As we found out during Saturday’s NC State-Clemson game, special teamers are like lawyers: You never know you need a good one until you need one. Wolfpack kicker Kyle Bambard missed three kicks including a potential game-winner at the end of regulation. This happened in a nationally televised game against the No. 3-ranked Clemson Tigers. Before overtime even started, social media exploded with reaction to his miss. This was even quicker than I’d expected.
I found many of the memes and gifs to be entertaining. However, the death threats and harassment were completely unwarranted and excessive. The sad part is this type of thing happens a few times yearly. Some poor college special teamer is always the target of these flash social media mobs. It’s simply cruel and unfair for so many reasons.
The first of which being, why does it take so little for rational decent human beings to lose their humanity? There are adults who post these vile things to college athletes. The young men and women who compete in college athletics are generally between the ages of 18 and 23. When did it become cool to be so violent and angry over a game toward them? People should be better than that. We should see the disappointing result and move on.
Second, the love specialists receive when they win the game is nowhere near equivalent to the hate they receive for losing one. For example, Kyle Brotzman of Boise State received death threats after his missed kicks caused Boise State to lose to Nevada. Immediately after that game irate fans began to send him death threats. They must’ve forgotten that it was his kicking that helped the Broncos upset the Virginia Tech Hokies earlier that season. If he had missed more kicks in that game, they would’ve lost, but his success didn’t cause an outpouring of love for him.
Blake O’Neill, the punter from Michigan whose punt was blocked and returned for a touchdown against Michigan State, experienced a similar event. He was said to be the world’s biggest dunce. Many people blamed him and solely him for the loss ignoring all the other plays in the game besides that one. Not to mention, he was averaging more than 40 yards per punt over the season and many felt like his play was a contributing factor to the Wolverine’s success.
Speaking of ignoring all other plays, all of these cases and more do not take the rest of the team’s play into consideration. In the infamous 2011 LSU-Alabama game that ended 9-6 after overtime, all the blame went to kicker. No one said quarterback AJ McCarron had one of his worst performances of the year. No one said the fact that the Alabama offense could not reach the end zone led to their demise. The play when all 6-feet-6-inches and 270 pounds of Michael Williams was out-battled for the ball by a much smaller Eric Reid was not taken into consideration. It was all on the kicker, Cade Foster.
Fandom should never cause people to crossover into this dangerous line of thought that berating and threatening a 19-year-old is OK. It is sad and disappointing that this is what people have devolved to. There is nothing wrong with being angry. It is perfectly normal to expect a college kicker to do his job well. But it is only fair that we hold all players to this standard. Which means taking in every player’s body of work, not just the most visible ones.
