Columnist Ron Kantowski: High hopes get kicked to the curb

Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2004 | 9:46 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

It's official: College football coaches are full of lawn fertilizer. The organic kind with the steer on the bag.

They will have you believe that the kicking game is just as important as offense and defense. Yet when it comes to recruiting, they continue to ignore special teams as if they were Keanu Reeves on Oscar night.

The season is less than a month old, and, as usual, coaches are having to explain to frustrated alumni with fat wallets how they lost the big game to State U. because their walk-on former soccer players disguised as kickers can't boot the ball between the uprights from spitting distance.

In the case of Oregon State, coach Mike Riley had to explain himself three times after one game, the number of extra points missed by Beavers kicker Alexis Serna in a one-point loss at defending national champion LSU.

Serna is a 5-foot-7, 157-pound redshirt freshman who played the requisite three years of soccer at A.B. Miller High School in Fontana, Calif. Which is three more years of soccer than Mark Mosley played in high school. Or Fred Cox. Or Lou "The Toe" Groza.

So tell me: If soccer players make such darn good field goal kickers then why hasn't Jerry Jones signed David Beckham?

Actually, I don't have a problem with any of these Garo Yepremian wanna-bes, at least until I try to interview them after a game. But if I were a college coach, especially one with a contract up for renewal and a mortgage on a castle in Millionaire Acres, I would start using one of my 85 scholarships on soccer players who specialize in field goals and extra points instead of corner kicks.

In addition to Oregon State's emotionally crushing loss at Baton Rouge, Arizona (vs. Wisconsin), Marshall (vs. Ohio State) and San Diego State (vs. Michigan) have failed to close out huge upsets because their former soccer players couldn't kick straight.

"It used to be a game of inches," Ole Miss coach David Cutcliffe said after those other Rebels beat Vanderbilt on a field goal in overtime. "Now it's a game of toes."

Sometimes, as your Rebels have so aptly illustrated, it's a game of toe jam.

If you think the kicking game is the least of UNLV's problems ... well, maybe you're right. But there are weaknesses on the Rebels' special teams that are so glaring they would require sunglasses -- those real dark kind that Jim McMahon used to wear -- to address.

At Wisconsin, the Rebels basically lost because their former soccer player, Sergio Aguayo, had a chip shot field goal blocked and returned for an 86-yard touchdown. Nine of the Badgers' 18 points were a direct result of kicking game blunders. Wisconsin's first score came on a safety when a deep snap sailed over punter Gary Cook's head and came to rest somewhere near Kenosha.

The problems continued in the Air Force debacle. Having seen the Wisconsin game on TV, Fisher DeBerry, the Air Force coach who usually is more conservative than a pair of wing-tips, elected to go for it on fourth-and-1 at his own 29-yard line during a scoreless game.

The Rebels held but failed to capitalize when Aguayo missed another relatively short field goal. Had he made that kick to give the Rebels an early lead ... well, perhaps they lose 27-13 instead of 27-10.

Actually, as bad as the Rebels played, the game might have been closer were it not for another special teams blunder. Right before halftime, UNLV's Hubi Schulze Zumkley tried to execute a squib kick but booted the ball directly to an Air Force up man, whose return gave the Falcons good field position and set up a lightning-fast touchdown that never should have happened.

Schulze Zumkley played most of his high school soccer in Herbern, Germany, at Anne Frank High School. One of these days, I'd like to see the Rebels use one of their 85 scholarships on a kicker from Errol Mann Vocational.

That's 78 more draft picks, which is what the NFL calls its scholarships, than the pros have. Yet that didn't preclude the Raiders from using their first-round selection in 2000 on a kicker (Sebastian Janikowski).

But it's not just kickers with hard-to-pronounce names who give special teams a bad name. What about this publicity stunt of having walk-on players cover kickoffs that Texas A&M started under Jackie Sherrill?

Sure, the "12th Man" is one of those neat and time-honored college football traditions.

It's almost as neat and time-honored as watching those scholarship kickoff return specialists from Oklahoma race 98 yards for a touchdown.