In terms of controversial HOT SPORTS TAKES that Chris Kluwe has had in his life, this one falls very close to the bottom of the food chain. Still, if you can sift through all his language dressing and naughty words (yes, that's a NSFW warning ... we learned our lesson tweeting Monday about U.S. Airways), you will find out that Mr. Kluwe believes college kickers are generally bad because their teachers are clueless.
Want to know why your team has a [redacted] kicker? Because your team has a [redacted] coach who doesn't know the first thing about the basic fundamentals of kicking and punting, but figures that a soccer castoff will do just fine so long as he gets screamed at loudly enough.
In my five years of college ball, and eight years in the NFL, I did not have a single special teams coach or head coach who had the faintest idea how it is that I did my job, and that is how it is EVERYWHERE. (I was lucky that early on in high school, I found a couple coaches who did know a thing or two so I could teach myself later). Now a lot of this is due to the fact that people just don't care about kicking, because it's only nine or 10 plays out of the game (whereas the offense and defense GLOREEEEE BOYZ get 35 to 40), but can you imagine if your linebacker coach had no idea how to teach the fundamentals of tackling and assignment responsibility?
We don't imagine Kluwe is making this up. Then again, we don't know if his situation is unique or not. And most certainly, we have no experience being taught how to kick at any level, unless you count being self-taught while taking 15-yard running starts at the ball during random football field trips in high school and college.
But if Kluwe is right, he does make a good point. Why on earth doesn't a special teams coach know how to at least instruct a punter or kicker properly?
