As a general rule, something has to go extremely wrong for an NFL kicker to drive a week of discourse. When Steelers kicker Jeff Reed trashed a Sheetz bathroom and berated its graveyard-shift employees back in 2009—"caused damage to a towel dispenser as he was infuriated at the fact that there were no towels in it," in the words of the local police's statement—it did not occasion any somber statements from the Steelers or exhaustingly snarky japes from Wawa. It did not spark a national conversation about the crisis in the Kicker-American Community. While there is a through-line between Reed's toilet meltdown and Harrison Butker's disastrous commencement address at Benedictine College—a kicker marooned in a non-kicking situation, embarrassing himself and inconveniencing others—it has not disappeared quite as quickly as Reed's incident did.
Not yet, anyway. Before it can go away entirely, and before Butker can return to Being Unapologetic In His Masculinity in a corner of the locker room that people take great care to avoid, everyone needs to get on the record. The NFL, in response to the kicker's broadsides against diversity, reiterated its institutional dedication to inclusion. GLAAD pointed out that it was a strange choice on Butker's part to celebrate the proud graduates by treating them to a tight 20 minutes of free-associative Trad Cath boilerplate. The Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica, the co-founding institution of Benedictine College, put a big statement on the front page of their website saying that they "do not believe that Harrison Butker’s comments in his 2024 Benedictine College commencement address represent the Catholic, Benedictine, liberal arts college that our founders envisioned and in which we have been so invested." Kansas City's official Twitter account made a point of noting that Butker does not actually live in Kansas City.
