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On Saturday, Sarah Fuller became the first woman to dress and take the pitch for a Power-5 football team. The media said Fuller’s performance was the kicker for Vanderbilt, a groundbreaking historic moment and breaking the glass ceiling. Much in the media and in the sports world echoed Hillary Clinton’s sentiment that Fuller has proven that “women and girls have their place on every playing field – literally.” In a game of growing hyperbole, ESPN ultimately claimed victory by declaring Fuller achieved “immortality” through his game in Vanderbilt’s game against Missouri.
Certainly she was spectacular. Fuller went 5 for 5 on field goals, threw 3 touchdowns beyond the end zone and even managed a save game tackle as the clock expired in rule. I laugh. In fact, she kicked once, he went 30 yards, Vanderbilt lost 41 to zero and the head coach was sacked after the game. This is reality, not a movie. And in real life, women get embarrassed when trying to play against male athletes.
But what we saw after the kick heard around the world – a kick that actually only went 20 yards in the air and rolled ten more before the returning team bailed it out in jumping on the ball before it goes out of bounds and takes a penalty – has been the strangest and most unnecessary cover-up in recent memory. The now-fired coach claimed Fuller executed a masterful, pre-planned “squib kick”. The head coach of the team formerly known as the Redskins called it the perfect “mortar kick”. Elsewhere it has been called a side kick. The SEC named Fuller one of its Special Teams Player of the Week for a “perfectly executed kick” that “sailed 30 yards.”
Again, here in reality it wasn’t perfectly executed, and it wasn’t a squib, a mortar, or a kick in play. There isn’t a designed kick in all of football. who calls a kicker to start it 20 yards from the sideline. And if there was such a designed kick, this isn’t the game you would call when you’re 21 at the start of the third quarter. No, it was just a bad move. Probably not much worse than any schlub on the street, including myself, but not much better either.
After the game, Fuller praised herself for proving that women can do it all. One is tempted to answer that women can apparently do anything except kick a soccer ball properly. One could also add that it is a good thing that the glass ceiling is only 30 meters away. Otherwise, she would never have broken it. Those would be harsh and mean comments, however, and not the sort of thing I would ever say. Although I have to admit, the temptation to ruthlessly mock Fuller becomes even stronger when you read the halftime speech she gave to the team. From ABC:
As Vanderbilt trailed 21-0 at halftime, Fuller decided she wanted to address the team. “If I want to be honest I was a little pissed off at how calm everyone was on the sidelines,” she said. “We did a first try, and I was the only one clapping and I was like – what’s the point? What’s going on? And I tried to make them swell. She said she compared it to the winning run of the SEC Vanderbilt football tournament, when the team “cheered all the time.” “I just went over there and said exactly what I was thinking. I was like, ‘We have to encourage each other. This is how you win games. This is how you get better at calling each other for stuff, and I’ll call you guys. We have to support each other. We have to lift each other up. That’s what a team is, ”Fuller said. “I think this team struggled, and that’s part of it. “We really just need to build that team camaraderie where they can all lean on each other. It was an adjustment to that team mentality where – hey, we all support each other here – and I just wanted to bring that to this team.
I’ve never heard of a kicker on any team, anywhere giving a halftime conference 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 would put my five year old daughter on my lap and let her “park the car” by driving her 10 feet down the path, and the next time she was in the car with me she was started shouting driving tips from his booster seat in the back. “Dad, make sure you stop at red lights,” etc. At least it was cute. It wouldn’t be so cute if the girl from the women’s soccer team struts around on the bark orders. However, given the team’s record and performance, I can’t say they didn’t deserve the humiliation.
Indeed, Vanderbilt tweeted after the bad kick with a photo of Sarah Fuller and the words ‘history made’. The tweet read, “Sarah Fuller. Remember the name. #PlayLikeAGirl. »Credit where it is due: they marched the pace. They really played like girls. And lost 41 points because of it.
All this condescending nonsense surrounding a bad kick from a woman whose ego may be beyond her capabilities on the soccer field is just boring to me as a man. For women, however, it’s much worse than embarrassing. It is condescending, degrading and insulting. Are women really so unimpressive and devoid of accomplishments that we have to treat them like we would a little kid who draws a bunch of scribbles on a sheet of construction paper and claims it’s the picture of ‘a tree? We congratulate the little kid on his bad drawing because we don’t expect kids to do better than this, and because they are emotionally fragile and need constant positive affirmation. Is this the case with adult women? Should we stand up and applaud and shout “big kick” when in truth it was a really bad kick? Are women so pathetic that we even have to call their failures achievements? Not just achievements – but historical achievements? Is it how sad and mediocre women are that we have to stoop to this?
Answer: no. That’s how sad and mediocre women feminists think women are, and maybe they are themselves. But it’s not reality, and it’s not what I think or what any rational person thinks. Women are capable of extraordinary things in many facets of life. They are also capable of extraordinary things in the field of athletics. Simone Biles immediately comes to mind. But women cannot compete with men in sports designed by and for men. They can’t do anything for them. Nobody can. They can do a lot within the limits of the possible, but competing against and with men in a Division 1 football game is outside of those limits. Contrary to Hillary Clinton, Fuller has not proven that women have their place in everything. She has proven otherwise. They don’t belong to a football field with men. And it’s okay. It does not do less than men. That just doesn’t make them men. And there is dignity and beauty in accepting that.
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