Nick KrugIn the hours and days that followed last April’s freak accident during the Kansas University spring football game that left starting quarterback Michael Cummings with a serious knee injury and pushed senior safety Michael Glatczak into the public eye for the wrong reasons, several Jayhawks stepped forward to show they had Glatczak’s back.
Defensive coordinator Clint Bowen was not one of them.
“I never said a word to him,” Bowen said Tuesday on Day 5 of preseason camp. “It’s football. The young man was playing football and things happen. I didn’t see any point in making a deal about it. Young man didn’t do it on purpose. It was part of the game. It was terrible for Cummings. Glatczak probably felt bad about it, but (he) didn’t need to.”
Need to or not, the walk-on from Centralia High by way of Butler Community College felt awful about the innocent hit that likely ended Cummings’ season. Still does, in fact.
“It was a tough day,” he said Tuesday. “I just kept thinking about it.”
Nick KrugThrough the help of several of his teammates — most notably Ben Goodman, Fish Smithson and Cummings himself — Glatczak eventually was able to move forward without feeling guilty. He surely still remembers what led up to the fluke collision where he hit a scrambling Cummings low and watched the quarterback limp off the field with help. But he can’t recall many specifics of the play and he’s just fine with that.
“I try not to (remember it),” he said. “I was just trying to make a play.”
Cummings understood that immediately and went out of his way to communicate to anyone who would listen that he believed Glatczak never saw him.
“Mike reached out to me and told me everything was gonna be all right and he didn’t hold any grudges,” Glatczak said. “It helped. He could’ve been bad, but he took it the right way and it helped me out a lot. It made the days go by better.”
If there’s any silver lining in this story it’s that Glatczak, who played for his father, Larry, at Centralia High, had a good enough spring and is off to a hot enough start in preseason camp to put himself in position to make some of those plays that Cummings won’t be able to this fall.
“He’s a great kid,” Bowen said of Glatczak. “We all know where his heart is and what he’s trying to do to help this team. And he’s gonna help this team. You talk about probably the biggest surprise of spring and camp, it’s Michael Glatczak. That’s the guy that can play that people will find out about.”
Added Smithson: “He’s more than a walk-on. He’s good. If you watch him you’ll realize he’s got talent and he’s gonna be out there this fall with us making plays.”
