Respect? You? After they sweated through every August practice, suffered 7 loses before you arrived and then you yell at them hoping for respect? They might be jocks but they know exactly why you are there and forgive me if I say they likely have little appreciation for the reason.
You summarized it quite well for any non-kicker football player at any level who has gone through the two-a-day drills in August!
I don’t know how it works at any level above high school, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that while everyone is doing up-down drills or wind sprints, they banish the kicker to the far side of the field to practice kicking.
That said, I still have the same respect for a kicker as I do for most athletes, since it is such a mundane job until it isn’t.
Then, I wouldn’t want that job for all the tea in China.
COACH: (to his kicker) “There is one second left and we are down by two points, and you need to kick a 40 yard field goal to win the Super Bowl. No pressure.”