St. Augustine High School, where he played for the St. Augustine Yellow Jackets high school football team. During his senior season, he completed 13 of 25 field goal attempts and 63 of 64 extra-point attempts. He was named to the Class 3A all-state first team at the placekicker position. Sturgis also played on his high school soccer team.

College career
Sturgis accepted an athletic scholarship to attend the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, and played for coach Urban Meyer and coach Will Muschamp's Florida Gators football teams from 2008 to 2012. As a true freshman in 2008, he handled kickoffs for the Gators, and averaged 63.7 yards on 90 total kicks. He did not attempt a field goal as a freshman. The Gators won the 2009 BCS National Championship Game.

Sturgis made 22 of 30 field goal attempts in 2009. Against the Georgia Bulldogs, he made a 56-yard field goal, which was the longest field goal in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) that season and was also a career-long for him. He completed one of two field goal attempts in the 2010 Sugar Bowl, which Florida won. In 2010, Sturgis made two of four field goal attempts in four games before he suffered a back injury that ended his season. He was given a medical redshirt.

In 2011, Sturgis made 22 of 26 field goal attempts. His 22 completed field goals were the third-best total in the nation and the best in the SEC. He was named to the All-SEC first team and was a Lou Groza Award finalist. He made his only field goal attempt in a 2012 Gator Bowl win. Sturgis made 24 of 28 field goal attempts in 2012. His 24 completed field goals led the SEC and set a new team record. Sturgis was a Lou Groza Award finalist. He made his only field goal attempt in the 2013 Sugar Bowl, which Florida lost.

In his career as a Florida Gator, Sturgis made 70 of 88 field goal attempts (79.5%) and 130 of 136 extra-point attempts (95.6%). His 70 completed field goals and 88 field goal attempts are both team records. He also averaged 64.4 yards on 343 kickoffs, with 67 touchbacks. Sturgis graduated from the University of Florida with a Bachelor of Science degree in Sport Management in 2011, and Master of Science degree in management in 2012.

Professional career

Miami Dolphins
In the 2013 NFL Draft, Sturgis was selected by the Miami Dolphins in the fifth round, as the 166th overall pick. He was the first placekicker taken in the draft.

On August 14, 2013, Sturgis became the starter for the 2013 season after a short-lived competition with Dan Carpenter and with the latter being released that day. In his professional debut, Sturgis did not miss any of his 3 field goal attempts. In Week 5 against the Baltimore Ravens, Sturgis tried to send the game into overtime when he attempted a 57-yard field goal near the end of fourth quarter as the Dolphins lost 26–23. In Week 9 against the Cincinnati Bengals, Sturgis kicked a 44-yard field goal to tie the game at 20 with 11 seconds to go in regulation as the Dolphins won 22–20 in overtime.

Sturgis was released by the team on September 5, 2015, and was replaced by Andrew Franks.

Philadelphia Eagles
On September 28, 2015, Sturgis signed with the Philadelphia Eagles, following a season-ending injury to Cody Parkey.

In his first game with the Eagles, Sturgis missed a 30-yard field goal attempt and an extra point attempt, which could have turned the scoreboard in favor of the Eagles as they went on to lose 23–20 to the Washington Redskins. After the game Sturgis took responsibility, saying "the rest of the team gave such a good effort today. [They] played so well. It's tough knowing I didn't do my part. I just went out there and missed. Hurt the team. It's on me."  After the game, head coach Chip Kelly decided Sturgis is better than anyone else they could sign. "We looked at what's out there," Kelly said. "I think the state of kicking in the league now is not very good. There's been a lot of changes. ...We feel in terms of what's available out there, we're going to stick with Caleb." In his second game with the Eagles, Sturgis missed another extra point, but was able to make all four of his field goals including one that broke a 7–7 second quarter tie in a 39–17 victory over the New Orleans Saints. However, Kelly did not show much confidence in his kicker as he went for it two times on fourth and long early in the game.

On September 7, 2016, Sturgis signed a one-year extension worth $900,000 to remain with the Eagles after beating out Parkey in training camp.

On September 10, 2017, in the season opening 30–17 victory over the Washington Redskins, Sturgis converted three field goals, a 50-yarder, a 42-yarder, and a 37-yarder. However, Sturgis suffered a hip injury in the game and was placed on injured reserve on September 12, 2017. Without Sturgis, the Eagles won Super Bowl LII against the New England Patriots.

Los Angeles Chargers
On March 16, 2018, Sturgis signed a two-year contract with the Los Angeles Chargers. He won the Chargers starting kicking job after beating out Roberto Aguayo. Sturgis was released by the Chargers on November 5, 2018, after missing a field goal and two extra points in Week 9.

Personal life
Sturgis married Kimberly Davidson, a former University of Florida cheerleader, in July 2014. Sturgis has five siblings. His older brother, Nathan, plays in Major League Soccer. One of his younger brothers, Mark, was also a placekicker at Saint Augustine High, following in his brother's footsteps. His father, Smiley Sturgis, is a pastor.

As of 2018, Sturgis coached at Kohl's Kicking Camps, a training camp.

See also

 2012 College Football All-America Team
 List of Florida Gators football All-Americans
 List of Florida Gators in the NFL Draft
 List of SEC Most Valuable Players
 List of University of Florida alumni

References

External links

 Florida Gators profile
 Philadelphia Eagles profile

1989 births
Living people
People from St. Augustine, Florida
Players of American football from Florida
American football placekickers
Florida Gators football players
Los Angeles Chargers players
Miami Dolphins players
Philadelphia Eagles players