A Tribute to King Louie

There have been a lot of good kickers through the years in college football. In my years of following the sport, however, I have never seen any kicker receive the pub and notoriety of Louie Sakoda. Time and time again you hear, in reference to King Louie, that he is the MVP of the Utah team. I have often asked myself: what makes a kicker/punter the MVP of a team?
Certainly, he is one of the best kickers in the country. He's perfect inside 40 yards, and near perfect over 40 yards (80%). However, he's only 8th in field goal percentage in the country, and he's tied for 4th in field goal makes.
He is a pretty awesome punter. He does have a knack for preventing returns (less than 20% of his punts are returned). He can also down it inside the 20 with the best of them: 43% of his punts end up inside the 20. In "pooch" attempts, he only puts a cool 28% into the end zone, and only one of those has been downed outside the 20. But his average punt and his net average rank him in the 30's in the country. On a side note, his net average is nearly identical to what mine was as a sophomore in high school (about 35 for me compared to 36.8 for him).
So, perhaps it is the fact that he does both pretty stinking well. I'm not sure that's it either, because there have been guys before him to do both well, as All-Americans and Groza/Guy Award winners. But none of them have been MVP's of top-10 teams.
So what is it that separates Sakoda from the rest? I believe the thing that makes Louie Sakoda the MVP of the undefeated Utes is: Utah's offense. If they didn't struggle so much between the 40's, he wouldn't have the opportunity to drop it inside the 20 2.9 times per game. If they didn't have so many problems scoring touchdowns in the red zone, he wouldn't be kicking 1.1 red zone field goals a game, and 2.1 field goals per game.
In short, Louie Sakoda is the MVP of the 7th-ranked and undefeated Utah Utes because Brian Johnson and Matt Asiata are not. Louie Sakoda is the big man on campus because Andy Ludwig is the little man in the press box.
So hats off to you, King Louie: you should take your extremely helpful supporting cast out to dinner. If it weren't for them, you'd be just another All-American candidate and Lou Groza/Ray Guy semi-finalist, but you couldn't possibly be the MVP of a top-10 team.