Kyle Brotzman missed ... twice.
The sun came up, the Earth continued rotating, and our public servants resumed serving themselves.
Boise State’s campus didn’t explode, nor did Nevada vault to college football’s national championship game.
But Brotzman’s two missed field goals Friday helped Nevada beat Boise State and knock the Broncos from a chance at the national championship.
In the process, apparently Brotzman ruined the countless lives of upstanding humanitarians, who proceeded to harass and threaten him. A college senior who hasn’t cheated, stolen, beaten, extorted, lied to get elected, used a dead person’s credit card, punched a cop in a bar, lied to get ratings, misled or murdered is horrible because of two missed kicks.
It’s a Forrest Gump world: Stupid is as stupid does.
Fans regularly operate on a fairly pathetic level, the starting point for cowardice being most message boards and online comment fields.
Lane Kiffin may be a goober of remarkable proportions, but getting death threats because he left Tennessee is embarrassing to the state of Tennessee.
Well, except for when former quarterback Jonathan Crompton was just such harassed during a 5-7 season because he wasn’t as good a quarterback as the gutless fathead from the boonies or pompous big-money booster or, sadly, “regular” fan would have been.
A high school football player in Texas and his family reportedly received the same a few months ago as a transfer and residency issue was discovered.
West Virginia head football coach Bill Stewart was threatened a year or two ago for not beating Louisville or Liberty by enough.
Referees and umpires regularly are targets of poster children for birth control, coming from people with neither the brains nor coordination to officiate more than a trip to the rest room, let alone the guts to perform an extremely thankless and difficult job for pedestrian compensation and absolutely no glory.
The Big 12 commissioner didn’t attend the Nebraska-Colorado game that clinched the division for Nebraska because of inexplicable anger toward him for, among other things, Nebraska’s loss to Texas A&M two weeks earlier, scores of little minds thinking that the refs threw the game because they threw too many flags on the Huskers.
One idiot on a Nebraska message board scoffed at such threats in general, then backed up his logic with: “Don Beebe has two things working against him. First, he can’t spell: How the heck do you get name ‘bee-bee’ out of a name spelled ‘Beebe.’”
Then he went into the common paranoid “He is a jerk and wanted to stick it to us” mantra. This imbecile no doubt has children and an upper-management position.
Georgia head football coach Mark Richt may not get death threats, but the man with more integrity than those who pay him and boo him is the target of an amazing amount of venom.
And then people start going after families.
All of the above because the people with misguided emotional investments are unhappy -- and clearly with more than what happens on a field or court.
How can our world be in the shape it’s in with so much perfection out there?
I’ve always said I aspire to be as perfect as the others who so quickly, vehemently, usually anonymously and often so arrogantly point out the humanity of those who make a mistake.
Whenever such incidents occur, there’s that requisite explanation that it’s only a fraction of a fan base. True. But it sure seems more like it’s three-fifths rather than one-tenth.
You see it with people you know. You hear it on radio shows, whether a postgame call-in show or a coach’s show. You catch it from people you don’t know.
And here’s a 20-year-old kid putting himself out there, investing the time and emotion and work ethic, and failing to be perfect.
Can one not be lucid as well as passionate about a team or sport? Is the species that stunted?
I’m sure he’s too big for it, but I’d love to see Brotzman do what he does best the next time some dirt bag gives him a hard time -- line up and kick in the middle.
So many more, however, deserve the same.
Contact Michael A. Lough at 744-4626 or mlough@macon.com
