re: Vanderbilt kicker Sarah Fuller to be named SEC co-Special Teams Player of the Week

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If Vandy wasn't so shitty she may have had more than one kick.

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But what we’ve witnessed after the kick heard round the world — a kick which actually went only 20 yards in the air and rolled another ten before the return team bailed her out by jumping on the ball before it went out of bounds and drew a penalty — has been the weirdest and most unnecessary coverup job in recent memory. The now-fired coach claimed that Fuller executed a masterful and pre-planned “squib kick.” The head coach of the team formerly known as the Redskins called it a perfect “mortar kick.” Elsewhere it has been called an onside kick. The SEC named Fuller one of their special teams players of the week for a “perfectly executed kick” that “sailed 30 yards.”

Again, back here in reality, it was not perfectly executed, and it was not a squib, a mortar, or an onside. There is no designed kick in all of football that calls for a kick to boot it 20 yards to the sideline. And if there was such a designed kick, it’s not the play you’d call when you’re down 21 at the start of the third quarter. No, this was just a bad kick. Probably not much worse than what any schlub off the street would do, including myself, but not much better, either.

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One might also add that it’s a good thing the glass ceiling was only 30 yards away. Otherwise she never would have broken it. These would be harsh and mean spirited comments, however, and not the sort of thing I would ever say. Though I must admit, the temptation to ruthlessly mock Fuller becomes even stronger when you read about the half time speech she gave the team. From ABC: With Vanderbilt trailing 21-0 at halftime, Fuller decided she wanted to address the team. “If I’m going to be honest, I was a little pissed off at how quiet everybody was on the sideline,” she said. “We made a first down, and I was the only one cheering and I was like — what the heck? What’s going on? And I tried to get them pumped up.” She said she compared it to Vanderbilt soccer’s SEC tournament-winning run, when the team was “cheering the entire time.” “I just went in there and I said exactly what I was thinking. I was like, ‘We need to be cheering each other on. This is how you win games. This is how you get better is by calling each other out for stuff, and I’m going to call you guys out. We need to be supporting one another. We need to be lifting each other up. That’s what a team’s about,'” Fuller said. “I think this team has struggled, and that’s been part of it. “We really just need to build that team camaraderie where they can all lean on one another. It was an adjustment going from that team mentality where — hey, we’re all here supporting one another — and I just wanted to bring that to this team.”

I have never heard of a kicker on any team, anywhere, giving a halftime lecture to the team. But such a lecture from a girl who was invited there as a publicity stunt would be, I imagine, intolerable. It reminds me of the time when I put my five-year-old daughter on my lap and let her “park the car” by driving it 10 feet up the drive way, and the next time she was in the car with me she started shouting driving tips from her booster seat in the back. “Daddy, make sure to stop at red lights,” etc. At least that was cute. It would not be as cute to have the girl from the women’s soccer team strutting down the sideline barking orders. Although, given the team’s record and performance, I can’t say they didn’t deserve the humiliation.

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All of this patronizing nonsense surrounding a bad kick from a woman whose ego perhaps exceeds her abilities on the football field is merely annoying for me as a man. For women, though, it is much worse than annoying. It is patronizing, degrading, and insulting. Are women really so unimpressive and bereft of achievement that we have to treat them like we would a small child who draws a bunch of scribbles on a sheet of construction paper and claims that it’s a picture of a tree? We congratulate the small child for his bad drawing because we do not expect children to do any better than that, and because they are emotionally fragile and in need of constant positive affirmation. Is this the case for grown women? Must we stand and applaud and shout “great kick” when, in truth, it was a very bad kick? Are women so pathetic that we have to call even their failures achievements? Not just achievements — but historic achievements? Is that how sad and mediocre women are, that we must stoop to this?

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Did MLB give Eddie Gaedel the player of the week award?
Did idiots across the country write in to the comment section of their local newspaper describing how they had tears in their eyes watching him bat?

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How could any woman not be completely embrassed by this? It is liberal men directly telling them "Hey honey, we think you are pathetic and second class, so here is your ribbon"

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Vandy special teams coordinator Devin Fitzsimmons to me re: Sarah Fuller: "This wasn't a PR stunt. It was literally like, 'OK, what gives us the best chance to win?' We did try out some other guys on the team that allegedly played soccer, like, when they were six. It was brutal."

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OK, what gives us the best chance to win?

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