North Carolina State University Athletics
PEELER: A Little Love for Long Snappers
7/22/2009 12:00:00 AM | Football
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH, N.C. – They live in relative anonymity, unless of course they screw up. They don’t get a lot of respect from fans or the media, most of whom don’t know their names or the work they put in to be part of the team. During the rigors of preseason camp and spring practice, they catch flak from their own teammates for their lack of total participation.
Their reward? They don’t even appear in NCAA Football 10 or any of the other video games that mimic college football. Usually, they are randomly impersonated by a team’s backup center.
They are long-snappers, and they are under-appreciated.
At NC State, the job of getting the ball from the line of scrimmage to the punter or to the placekick holder is handled by two players, juniors Corey Tedder and Mike Maurer. They both arrived at NC State as walk-ons, looking for a way to continue playing team sports, with only a slight chance of earning a scholarship.
Their job is not easy. For hours every week, they look at the world upside down as they try to throw precision passes backwards through their legs. It’s a specialized field, in which the only glory is making an occasional tackle or riding the coattails of team success.
The only time their name is mentioned on television, radio or in the newspaper is when one of their snaps goes awry, as happened only once last year, against South Florida.
“The worst part about it is that we are running and lifting and putting in all the off-season work, just like everyone else,” Tedder said. “When the season comes around, some of the guys on the team respect what we do, but others just sort of brush us aside.
“We don’t practice as much as the others do. It’s physically impossible to do nothing but snap for an entire practice.”
But they work just as hard as the more recognized players on the team, on and off the field. This summer, they have breakfast together after their 5:30 a.m. strength and conditioning workouts, then they head out for their part-time jobs with different Raleigh landscaping companies.
For Maurer, a history major, it’s a better way to earn money than taking tickets at a movie theater, which is what he did a couple of summers ago.
“It was terrible,” said the native of Virginia Beach, Va. “I had to work every weekend and every holiday, and I didn’t get to see the movies. This works out better.”
But it has nothing to do with his hopes of going to graduate school and becoming a teacher.
For Tedder, the hot days of putting down sod, spreading mulch and planting shrubs and flowers is part of a required internship for his degree in horticultural science. The Rockingham, N.C., native hopes one day to be a construction project manager.
If that happens, his days of killing time trying to identify all the plants around the Dail Practice Fields will be well-spent, despite the grief he catches from all the other special teams players, who generally don’t want to know the difference between the weeds that sprout up every now and then.
“The funny thing is there are two plant-identification courses in my curriculum and I have failed them both,” he said, laughing. “But they are the hardest classes in my major.”
They like to kid each other about the work they do. Maurer tends to spend more time driving from project to project, in the comfort of an air-conditioned pick-up truck. Tedder spends most of his afternoons outside, operating an open-air backhoe or Bobcat.
Maurer thinks that’s only fair, since Tedder was recently awarded a full athletic scholarship, while Mauer is still a walk-on.
“He got the scholarship, I get the air-conditioning,” Maurer said. “It all evens out.”
Both usually leave the lockerrooms at the Murphy Center every morning wearing brogans, blue jeans and T-shirts and well-hydrated for a long day of outdoor work. They endure their share of ridicule, of course, especially from their fellow linemen. But Tedder is armed with the perfect comeback.
“Y’all play in the trenches,” he tells them. “I work in the trenches.”
As you might expect, they began their collegiate careers as rivals, both hoping to beat out the other for a starting job. In the early days, they were looking out for themselves, hoping that the other would mess up just enough to lose the starting job.
“We were kind of like Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus,” Maurer said. “We were friends, but we were secretly against each other the whole time. It’s a little different now. We sit around and talk about how much things have changed.”
Now the long-snapping duties are split in two: Tedder, who throws faster, snaps for punts. Maurer, who is more accurate, snaps for field goals and extra points. (In a new twist, Tedder will be on the receiving end this year as he takes over for departed quarterback Daniel Evans as holder.)
They are both sure the time they have put into the thankless job has been well worth it, even though they have little social life at the moment.
“My life right now is 5 a.m. to 5 p.m.,” Tedder said. “I sit in the room and go to bed.”
“I should have been doing all this other stuff, like taken the GRE already,” Maurer said. “But I like being part of the team. You have to make some sacrifices. I work-out, I work and I watch about an hour of television before I go to bed.
“But television at 6 p.m. really sucks.”
They see their transformed roles as representative of the change in culture in the football program. They are no longer looking out for their own self-interest. They are doing the best they can for the team.
“It is now all about the team,” Maurer said. “You get your stuff done, but don’t be selfish about it. You have to be the best you can at your job.
“My job is to throw the ball between my legs as quickly and accurately as I can. But once it leaves my hands, it is someone else’s responsibility. I am going to do my job well. As long as everyone is doing their job well, then we are all going to benefit.”
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
