FOR THE LOVE OF A SPOTTED COW! I am sweating through this shirt again right here in my office in Mukwonago and it is only seventy-five degrees out because apparently the heat of our collective American obsession with this Tokyo Toe kicking prospect has been radiating off my screen like a nuclear meltdown. Kansei Matsuzawa walks into your life as if he just stepped out of a vending machine at a Kwik Trip near Lake Michigan instead of being an international prodigy who found his way to Division One football by watching YouTube videos on an old smartphone while working double shifts at a steakhouse in Ohio because the grass was too hard and nobody would give him space. I have been officiating for twenty years and I can tell you right now that this is not how we do things around here but apparently it works when your name means nothing to anyone until you score forty-five yards out of bounds on a windless Tuesday night in Honolulu.
You want to talk about grit? You think this kid has grit because he kick an American football from Ohio into Hawaii without knowing the rules or having parents who could afford him cleats that fit his size thirteen foot which seems like a massive logistical nightmare for someone coming over here with nothing but a backpack and hope in their eye. I remember back when I was calling games down at the high school level near Beloit where we used to call those fields dirt pits because there were no sods installed yet and you had to wear your boots through three inches of mud every single Saturday night just to make sure that nobody slipped on a wet patch of grass while trying to kick a field goal which felt like an Olympic event when the temperature dropped below freezing. That was back in 2018 around the time this guy watched his first Raiders game and decided he wanted to be something other than what his parents thought he should be because that is exactly what my father told me I would become if I kept wearing those yellow shirts on a field where kids were getting hit with helmets full of dirt into their faces while trying to block punts.
The story here about Matsuzawa sneaking out at night to kick footballs in a net for ninety minutes without anyone watching him is something that resonates deep within my soul as an official who spent three years chasing down players who were running the wrong way on purpose just because they thought I would not see it but this kid did it with no one behind him. He was learning how to kick alone at 9 A.M. after working a shift where he had been flipping steaks and making sure that his hands were clean from blood of any kind so he could hold the ball steady while standing on pavement instead of turf which is something I have never understood about modern athletes who think they need grass under their feet to perform well when all you really need is discipline and a stomach for pain. My cousin Michael-Vincent told me last week that this kid should just come out here and play in the snow because he does not understand what winter football means but I told him no because we are talking about someone who came from Japan which might be cold too or hot depending on the time of year so you cannot generalize anything unless you go there yourself.
I have to ask you if this is really how they do it now where a kid studies Jason Myers highlights for three hours before practicing at all when in my day we used to watch our older brothers kick and try not to get hit by their feet because the ball came off too fast and left bruises that looked like fingerprints from an angry person hitting your leg. You think Matsuzawa studied enough videos of his form or did he just practice until it hurt him so much that he stopped caring about anything else? That is something I have been thinking about all week while standing on a sideline in the rain for six hours straight and watching our players try to run through mud holes that were made by someone who was too lazy to water down the field before kickoff. It reminds me of my old buddy Blake who used to tell stories about playing football at a school where they did not have lockers so you just left your cleats in the trunk of his car and prayed nobody stole them because he was from Chicago which is colder than Mukwonago but not nearly as nice because we got our own culture here.
Let me get back to this coaching staff for Hawaii because Thomas Sheffield sent this kid to a beach when he needed him on a field with dirt in his nose and rain soaking through his pants until the cold made you feel like your lungs were freezing up inside of your chest but no instead he said go touch grass which I think is what they tell everyone now but why not just make them kick? Why do we need specialists telling us how to breathe or write affirmations in notebooks when all you really have to do is put the ball on a tee and hit it hard enough that nobody can stop it. This part about him going back there after working at Hocking College where they had one field with grass but maybe not always green depending on the season because they were trying to make sure people did not slip while running around for touchdowns which I have never liked the idea of a touchdown being scored by someone who does not actually run.
I remember once when I was officiating in Wisconsin back in 1998 where we had a kicker come onto our field and he said his name was something like “Tokyo Toe” but it turned out to be just a nickname that nobody believed until they saw the guy miss three times on a windy day which is exactly what you expect from someone who has not played much in their life. That was back when we did not have cameras everywhere filming your face for twenty-four hours so people would know if you were scared but Matsuzawa had to deal with that pressure of having his story told by every newspaper and TV channel he could find before even getting a chance to practice on the main field which is something I think makes him more nervous than anyone else who comes out here from Japan because they think this is easy. The truth of it all is that nobody wants you to win unless you actually make the kicks or lose them but Matsuzawa has been winning in his own way by not giving up and trying every day even though people told him no which I respect more than anything else anyone could do for a living like working at Culver’s where they tell me now that we can get those burgers if we are lucky enough to find one without waiting an hour.
I want you to understand something about this game of ours because it is not just kicking and running around fields with grass or dirt underneath your feet so people do not slip on them but it is a mental thing too like the time when I saw Michael-Vincent try to make a field goal at age eighteen during halftime while our coach was yelling from the sidelines telling us all that he would go home if we missed. That did happen actually and everyone laughed because this kid was kicking for his life not just winning points which is what Matsuzawa seems concerned with right now even though he said earlier in an interview that it was too much pressure on him to win everything at once like a game show where you have no idea how the contestants feel until they tell you themselves. I told my wife about this and she looked at me through her eyes which were tired from working double shifts herself because sometimes we both need someone else who can tell us what is wrong with our lives before we realize it ourselves but she just said okay fine do your thing while she cleaned up the kitchen floor after the kids spilled juice on the carpet.
The whole point of this column is that you cannot judge a kicker by how much money he makes or if he plays in Hawaii because I have seen kickers play there and miss kicks anyway when it was windy outside which they claim happens all the time here where we get storms coming in from Lake Michigan every few weeks depending on the month. You want to talk about modern sports logic? Why does a kicker need an emotional coach telling him how to handle stress after he misses three straight field goals like this Matsuzawa guy did before getting better later that season at Hawaii when they had more resources and less dirt in their eyes because of all the new turf installed there. This is not football as I know it where you just play until your legs stop moving or someone stops you from running faster which happened once to me on a field
One-Ry Out.