Synopsis

Adam Sandler plays a beleaguered football kicker who feels ignored by his teammates and blamed whenever something goes wrong. His miserable routine gets even worse when Pittsburgh Steelers players steal his lucky snow shoe and torment him. Set against a mock-earnest, Springsteen-style sports ballad, the video turns the kicker's lack of glory into an escalating comic tragedy. Sandler's lonely figure remains determined to do his job, even as everyone around him treats him as an afterthought.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was made with help from NFL Films, giving Sandler's exaggerated football lament an unusually authentic NFL setting.

• Pittsburgh Steelers players Jerome Bettis, Greg Lloyd, Kordell Stewart and Justin Strzelczyk appear in the video. Strzelczyk plays himself as one of the teammates who steals the kicker's "snow shoe" and taunts him.

• "The Lonesome Kicker" was released as the lone single from Sandler's 1997 album *What's Your Name?* and received airplay on MTV.

• The song's mock-earnest football style and focus on an overlooked specialist helped inspire Sandler's 1998 sports comedy *The Waterboy*.

• Work on the video reportedly led to a feature-film offer. The project was eventually declined by both the filmmaker and Sandler and became *Joe Dirt*.