I am assuming he's black. High five to the white people who named their kid Kadarius, if not (and report yourselves to the Tolerance Commissar for cultural appropriation). And the white guy who is being promoted over him is really only a guy in the sense that Elliot Page is. As far as I know, they have the same plumbing arrangements at this time.

Anyway, who is Kadarius Toney? An obscure football player, who might go on to fame and fortune as an NFL star, but much more probably, statistically speaking, has just hit the peak of his athletic career which will end shortly. So being named SEC Player of the Week should be his big moment, his time to shine. This might be the only recognition he gets. He returned a punt 50 yards for a touchdown against the University of Kentucky. How do I, a person whose attitude toward college football players can best be summarized as "wake me up when they get picked in the NFL draft", know this?

I saw this article online.

Sarah Fuller, who did NOTHING, is named three times in an article about receiving an award for absolutely no reason. She was the least accomplished player, at the most inconsequential position, on either team, in the damn game! She did not deserve an award called "kicker of the week in the Vanderbilt-Missouri game" she did not deserve an award for "Vanderbilt Kicker of the Week" because their punter made seven kicks. Harrison Smith punted each time for an average of 43 years. Sarah Fuller kicked the ball from the 35 yard, where it traveled in the air, not much higher than a man's head, to the opposing 40 yard line, a distance of 25 yards, it rolled about five more yards and a Missouri player fell on the ball on his 35 yard line. Sarah Fuller advanced her team's field position 30 yards. She did only marginally better than if she kicked the ball out of bounds, which would have resulted in Missouri getting the ball on their 40, instead of their 35. As it is, Missori was able to achieve a winning record for the first time all year because they pounded Vanderbilt 41-0. Because Vanderbilt never scored, Fuller only had the opportunity for a single kickoff, to open the half. She also never had the chance to kick an extra point, because her testosterone-poisoned teammates never scored a touchdown. She never had the chance to kick a field goal, because Vanderbilt only moved the ball past the Missouri 44 twice. Once, when they fumbled after a big run, around the Missouri 35. The other time was late in the fourth quarter when they got down to the Missouri 32 and turned the ball over on downs, rather than attempt a kick on 4th and 4 from the Missouri 32. On the one hand, in the NFL, which is the standard with which I am more familiar, a field goal from the 32 should certainly be doable. And I certainly would not trust my kicker with a 49 yard attempt after watching that pathetic second half kickoff, so you could say it reflects badly on Fuller. Another argument is that when you are down late in the game, you need all the points you can get, so you are more likely to gamble and go for it in hopes of getting a touchdown, rather than a mere 3 points. The redirect would point out, however, that Vanderbilt was down 34-0 at that point and were at the closest they'd ever come to the opposing goal posts, with less than 6 minutes to play. They were not going to get enough points to win if the entire starting Missouri defense keeled over from laughter-related hernias and had to be taken off the field, and they were unlikely to get another opportunity to come this close. If you are going to play for something it might as well be the chance for your team to have the first woman kick a field goal in a game of this significance. Unless you were sure that there was no way Fuller was making the kick without a hurricane force wind behind her.

So let's look at the one thing Fuller DID do to be named Player of the Week. That 30 yard kickoff. In the NFL, kickoffs travel so high the TV cameras have difficulty keeping the ball and the players on the same screen of the duration of the kick. There was no such issue with Fuller's attempt. Another article says she "made" her kickoff attempt, with a connotation of a successful play. When you "make" a play in football, the meaning is that you successfully achieve an unquestionable standard of success. You throw a ball that is caught, you catch a ball, you block or tackle a player you are aiming for, you kick the ball between the uprights on the goal post to score points. Or you "make" a desired position on the field, to, again, score points or retain possession of the ball. Fuller simply kicked the ball in the general direction of the opposing team.

