The two most depressed men in the world right now are Kyle Williams and Billie Cundiff. Each should be on a suicide watch, and each should be kept away from their teammates for a minimum of six months.
I am a humanist. I FEEL for people.
Professional athletes are pampered and this disgusts me. Make a trade, the guy has a horrible year and the coach says "He needs time to adjust to the new environment." This is an athlete who will get paid more in one year than I will ever earn in my tiny, almost invisible, lifetime. And his organization makes excuses for him.
I earn 13 cents an hour and I am expected to perform. No excuses, no time to adjust, no empathy, no sensitivity. I screw up a little, I get my balls busted. I screw up a lot, I am gone.
Logic dictates to me that the more money you earn, the more should be expected from you. But then again, the only "more" expected of corporate executives is more corporate lunches, more expensive cars, more cold heartedness directed towards their "subordinates." But I digress.
When athletes fail on a huge scale on the big stage, they are reviled. Fans are merciless, evil, vicious and ignorant.
This is where I draw the line. They are human. I feel bad for Bill Buckner. Need I say more? They have nerves, they feel pressure even though they will lie and say they don't (except Adam Vinitieri, whose blood flow is restricted by ice cubes).
Kyle Williams fumbled twice and cost the 49'ers a trip to the Super Bowl. I am convinced if he handled the punt in OT, the 9'ers would have won.
Billie Cundiff missed a 32 yard field goal that would have sent the PATS/ravens game into OT. He cost the ravens the chance at a trip to the Super Bowl.
These are huge mistakes. Football is a brutal, vicious sport. You get beat hard every week, week after week, for a chance to make it to The Big Game. If you make the playoffs you do not want to beat yourself. You are in too much pain, you have worked too hard, your emotions are stretched too thin. If you lose in the playoffs you want to get beat giving your best effort.
Fans and sports analysts will rip these two apart. They will get cruel, they will make jokes. Cundiff and Williams will probably be 100% uncomfortable in their own home towns. They will probably feel that their safety and the safety of their families is threatened. This is so goddamn wrong.
Michael Strahan was asked "Athletes always say we live and die as a team, it is never one player's fault. How would you handle it if your kicker lost a playoff game?" He said "If he was still on my team next year, we would have a problem." Case in point.
I have to be honest. I am glad Cundiff missed the field goal. The miss paved the road to the Super Bowl. But I do not want the man to suffer. I do not want his family to have to deal with viciousness, verbal or physical.
I am disappointed that Williams fumbled. Felt like the 9'ers deserved that win. But he does not deserve to be tortured for the mistake.
Tough call. We live small, angry, painful, disappointing lives. We pin our hopes and dreams on our teams. But you cannot castrate them when they fail.
How often do you fail? Pretty regularly, I'm guessing.
Try a little tenderness. It will catch your evil human nature by surprise, but it might just change you for the better.
No comments:
Post a Comment