As someone who has lost his cool once or twice in athletic venues, I can sympathize with Elizabeth Lambert.

I have yelled at a parent in front of players who questioned my umpiring capabilities. I was thrown out of a minor baseball game for disputing a called third strike and for telling the umpire, at age 14, that his call was “horseradish.“ Legendary Vernon basketball referee Mel Briggeman gave me two technical fouls in one adult rec league game. One of them I actually deserved.

The good news for me was those incidents happened way before today’s video age. Which makes me glad I’m not Lambert, the young soccer player with the University of New Mexico Lobos. Up until, say, a week ago, those of us outside of Albuquerque, N.M., home to the UNM campus, and Lambert’s hometown of Lancaster, Cal., had never heard of Lambert.

But, because she got a tad aggressive during a conference playoff semifinal against Brigham Young University, Lambert is almost as big a household name today as Ellen. Or Oprah.

Lambert’s lifetime of infamy – it’s gone WAY beyond 15 minutes of fame – started out courtesy of ESPN, America’s version of TSN, on their Sportscentre highlight package. They showed Lambert first being elbowed in the mid-riff by a BYU opponent, then punching her in the back of the head in retaliation. Hey, no big deal there, right? We see that in almost every hockey highlight, no matter what league.

However, ESPN showed further clips from the same game of Lambert’s aggressive tackling, kicking a ball into an opponent’s face while the player was down, and, in what was the most heinous act, she yanked on a rival’s ponytail, hauling her to the ground. For her actions, Lambert was given a yellow card, and was later suspended indefinitely by her university team.

From ESPN, the clip graduated to YouTube, where it has now become a fixture for all to see. When I last checked Thursday, more than 843,000 people had viewed the two-minute clip. Lambert has become the butt of jokes and the target of many who would like to see her scholarship revoked.

And that’s where I have a problem.

In today’s “any news, anytime, anywhere” world, where video has become a pre-requisite, we are much too quick to render judgment without getting all the facts.

The highlight clip was a little one-sided. For instance, there is no shot of the BYU player talking to Lambert and pointing at the scoreboard – BYU was ahead 1-0 and won by the same score – as the TV heads reported in the same clip. And while the clip clearly shows Lambert yanking the ponytail, I would bet one of my paycheques the BYU player embellished things. This is soccer. Surely we’ve all seen a soccer player get bumped by an opponent, then roll on the ground for 20 yards like they’ve torn a tendon if they think it will draw a penalty.

According to the Lobos’ women’s soccer media guide, Lambert is a third-year player who “uses her size and aggressiveness to stop the opposing attack.” Nowhere does it say, “She does this by kicking ankles, pulling ponytails and delivering an elbow to the ribs.”

She helped her high school team win two league championships. She’s a scholar athlete. She was on her high school principal’s honour roll every year. Think it was really hair pulling that attracted the Lobos to her?

Lambert had one bad game, a playoff game where emotions run higher than a league game, and certainly lost her cool. There is no question she deserved a suspension. Her actions were inexcusable. She has admitted as such on the school’s website.

Does she deserve to have her scholarship revoked? No way. And, thanks to so-called video news, she’s getting a world-wide bad rap. She doesn’t deserve that, either.