Apologize to Michael Deiter.
Yes, you. Apologize to Badgers senior guard Michael Deiter. Oh what’s that? Would you have not known his class rank and position if I hadn’t included it vis-à-vis AP Style? You’re part of the problem.
After Saturday’s game against Penn State, Deiter tied Sojourn Shelton for the most starts in school history with 51. He also has the most consecutive starts in school history with (please wait a moment while I copy and paste) 51 starts.
Assuming he plays in his 52nd consecutive game this Saturday, he will break the all-time record at the University of Wisconsin.
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So once again I’ll ask for an apology on his behalf, because guys like him — who start 51 straight games at left guard, left tackle and center — don’t run around asking for apologies.
But boy does he deserve it.
I see you cheering for running back Jonathan Taylor. That’s called elitism. Taylor and his fellow bourgeois class of running backs like Taiwan Deal and Garrett Groshek are merely reaping the benefits of proletariat offensive linemen like Deiter, who are willing to sacrifice their body for the good of the team eschewing glory for gallantry, swapping out grandeur for grit, all the while facing media attention only due to miscues.
Now, as those who know themselves to be guilty of an egregious miscarriage of justice are prone to do, I see an excuse creeping up on the horizon.
“But Wisconsin is known for its offensive line, it gets so much credit.”
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Sure, we all love talking about the Wisconsin offensive line, paying lip service to the backbone of Badger football because Sports Illustrated told us to. But it’s always the Offensive Line™.
They have names.
Your identity politics are sickening, and frankly, it can’t go on any longer.
Not all 6-foot-6, 300-pound guys are the same, you know.
For example, Michael Deiter is 310 pounds. Junior David Moorman is 6 foot 5. Why Michael Furtney is a wee 291 pounds (though he is a freshman and has some time to grow).
So you see how hurtful your lack of sensitivity is to this diverse group of men ranging within one percent margin of error in height and weight of one another can be?
Imagine a world in which the offensive line didn’t exist. It would be carnage. These men are the only things saving us from football becoming a very dangerous game, and nobody is going to tune in to watch a product that features frequent debilitating injuries and long-lasting harm. It would probably look something like this.
Though it may appear in that clip as though Colts head coach Chuck Pagano (fired after this season, obviously) was playing some sort of upside-down-under-water-3-D-chess … he is almost certainly not. Rather, much like myself, he was attempting to prove a point to the idiot masses: “Is this what you want? No O-Line? I’ll give you no O-Line!”
Of the four years, Deiter has graced us with his fundamentally sound, technically thrilling blocking – this ongoing season has been the least successful for the team as a whole. At last count, the Badgers had four losses.
Despite the complete neglect of the weekly seminal performances turned in by our heroes, they always share plenty of the blame when things get dreary, and this season has been no different.
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Complaints about the appearance of uncharacteristic penalty troubles and issues opening holes for backs (though they seem to be doing just fine atop their ivory towers), may not be completely unfounded.
But the validity of the criticism is of little importance, as few have earned the right to speak on the topic of our these great men, who are more-than-just-very-big-guys-that-spend-the-game-making-sure-other-very-big-guys-don’t-get-through-them.
How to rectify this dereliction of recognition?
A great start would be to apologize to Michael Deiter.
