This is getting ridiculous

Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson

EOG Dedicated
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John Kelly

John Kelly

Born Gambler
Staff member
USA Today publishes a weekly newspaper titled USA Today Sports Weekly.

In its latest edition, USA Today Sports Weekly devoted its back page to a feature on Sarah Fuller with a headline reading, "Fuller perfect for Power Five play."

I did not immediately blame columnist Gentry Estes of The Tennessean for the silly headline because columnists rarely write newspaper headlines.

However, upon reading the article, it was clear Estes was guilty of hyperbole when he described Fuller's participation in Vanderbilt's blowout defeat at Missouri.

Cue the columnist:

"Fuller's participation wasn't a Nashville story or a Tennessee story or even a strictly American story. This was a GLOBAL ACCOMPLISHMENT."

I subscribe to USA Today Sports Weekly for sports stories behind the scenes, not fairytales.
 
WildBill

WildBill

2
Notice the Fuller stuff now is just marketing. A bad team does this to get attention in a horrible season. The national media talks about it because even if a lot of men hate it, the upside for football is getting more female viewers. This isn't stuff you read on a highly analytical site, its national media that needs to write stuff that gets clicks and readers.
 
blueline

blueline

EOG Master
QUESTION: It was great to see Sarah Fuller kickoff for Vanderbilt last Saturday. What she did made all the national news shows. It would have been even better had she gotten a chance to kick a field goal. One of the announcers on TV said that Vanderbilt was waiting until they got to the Missouri 15 yard line before they would let her try. Missouri’s defense prevented this from happening. I was wondering if you watched Sarah practice field goals during the pregame warmups and how far out she was trying them from.

MATTER: Ben Frederickson and I discussed this at length on the podcast this week. Here's my take on what shouldn't be but inevitably became a polarizing story. Great moment for Fuller. Credit to Vandy coach Derek Mason for being willing to think outside the box. I don't think he planned to let her kick a deep field goal. I watched her pretty closely before the game and at halftime and she made some and missed some - but they were all short attempts, mostly in PAT range.

I'll be the first to admit some of the coverage has gone way over the top. I had the TV broadcast on in the press box on Saturday and I thought the announcers got overly transfixed with the angle and missed other parts of the game. I'm guilty of this in some of my writing, but I regret pushing hard on the "making history" phrase considering other women have kicked in Division I games - just not for a Power 5 team. I think we error sometimes in the media when we differentiate Power 5 from non-Power 5 with stories like this - and it does a disservice to the women who have kicked for New Mexico and Kent State.


Two more things few people have mentioned in the coverage:
1. Derek Mason wanted to have an open tryout for a kicker last week, which would have likely produced a Vandy student who could kick a football. Students were home for the Thanksgiving break, so that wasn't an option. Sarah Fuller was his Hail Mary.

2. Last Wednesday Mason called Fuller "an option." In the meantime, Vandy's social media accounts all but turned her into the face of the program. Then the SEC got invested in the narrative - to the point Mason might have felt obligated to make her his kicker instead of other options. Not sure many people realize this - or understand the mechanics - but Vanderbilt fired its athletics PR staff this summer and absorbed all those jobs under the umbrella of the university's PR wing. I'm not sure a staff accustomed to promoting athletics would have gone with the full-court press on the Fuller story ... but the university pushed it hard.

All of that being said, she deserves credit for volunteering to help another team on her campus. Give her credit for speaking up in the locker room at halftime when she realized things were so grim. She comes from a winning program and a winning culture. If girls and women - or men for that matter - took away some inspiration from what Fuller did on Saturday and the way Vandy approached it, that's a good thing.
 
John Kelly

John Kelly

Born Gambler
Staff member
Fair Warning's most recent contribution fits perfectly with the thread title, "This is getting ridiculous."
 
F

Foresthill

EOG Addicted
John Kelly said:
The squib kick was in order because she could not kick a football 60-70 yards.

She kicked a football like she would kick a soccer ball.

Carry on.
Click to expand...

I suspect that I'm probably the only poster here who watched the whole game, not because she was playing, but because Missouri was playing. And during the telecast of the game Sarah Fuller was shown practicing kicking extra points and/or field goals before the game. Her leg motion was the same as any other male soccer style football kicker.

While practicing those kicks her leg motion wasn't kicking the football the way she kicks goal kicks (or fullback kicks), nor how she "punts" a soccer ball.

And her squib quick motion wasn't much different than any male kickers squib kick motion, though it was obviously the way she kicks goal kicks. That's understandable -- that's how she used to kicking a ball. I'm sure the football coaches agreed to let her kickoff that way, but they certainly didn't agree to let her attempt extra points or field goals that way by what I saw in the telecast as noteed above.

And your post was liked by someone who most likely didn't watch the game either and, thus, is uninformed as usual.
 
F

Foresthill

EOG Addicted
John Kelly said:
If Sarah Fuller made the tackle, she'd be awarded the Heisman Trophy.
Click to expand...

John, you need to calm down. You are making way too much out of it, except in reverse.

If you want to be upset at some entity for the overblown nature of the story be upset with the Vanderbilt University information office who hyped the story, and not Sarah Fuller. She didn't seek out the football coach, instead the football coach sought out a kicker from the women's soccer team and she agreed to do it. And the subsequently fired football coach only went to the women's soccer team because all the rest of the students had left campus for the Thansgiving break. I repeat with further clarification, it was NOT the Vanderbilt athletic department sports information office that hyped up the story on Sarah Fuller, but rather the Vanderbilt University information office.

