Zach Nichols: The College Football Player of the Challenge
As I’m a bit fed up lately on some commentary I’ve been hearing about different female body types, I decided to write about someone who tends to have misogynistic views. Now I know this feels like a cop out, since Zach played DII football at NMU, but this article is more about how although Zach left college, he never truly left the locker room.
Zach Nichols: The College Football Player of the Challenge
Y’all know I’m a big fan of football, but my high school didn’t have a team, so other than going to games at other schools and hearing tales about how big of jerks the Watt brothers were (not JJ, he’s the best), I had never really met football players before college. And while that part of me that finds playing football an attractive quality isn’t dead, it sure has gotten a lot quieter (Not dissimilar to my feelings about Zach).
Misogyny isn’t Dead
When I was in college, my team’s locker room shared a wall with the football team, and the locked door that separated our locker rooms did not do a good job of soundproofing between the rooms. This ensured that not only did we know which football players knew all the words to Hannah Montana songs, but that we also often heard them talking about the girls on my team. One thing that stuck out to me was when they all made a bet to see which football player could sleep with all the girls on my team. There was a lot of talk about how easy it would be, because we were all such sluts, and a lot of lies about how they hooked up with a bunch of the girls on my team who weren’t straight (not to mention the fact that we talk, so it’s not like we’d all sleep with the same guy anyways).
Now, Zach has so many televised instances of treating women horribly that it would make me feel sick listing them. He has proven what he thinks about women again and again, even writing a note to Jenna after leaving Exes II saying: “If you cuddle with someone else, I’ll kill you. Also, remember gravity is a bitch and your ass is astronomical. Keep it that way.” Considering this is the girl he went on to marry, I feel like this is a good representation for how he feels about women.
Popularity is Overrated
The football team at my school was pretty good. We pulled in a lot of elite players from Florida, and although we never won the conference, we were competitive with the top teams. However, they were not the best team at my school. Soccer, volleyball, field hockey, lacrosse, and rugby always made it farther in the playoffs than football, and yet they got more privileges than any other team. Not only would they get field priority and excused assignments since they were on the team, but even their practices did not have to follow the same rules that were enforced for the other teams. This was all simply because they brought in more money than the other sports. Now, from a business standpoint that makes sense, but from a non-football athlete standpoint, it was the worst.
Now take Zach’s negative attitude and terrible actions and consider them failing grades. If a castmate fails enough grades, they shouldn’t be recast. However, while sometimes these failing grades are obvious, sometimes production hides this in the edit, like professors hide football players’ bad grades by passing them regardless. Depending on who production decides the villain of the season is, they can make Zach be the voice of the people, by showing only his funny confessionals, or they can show the rot he sows. Take WOTW2 for instance, where the audience often sided with Zach against the show’s villains, even though we all know how awful the man can truly be.
