The choke epidemic

Let’s talk some ball here. I mean, come on, dude! Pound a beer, let the foam gently slide out of your mouth and squash the damn can over your head. Let’s go!

It was an extraordinary exhibition of pro football this past Sunday, with the AFC and NFC title games both featuring high drama, amazing plays, and some real bad screw-ups. As in Kyle Williams and Billy Cundiff. Especially Cundiff. If you didn’t see the Ravens/Patriots game, Cundiff, the kicker for the Ravens, missed a dinky little field goal at the end of the 4th quarter that would have tied the game. That is to say, he choked in a way that would make Mr. Heimlich himself shudder. His unfortunate story makes a point I think any coach of any team at any level would now take to heart—whatever you do, make sure your kicker is a guy who will not pee in his pants when it’s sweaty palm crunch time.

In the last couple of years, we’ve seen Boise State’s remarkable football program just miss undefeated greatness and a total monkey-wrenching of the wretched bowl championship series because their kickers blew not one but two seasons by gagging easy field goals, against UNR in ’10 and TCU in ’11, a pair of utterly horrific unacceptables. We also saw Oregon ruin any chance it may have had to play for the national championship because their kicker went all gummy in the last second against USC. And Stanford bit the bag in this year’s Fiesta Bowl because its freshman kicker barfed up the chip shot that would have beat Oklahoma State.

In the NFL, teams never draft kickers, which is pretty weird. They laughed at Al Davis for using a number one pick to take Sebastian Janikowski. Considering the career that big lug has had for the Raiders, nobody’s laughing now. Yet teams would rather draft a mediocre linebacker from UC Merced than “waste” a pick on a great kicker from a top school. This is now an indefensible attitude, seeing how many games are won, or lost, by your kicker.

I really wanted Cundiff to make that kick against Brady’s Bunch, mainly because I didn’t want to feel bad for him if he missed. And goddamn, the dude went and yanked it dead left in a most butt-ugly way. Sonuvabitch. Well, OK, fine, Cundiff. I’m gonna immediately bail on your pain and switch on over to the ’Niners game. You, you poor bastard, you gotta go in your locker room and look Ray Lewis in the eye and say … well, what do you say to Ray Lewis after you just burped up the game-tying kick in the AFC championship game? I imagine Cundiff needed at least eight oxycodones to hit the hay Sunday night. He also might have consoled himself by saying, “Well, OK, I suck. But at least I’m not the captain of the Costa Concordia. Now, that dude choked big time!”