You know you are having a bad day as a college athlete, or any other kind of athlete, when a fairly ordinary casual fan of college football not only knows your jersey number, but knows enough to recognize that you are having a bad game. Such was the case tonight for Washington Huskies player #73, whose performance tonight was so wretched at Right Tackle that I looked up his information to see if he was a rookie (he was, in fact, a sophomore) and other information about him like his name, height, weight, and hometown, that I will not share because I do not want to dox him. He had a bad enough night, he doesn’t need any more from me at least. What was shocking to me was that every passing down, especially towards the end of the game, I saw him giving perhaps the worst blocking from that position that I have seen in my life, including a terrible stance, awful work with his hands, and the tendency to either be called for holding (it happened three times in the last half of the fourth quarter, probably because the refs were as tired about it as I was) or absolutely getting blown up by the edge rusher. It didn’t know what move the edge rusher tried on him, it worked, and it was a shockingly bad performance.

When someone is having that bad of a game, such that your performance is so bad that every play the quarterback (who played bravely and injured, but not very effectively, alas) is getting hit or having to throw the ball away quickly every single down, anyone could have done an equally good (or bad) job. Bring in anyone from the street who is heavy enough to be an offensive lineman and they will at least do the job at the same level. Literally anyone of sufficient height and weight (6’6″ and at least 300 pounds) would have been able to do just as well as that hapless and totally incompetent offensive tackle did. His technique was so bad it could be recognized and critiqued by ordinary viewers of the game, given his stiff footwork and terrible technique. One of the advantages, if it can be said, about having such a disastrous performance in the final game of the season (the national championship, no less), is that the game footage will be so bad that it will provide an entire offseason’s worth of work that will need to be done by the player to retain his scholarship and his place on the team. 

This is not the only time I have felt that a player’s performance was so bad that virtually anyone could have done the same job as the person who was supposed to be performing at the highest level. A few examples will suffice to demonstrate that this experience, though rare, is not unprecedented at least. The performance of the American Samoan goaltender during the OFC competition was so poor that his team lost 27-0 to the champion Australians, and the game was so terrible that it helped convince the Australians that it was not worth dominating the Oceania federation and that it would be preferable for them to switch to the Asian federation in order to obtain a guaranteed World Cup spot (which, at least for now, even the OFC has now that the World Cup has been expanded to 32 teams starting in 2026), as well as higher caliber competition in the form of the Japanese, South Koreans, Saudis, and Iranians, the other football powers in Asia. Quite reasonably, Australia has never looked back from that decision and has become an perennial powerhouse within its region, instead of beating up on players so bad that even an arthritic and gout-ridden goalkeeper could do no worse, at least, than the existing goalkeeper is doing. Just give me a Samoan name and I could easily embarrass myself equally completely. A similar performance was turned in by James Harden when he jacked up a large part of the nearly 30 three point shots that were missed by the Houston Rockets a few years ago in a terrible loss that they suffered to the Golden State Warriors in the NBA playoffs. If you want someone to jack up ill-advised three pointers that aren’t going to hit the mark but brick or be air-balls, you can have me do the job for a lot less than you’re paying James Harden to do it for.

One of the joys of watching terrible sports performances is the everyman aspect of such things. When we watch sports being played at the highest level, we are in awe of the skill and God-given talent that is on display. We see performances that leave us speechless and having nothing but praise to say about those who seemingly effortlessly demonstrate stunning feats of athletic prowess. The experience is entirely the opposite when we see a player turn in a terrible performance, though this is not without pleasure of a different kind. When we see players whose performances are shockingly bad, we are reminded that even at the highest levels of sport there are performances so bad that rec league heroes could do better, or at least look better, in turning in those performances. A team had to be good enough to make the playoffs or make a championship, so how could its players look so bad on the biggest stage? Many of the people watching could put in an equal performance themselves if given the chance, and yet there are plenty of cases where players are simply not up to the pressures of playing the biggest games against the toughest opponents at the highest levels, in large part because they are replacement level players who are being asked to step up for those whose good performances led to the team’s prior success but who because of injury or some other reason were unable to play the game that mattered the most. Anyone can play poorly, but not anyone has good enough teammates, alas, to play poorly in the biggest games. Only a few people have that chance, it seems.