‘It’s an instinct’: how Aussie punters took over US college football
In the national championship game between TCU and Georgia on Monday, two punters from Australia will hit the field as representatives of one of college football's most active pipelines. One Saturday afternoon in Iowa, the chant, a favourite of American sports fans, began to erupt from the crowd during a college football game.
This chant frequently honours NFL superstars who play the more enviable positions on the field. But on this particular day, neither a quarterback nor a wide receiver was the object of such adoration.
He made punts. an Australian bettor
On September 3, Iowa defeated South Dakota State 7-3. Tory Taylor may have been the game-changer. The Melbourne native pounded the ball 10 times for a career-high 479 yards. He made seven kicks that connected within the opposing team's 20-yard line. Of the seven, five were within the Jackrabbits' 10 to score.
The head coach of South Dakota State, John Stigelmeier, remarked, "That is a strong weapon." I believed he kicked the ball once out of bounds and rolled it down to the 2-yard line. I once said, "This kid is a freak," at one point.
The prevalence and domination of Australian punters in American college football is symbolised by that "freak."
Inglewood, California's SoFi Stadium will host the College Football Playoff title game on Monday night, featuring two of them going up against one another. Jordy Sandy from nearby Traralgon will face Georgia's Brett Thorson, a fellow Melbourne native. Jesse Mirco from Fremantle, who attended Ohio State, participated in the semifinals.
The huge contribution that Australian gamblers are making is evident from a cursory look at NCAA statistics and individual accomplishments.
In the NCAA's Football Bowl Subdivision, the top division of college football, four of the top 10 punters in terms of attempts and total yards are Australian. With Mirco coming in at number ten with 45.59 yards per punt, two teams were among the top 10.
Another Melbourne native, Cincinnati's Mason Fletcher, was a third-team All-American after being sixth in punting average on the Associated Press' second All-America squad. Taylor was second in yardage (3,339) and fourth in punts (74) on that list (46.29). Fletcher was also named the American Athletic Conference's special teams player of the year. His father played Australian rules football in the Australian Football League for 23 seasons.
Adam Korsak of Rutgers, meanwhile, won the highest accolade in collegiate punting. Korsak won the Ray Guy Award after finishing second in attempts (75) and fourth in yards (3,207). Guy is the only punting specialist inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He played 14 seasons in the NFL.
As Americans would grow up throwing a baseball or an American football with their friends or their dad, he continued, "we grew up punting an Australian football back and forth with our buddies or our dad in the front yard." The ability to punt in American football is incredibly transferable because it is both an instinct and a skill that we learn.
However, Australians who are learning to punt must adjust to new requirements, restrictions, and a ball that is lighter and slightly longer with pointy ends.When it comes to rapid punts, roll punts, and short-range punts, it's completely different, according to Mirco, who just completed his second season with the Buckeyes. "While I'm here, I continue to study every day."The toughest adjustment, according to Nathan Chapman, co-founder of Prokick Australia, is "learning how to kick high." Prokick Australia trains Australian rules players to serve as punters and place-kickers for American colleges.
After spending eight years as an AFL player, Chapman made an unsuccessful attempt to break into the NFL and said, "There are some major, massive improvements that need to be addressed." "We teach spiral kicks for 80% of the time." In Australia, we tend to hit spirals because we want them to go farther rather than higher and shorter. They are unaware of how difficult it is until they begin learning it with a different-shaped ball.
"There's a misconception that Australians merely do Aussie kicks when they arrive and do them quickly." None of that applies.The boys are skilled at spiralling, which is how we have to get there. Because of our ability to spiral and do the Aussie kicks, we actually recruit new players 95% of the time.
At Prokick Australia, Mirco, Sandy, Thorson, Taylor, Fletcher, and Korsak all received training. That institution, which has established a pipeline to many American universities, produced six of the top 10 punters in the FBS by yardage, including punters from New Zealand and Ireland. Seven graduates have received the Guy Award since the establishment of Prokick Australia in 2007, and 87 have been named All-Americans. There are four NFL players right now.
With a lucky spark, the desire to play American football can start to burn. In 2019, Mirco watched one of his compatriots, Max Duffy, punt for Kentucky while on vacation in America.I've been kicking in Australia ever since I was four years old.
It was something I enjoyed doing and had excelled at for my whole life "said 25-year-old Mirco. "This was a chance for me to go back into sports, which I wanted to accomplish."
Sandy, 29, and a coworker decided to switch occupations when they were both employed in Traralgon's paper factory.It employs quite a few people in his hometown, he said. "As a result, we would both work 12-hour hours, including night and Sunday shifts. We both probably came to the conclusion that there was more out there for us.
Both men would carpool to Prokick Australia in Melbourne after their shifts ended at 6 a.m., "which would be a four-hour round journey three times a week," Sandy recalled. Tom Hutton, one of his coworkers, was given a scholarship.at Oklahoma State, where he played this season as the oldest college player at 32.But acclimating to American college football involves more than just picking up new kicking methods and regulations.
When you first arrive here, Mirco said, "You don't have any family, and you don't really have any friends." "Your coworkers and staff can obviously assist with that, but you have to start coming into your own and mature." Not just football, either.
The situation was made worse by Australia's draconian COVID-19 rules, which prohibited overseas travel. Due to these limitations in 2020, the family of Old Dominion punter Ethan Duane, who had been away from his own family for almost two years, welcomed him into their house.
Sandy was additionally compelled by restrictions to stay on school when his Australian father developed pancreatitis.
His organs failed, and Sandy remarked, "I was kind of stuck during COVID." Being apart from family, you know, was extremely difficult.However, the responsibilities of college life, particularly for athletes, leave little time for personal depression.I wasn't necessarily homesick, but it was a tremendous adjustment, said Korsak. But I thought I was able to keep myself occupied and handle things on a day-to-day basis to the point where I didn't feel homesick.
College gradually turns into a second home.
I was unsure of what to anticipate because I was raised in a little country town in Australia, around two hours east of Melbourne, said Sandy. But after travelling through a good deal of America, Texas struck me as the state with the most similarities to Australia in terms of people and culture. I fell in love with the location and intend to stay forever.
Sandy even founded a neighbourhood charity. Sandy gives $20 to the Hope Center for Autism in Fort Worth, Texas, for each punt he places within an opponent's 20-yard line. Other contributors have equaled or given more than that sum.
He answered, "I have an autistic cousin back home." "I've witnessed some of the difficulties her family has had to overcome."
In order to generate money for Count The Kicks, an organisation that fights stillbirths, Taylor sells T-shirts in Iowa with the slogans "Punting is Winning" and "Oi! It's Taylor Time!" Brian Ferentz, the offensive coordinator, and his wife Nikki lost their newborn daughter in 2017.
More Australians are coming, in addition to Taylor, Mirco, Thorson, and Fletcher still having eligibility. According to Chapman, ProKick Australia is now training roughly 60 of their countrymen to join them.
Sandy stated, "Hopefully we can keep it going." "Having some Australian players to play against or watch here in the States is pretty exciting." It has been truly great.
