Bet you wouldn't have said that face-to-face with the Gators' kicker last year, or with a certain kicker named "Janikowski".
The sports media hasn't covered this in years, but I do remember players describing the position of kicker ( when most of them still spoke English ) as the least respected on the team. An example of one source of resentment was that because of their size most kickers were able to buy street clothes off the rack, where as the rest of the players were mostly super size and had to shop in big and tall places. Another is the kicker isn't in the game for about half of it like most players ( defense/offense ).
With kicking made more important in recent years, especially in OT, kickers take on a more prominent role as hero or goat. Many times it's goat. If she wants respect, she picked the wrong sport. Ask her to compare her treatment to a player who fumbled during an important play or a WR who dropped a pass. They have to do plenty to atone for one bad play.
Let me preface my comment with this:
I kicked on my high school team. Actually, I was the tight end (careful there fellas) but the Friday before our opening game in my junior year, the coach realized that we didn't have a kicker yet. So, he lined everyone up with the quarterback holding the ball at the 25 yardline and had everyone give it a shot. I was one of 4 that made it through the uprights. We had a kick-off between us and I was the one left standing. So, in addition to my offensive duties, I also kicked extra points and field goals (as well as punting duties) in my junior and senior years. I was also the second leading scorer on the team due to my second job.
We ran a double tightend run-style offense where the majority of the time I blocked and on occasions, I caught a few short TDs. So, basically, I have a dog on each side of this argument. But, with all that said, full-time kickers are not football players. If this girl wanted to play football, she should never have been a kicker. But, in defense of kickers, the kickers come in because the offense can't get their job done, pull the teams collective @$$ out of the fire, so to speak. If the REAL football players don't want kickers on the field, they need to do their jobs better.