Sarah Fuller has been in far more demanding circumstances than she was Saturday. Just the week before she was in goal for the Vanderbilt women's soccer team during its victory over the University of Arkansas in the SEC tournament championship game.
But when Fuller took the field with the Vanderbilt football team Saturday and chipped the second-half kickoff about 30 yards downfield against Missouri, she became the first woman to play in one of college football's top conferences.
If, as Fuller hoped, her modest kick had inspired girls and women to do big things, then good for her.
And, really, if the Vanderbilt football team had executed anywhere near as well as Fuller did with her deft kick, which a Missouri player fell on, the Commodores would not be winless after eight games, including the 41-0 defeat at Missouri. And Derek Mason, the team's coach, might still be employed. He was fired Sunday, shown the door one day after opening one for Fuller.
Still, it is worth noting the context in which Fuller appeared -- during a pandemic that continues to accelerate, with more than 205,000 new cases reported in the United States on Friday.
Fuller had her opportunity after Vanderbilt's starting kicker opted out of the season because of concerns about the coronavirus and almost all of its current kickers, holders and long snappers were sidelined last week after coming into contact with someone who had contracted the virus. That is all it took for Fuller to be enlisted.
In this "make it up as we go along" asterisk of a college football season, why should historical footnotes be any different?
Consider Saturday: an Iron Bowl played before a smattering of fans, with the coach of top-ranked Alabama, Nick Saban, watching his team's romp over Auburn from home because he had tested positive for the virus. Ohio State Coach Ryan Day also contracted the virus, but he did not miss his team's game against Illinois because it was canceled late Friday. Florida State's game was called off hours before kickoff for the second consecutive Saturday -- one of 19 games wiped out last week. Days like that have become normalized.
In fact, Ohio State's biggest obstacle to reaching the College Football Playoff might be the virus. If the Buckeyes (4-0), who have had two games canceled, cannot play either of their final two games -- against Michigan State (2-3) and Michigan (2-4) -- they will probably not have enough completed games to be eligible for the Big Ten Championship Game and thus, it seems, out of contention for the CFP.
That could put the Buckeyes in the perverse position of hoping for enough Big Ten cancellations -- at least eight of the remaining 12 other games -- so the threshold for qualifying for the conference title game is lowered from six games played to five, or of asking the Big Ten to rewrite its rules.
If not, their fate will be in the hands of the CFP committee.
For now, the limping and wheezing will continue as college football enters its final stretch, with conference championship games, bowls and the playoffs approaching. Stanford and San Jose State had the rest of their seasons thrown into doubt Saturday when health officials in Santa Clara County, Calif., banned all contact sports at the high school, college and professional level until at least Dec. 21.
Yet forging ahead -- with piped-in crowd noise, absent coaches and on-the-fly scheduling as the pandemic only worsens -- speaks to a different motivation: the lure of recouping billions in TV revenue.
So the show, with its unpaid performers, carries on -- all the better if there's a female kicker.