Echo From the Buttes Blog: Karmic Comeuppance for Mouthy Rudy Carpenter

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Rudy Carpenter may not play against Southern California this Saturday due to an injury suffered against Cal. Did Carpenter get what was coming to him?  Rudy Carpenter hobbled out of Cal’s Memorial Stadium on crutches after badly spraining his ankle near the end of the Sun Devils’ loss. He could miss Saturday’s visit to USC and end his stretch of 36 straight starts dating back to Sam Keller’s season-ending hand injury in 2005. That’s the second-longest active streak in the nation.

The injury may have been karmic comeuppance for the mouthy Carpenter. Cal linebacker Zach Follett told the Contra Costa Times that Carpenter got overly personal with his trash talk during ASU’s upset of Cal last season. He also claims his parents were spit on in Sun Devil Stadium last year. So when Follett beat an offensive lineman badly and got a free shot at Carpenter in the fourth quarter, he took it – delivering a third-down pummeling to Carpenter’s blindside that caused a fumble. (Watch Follett abuse Jon Hargis and light up Carpenter at the one-minute mark of the video below.) Quoth Follett: “Thank the lord I finally got him. It was a long time coming since last year. He said some things in my ear last year. A year of frustration was let out on that play.”

If you heard Follett chattering away about Carpenter during pregame warm-ups, it was clear he had an axe to grind. And he must’ve let his teammates know about it. After Follett recapped the play in his postgame press conference on Saturday, Cal coach Jeff Tedford hugged him and said “You got him.”  Cameron Jordan, a defensive end from Chandler High, described the play thusly: “I saw Zack make contact and I might literally have stopped playing and just watched. I told the offensive lineman, ‘You’re quarterback just died.’ If you guys could have seen the pain, his face when he got hit, it was the funniest thing in the world.”  While Jordan was having a nice laugh and Tedford and Follett were hugging it out, Carpenter was hobbling around on crutches outside the visitors’ locker room. Dennis Erickson has said that Carpenter’s availability against USC will probably be based on his pain tolerance. We’re betting that Carpenter will play simply because he’s one tough cookie. But he’s also a bit of a punk whose on-field jabbering and off-field controversies have inspired disdain from a lot of people around the Pac-10 and even in this fan base. You never want to see an athlete get hurt. However, one can hope Rudy discovers the glee with which Follett’s hit was delivered and tone down his antics moving forward. Carpenter’s talent demands respect, but his mouth too often inspires contempt.