Jack The Kicker

In a strange way the events of last week, when a reserve punter at the University of Northern Colorado was arrested for allegedly stabbing the starter in his kicking leg and then fleeing the crime scene in a car with the license plates 8-KIKR, are reassuring. Not because they show just how far somebody might go in the quest for athletic success--the news of any week demonstrates those depths. In fact the one thing we've learned is just how fragile a commodity sportsmanship has become as the pressure to succeed, and the rewards for doing so, have grown so outlandish. What's reassuring about the case, in a strange way of course, is that it doesn't happen more often.

The case: Mitch Cozad, a 21-year-old washout from the University of Wyoming, walked on at UNC, one NCAA level down, this fall but still failed to get any traction in his pursuit of a kicking job. Cozad had never even been first team in high school, back in the small farm town of Wheatland, Wyo. ("Think Friday Night Lights," a Wheatland Bulldogs cheerleader suggested last week.) But his dreams never seemed to suffer for a withering reality. Back home they remember a kid whose mother "spent ungodly amounts sending him to kicking and punting camps," who had separate shoes for kicking and punting and who kept a herd of his own footballs at practice. They say his mother, Suzanne, filmed all his kicks at practice and would "bad-mouth" players ahead of him on the depth chart. ( Cozad's father does not live with him.) Once, when Cozad was switched from kicker to lineman, he hid the kicking tee.

Cozad, who missed his only game-winning field goal attempt at Wheatland ("He was never the full-time kicker," an assistant coach there said), did not mistake the lack of interest from major colleges as being in any way predictive of his Division I success. He walked on at Wyoming in 2006, but even though he was the only punter on the team's spring roster, he was replaced as soon as a junior college transfer was brought in. "There's just some situations, political situations, that are tough to deal with," Cozad said before leaving for the Division I-AA Bears.

His high school coach, Paul Miller, thought Cozad was a good kid, with a tremendous work ethic but definitely without the talent to be a big-time football player--or even a medium-time one. "The fact that he's even at a Division I-AA football team is a bit of a joke," he told the Greeley (Colo.) Tribune. At UNC, though, his presence was easily explained. "He was probably looking down the depth chart," said UNC coach Scott Downing, "and saw that we had one punter listed."

That punter was Rafael Mendoza, a popular teammate, "a funny guy, a really good guy," according to a teammate. Mendoza, a senior, had the job sewed up; Cozad was not making enough of a run at it to put any pressure on him. When Cozad asked coaches how he was doing two weeks ago, Downing told him he'd have to "work harder."

Cozad, police say, hatched a plan instead. It might have been hard to see coming, the way Cozad blended into the collegiate woodwork. Male and female students at his dorm, Turner Hall, thought him a "sweetheart," a "normal, regular guy" and a "regular student who just wanted to study hard and meet new people." There may have been some signs, though. One player told police that Cozad had "an extreme hatred, competition and jealousy" for Mendoza. In fact police believe Cozad had begun plotting his sabotage weeks before. One teammate said Cozad asked him for directions to Mendoza's apartment. And four days before the incident, Mendoza recalled later, somebody who matched Cozad's description was in his parking lot, watching him.

On the night of Sept. 11, as Mendoza returned to his apartment, an assailant stabbed him in the thigh of his kicking leg, opening a puncture wound one inch wide and five inches deep. According to the police affidavit, the assailant then fled on foot to the parking lot of Knotty's Pine Liquor. A store employee watched somebody remove tape from the front and rear license plates of a dark-colored Dodge. The vanity plates were registered to Suzanne Cozad of Wheatland, Wyo. Her son was arrested shortly afterward and held on $30,000 bail until his mother came for him and returned him to Wheatland.

Last Saturday, meanwhile, the Bears, winless in their last 12 games on the road, traveled to Texas State. Defensive back Jason Hildenbrand emerged as the kicker, at least until Mendoza returns to the team. On six kicks he averaged just 29.3 yards, his first college punt traveling 11 yards. But the Bears, who were 0-2 coming into the game and dogged by all manner of national media during the week, stunned the No. 23 Bobcats 14-13, with the deciding TD coming on a blocked punt return. It was a surprising result, indeed. Reassuring, anyway. Said Hildenbrand after the game, the week's sad events somehow reformatted into this unlikely triumph, everybody pulling together, the whole thing looking more and more like a moment of pathology and not just another indictment of competition: "This is just totally awesome."