Other articles call her kickoff a "squib" kick, usually with a positive or even superlative modifier. For example on ESPN, the article describes the play as follows: "It was a low squib kick designed by coaches to limit the possibility of a return. It traveled 30 yards and was downed at the 35-yard line." See, that's pretty disingenuous. That IS what squib kicks are for. And the end result of Fuller's kick resembled a squib kick in outcome and appearance. That really only applies when you do it on purpose. And there was no reason to do it then and there. The usual circumstance is when you have a small lead and there is not much time, so you kick the ball on the ground to make it difficult to catch and lessen the chance of the other team running it back for a score. You also prevent a touchback which takes almost no time off the clock, because while the ball is bouncing crazily around, precious seconds are ticking away. When Fuller dribbled that kick to the 35, Missouri already had done more than half their scoring for the day, being up 21-0. At that point in the game, Missouri had done all their scoring the conventional way, without returning a single kick for a touchdown. The best kick return they had had was an 8 yard punt return, after which their offense went another 80 yards, so it's not even like that 8 yarder did much to set up the score. And there were 30 minutes left to play when Fuller's foot hit the ball. So none of the reasons to attempt a squib kick were relevant. Running time off the clock was not a possibility, they had no reason to fear a kick return and the difference in the score was such that there was no reason to try an unconventional kicking strategy to gain whatever slight edge one might. Even the form of the kick was off. You kick a squib, but driving the ball into the ground to make it bounce. Fuller's kick traveled through the air and then rolled.

What seems much more likely is that Fuller's kick was intended for distance but came off sad and weak and everyone is agreeing upon a lie to paint her big-time football debut as a smashing success. Hell, if I was coaching, I'd have asked her to perform an on-side kick. It requires a degree of skill and aiming, as opposed to most kickoffs, which simply require as much leg-power as possible to get the ball as far downfield as possible. And onside kick is not supposed to go far, because the kicking team intends to run up and grab the ball before the receiving team can get to it, and thus retain possession of the ball near midfield. Such kicks are risky and usually only attempted near the end of the game when a team is desperate for more points and cannot afford to let the other team have the ball back. But they often meet with more success on the opening kick to either half, when no one is expecting it. A successful onside kick was much more in Fuller's wheelhouse and might have provided a spark to Vanderbilt. And much could have been made of how the skill and precision with which soccer players learn to kick served Fuller and her school so much better than the raw power which is emphasized with male placekickers, who seldom pull off such feats. Worst case scenario, she screws it up, which even professional kickers do most of the time, so she doesn't look all that bad. Most placekickers seldom screw up so badly as to have the kicker returner simply fall over before advancing the ball a single yard and still start on the 35 yard line. That's what's known in the parlance of the game as "good starting field position". A kickoff has the sole function of denying "good starting field position" to the other team, and Fuller did not accomplish this.

Meanwhile, Toney scored an actual touchdown. If their accomplishments took place on the same field, Toney would have scored enough points to beat Vanderbilt all by himself.

But, because gender politics, Toney had to share his 15 minutes of fame with a woman who, by any objective standard failed. She did not pass a test other women had failed to pass, she did not win some competition where no one else had. All she did was have a man name her the kicker for the game (largely because the actual kicker was being locked up by hysterics had COVID). This is not to denigrate Fuller's personal qualities and virtues and athletic accomplishments. But she did not "earn" a spot on the team by doing anything that a backup lineman had not done for many more years, putting in much more work on football fields without getting to play against Missouri, much less get to horn in on Kadarius Toney's big day.

The aforementioned article on ESPN does not even mention that Toney was Fuller's CO-Player of the Week. Neither does the Sports Illustrated article on the same event. Or one by UPI. You have to go down the list of Google searches for "SEC special teams player of the week" to the fully-quote piece above that mentions Toney once. Right next to it is one from his own football program's website, in which he is the featured subject, where Fuller is mentioned once, in a single sentence. See that's to be expected from an article published by an outlet whose focus is on his own football team. And the article I ran with was on "The Tennessean" whose focus would naturally be on the player from the Tennessee school (Vanderbilt). But it at least had the decency to mention Toney. Unlike the three national outlets I referenced, UPI, SI & ESPN.

All this does for the cause of women is reinforce Dr Johnson's assertion about a woman in a man's profession, that it is comparable to a dog walking on its hind legs. You are not supposed to expect it be done well, just amazed that it is done at all. Except the bitch on her hind legs actually had to achieve a degree of skill in that regard. Fuller just got picked because the men were forbidden from playing, her main recreational activity had something to do with kicking a sports ball and maybe Vanderbilt wanted a positive headline. It's almost like people are acknowledging that women are, in some respects, inherently inferior to men and we have to grade on a curve for them.