Source: stltoday.com
 
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F

Foresthill

EOG Addicted
John Kelly said:
Hate to censor anything, WildBill.
Click to expand...

No you don't. The posts you need to censure you don't. And the posts that are in no way hate speech, but merely need clarification you censure without communicating to that person first.

The disinformation and hate speech on this site is epic. Yet a misunderstood humorous post is deleted. Shameful.
 
F

Foresthill

EOG Addicted
blueline said:
QUESTION: It was great to see Sarah Fuller kickoff for Vanderbilt last Saturday. What she did made all the national news shows. It would have been even better had she gotten a chance to kick a field goal. One of the announcers on TV said that Vanderbilt was waiting until they got to the Missouri 15 yard line before they would let her try. Missouri’s defense prevented this from happening. I was wondering if you watched Sarah practice field goals during the pregame warmups and how far out she was trying them from.

MATTER: Ben Frederickson and I discussed this at length on the podcast this week. Here's my take on what shouldn't be but inevitably became a polarizing story. Great moment for Fuller. Credit to Vandy coach Derek Mason for being willing to think outside the box. I don't think he planned to let her kick a deep field goal. I watched her pretty closely before the game and at halftime and she made some and missed some - but they were all short attempts, mostly in PAT range.

I'll be the first to admit some of the coverage has gone way over the top. I had the TV broadcast on in the press box on Saturday and I thought the announcers got overly transfixed with the angle and missed other parts of the game. I'm guilty of this in some of my writing, but I regret pushing hard on the "making history" phrase considering other women have kicked in Division I games - just not for a Power 5 team. I think we error sometimes in the media when we differentiate Power 5 from non-Power 5 with stories like this - and it does a disservice to the women who have kicked for New Mexico and Kent State.


Two more things few people have mentioned in the coverage:
1. Derek Mason wanted to have an open tryout for a kicker last week, which would have likely produced a Vandy student who could kick a football. Students were home for the Thanksgiving break, so that wasn't an option. Sarah Fuller was his Hail Mary.

2. Last Wednesday Mason called Fuller "an option." In the meantime, Vandy's social media accounts all but turned her into the face of the program. Then the SEC got invested in the narrative - to the point Mason might have felt obligated to make her his kicker instead of other options. Not sure many people realize this - or understand the mechanics - but Vanderbilt fired its athletics PR staff this summer and absorbed all those jobs under the umbrella of the university's PR wing. I'm not sure a staff accustomed to promoting athletics would have gone with the full-court press on the Fuller story ... but the university pushed it hard.

All of that being said, she deserves credit for volunteering to help another team on her campus. Give her credit for speaking up in the locker room at halftime when she realized things were so grim. She comes from a winning program and a winning culture. If girls and women - or men for that matter - took away some inspiration from what Fuller did on Saturday and the way Vandy approached it, that's a good thing.
Click to expand...

Blueline, thanks for copying and pasting this from stltoday.com. I tried to do so, but stltoday.com wouldn't let me.

Interesting that John Kelly liked a post that didn't cite the source of Q & A who the participants were.
 
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John Kelly

John Kelly

Born Gambler
Staff member
Foresthill said:
No you don't. The posts you need to censure you don't. And the posts that are in no way hate speech, but merely need clarification you censure without communicating to that person first.

The disinformation and hate speech on this site is epic. Yet a misunderstood humorous post is deleted. Shameful.
Click to expand...


Not enough time in the day to correct your nonsense.

Carry on.
 
F

Foresthill

EOG Addicted
Foresthill said:
I repeat with further clarification, it was NOT the Vanderbilt athletic department sports information office that hyped up the story on Sarah Fuller, but rather the Vanderbilt University information office.
Click to expand...

Turns out the Vandy sports information staff was fired and absorbed into the Vandy university wide PR staff as describe below by Dave Matter of stltoday.com in response to a question in his chat:

Not sure many people realize this - or understand the mechanics - but Vanderbilt fired its athletics PR staff this summer and absorbed all those jobs under the umbrella of the university's PR wing. I'm not sure a staff accustomed to promoting athletics would have gone with the full-court press on the Fuller story ... but the university pushed it hard. (bolding and underlining by me.)
 
FairWarning

FairWarning

Bells Beer Connoisseur
I haven't watched any of the game, but I see Fuller kicked an extra point. Vandy had another kicker make a 39-yard FG.
 
WildBill

WildBill

2
Well at least she scored a point. Maybe we can move on and if she keeps a job should be the best player at it. Most schools don't have roster spots to waste on an extra point only kicker.
 
John Kelly

John Kelly

Born Gambler
Staff member
Title IX should prohibit women from playing men's sports.

It sickens me to see bloated (and I do mean bloated) college rosters in women's field hockey and yet men's wrestling programs are eliminated because of Title IX implications.

Title IX requires colleges and universities to feature substantial proportionality, which means the ratio of female-to-male varsity athletes must closely mirror the ratio of female-to-male undergraduate students.
 
P

Patrick McIrish

OCCams raZOR
Everyone gets their 15 yard FG..... or is it their 15 minutes of fame?

Either way boring and sad story from the start, of course it's going to end the same way.
 
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