It’s pretty rare that you see a college football team’s fanbase pulling for the punter, much less an entire nation. And it’s even rarer when that punter isn’t even from America.
Such, however, is the viral fame that University of Nebraska punter Archie Wilson, an Aussie, mind you, has garnered over his love for his family.
Sports Illustrated: “Nebraska Punter Archie Wilson Is Your New Favorite College Football Player.” The Athletic: ” Nebraska football’s 2-footed Australian punter already won over coaches. Now he’s captured fans.”
It’d be a bigger story, I suppose, if Archie Wilson only had one foot or had a third to spare, but given that “ambipedal,” the word for using both feet with equal skill, doesn’t carry the same linguistic currency as “ambidextrous” does for doing the same thing with your hands, I suppose that’s about as close to a passable headline about a left- and right-footed punter as you’re going to get.
So why, pray tell, is the 19-year-old Wilson going viral? It’s not just because he’s adapted to American football after playing Australian rules football and has never played a game of American football, nor the fact that his first game starting for the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers will be at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City against the University of Cincinnati Bearcats.
“Huge crowd, Arrowhead, Thursday night, it doesn’t get much bigger,” Wilson said during a media briefing last Tuesday.
“I’m excited to get out there. I mean, ideally, I don’t have to punt much. But if they do need me on the field, I’m really excited to go out there and kick some.”
Indeed, aside from being ambipedal, this isn’t even really an unusual story, as The Athletic noted.
Wilson trained and played Australian Rules football at Haileyburg, the prep school that produced Chicago Bears punter Tory Taylor, a former Ray Guy Award winner at Iowa and the FBS record-holder for punting average in a career.
Do you support this punter?
Wilson followed in the footsteps of dozens of punters who went from Prokick Australia, a punting and kicking academy, to the FBS ranks. A sampling of the Aussies at the top of their field today includes Taylor, Cameron Johnston of the Pittsburgh Steelers (formerly Ohio State) and Michael Dickson of the Seattle Seahawks (formerly Texas).
However, it’s when the Melbourne, Australia, native talked about his family and how he got over here that he became a nationwide sensation.
“Yeah, I love them a lot. I’ve got two little brothers and my mom and a dad, and that’s the tough part of being here,” Wilson said, becoming visibly emotional at the podium.
“I love them a lot, and I miss them.
“But they know this is what’s best for me. It’s cool I can still talk to them plenty over the phone and they’re coming here to see the first few games, so I’m looking forward to that,” he added, collecting himself.
WHOLESOME 🥹@HuskerFootball‘s punter Archie Wilson became emotional when asked about being away from his family in Australia ❤️ pic.twitter.com/Jtk3RsCF5p
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) August 12, 2025
Suffice it to say, that heartening moment went viral. The clip even got featured on NBC’s “Today,” where co-host and former first daughter Jenna Bush Hager applauded him.
“Can you imagine never playing and then, leaving your family on the other side of the world?” Jenna asked. “If he’s crying like that, think about how his mom feels.”
Keep in mind that this is a guy who’s not outwardly nervous about playing his home opener at the stadium where the football team that’s won two of the last three Super Bowls plays its home game. (In Kansas City, this last season’s Super Bowl is a bit like Bruno in “Encanto”: We don’t talk about it.)
But his family and being away from them? That visibly moves him. And it’s not as if the guy was inconsolable; for a few seconds, he had an understandably visceral reaction and then got himself together.
When we talk about the “vibes shift” going on right now, this is a bit of it. It’s not a star performatively breaking down talking about how he’s trying to teach his nonbinary 3-year-old about how toxic masculinity colonized the global south (or whatever). It’s a tough guy who clearly has a strong bond with his family — and one assumes, given his level of achievement and how he feels about them, that they raised him right.
This is everything we want to get back to: recognizing that not only is the family unit the core building block of society, but that it’s OK to get emotional about it. We don’t need to lean on government or academia or power structures. Mom, dad, brothers and sisters will be just fine, thank you. And fatherlessness, which eats into this structure, needs to be stopped.
Sure, he may just be an ambipedal punter for the University of Nebraska. They may not even be your team. And this might not even be his country. But darned if Archie Wilson isn’t our favorite player in college football right now, and praise be to God if there are millions more like him.
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