Steve Sailer writes: “Australian Rules football is a big time professional sport in one of the world’s big time sports countries, and the game is centered around punting. So, the best athletes focus on punting, and they tend to be more athletic about punting. Instead of mechanically punting the same way every times, Aussie Rules players are used to punting off the run and in a variety of trajectories and spins.”
* I guess you missed the last play of the unbelievable Michigan-Michigan State yesterday which was lost when Michigan punter Blake O’Neil botched the punt with only 10 seconds left in the game: “O’Neill, from Melbourne, Australia, played his first game on the gridiron only last year, converting to a punter after playing Australian Rules football. He was trained by Nathan Chapman of Prokick Australia and spent a successful season at Weber State last year before switching to Michigan as a graduate transfer.” It turns out that a punter needs to not only have a good ability to kick the ball but to also be handle a snap from center. I don’t think Australian football puts a lot of emphasis on use of hands. I found the following comment on Wikipedia: “There are rules on how the ball can be handled: for example, players running with the ball must intermittently bounce or touch it on the ground.” Maybe O’Neil blacked out and thought he was playing Australian rules football.
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — If you are looking for a college football player who has taken the road less traveled, University of Michigan graduate transfer Blake O’Neill is your guy.
O’Neill has done some modeling in Australia. He’s excelled in Australian rules football while surviving a “split liver” to become the Wolverines’ punter by way of Prokick Australia and Weber State. It’s been a long journey from Melbourne, but O’Neill takes it all in stride.
He’s curious by nature and doesn’t shy away from anything new or different — even catwalks.
“I modeled all sorts of things,” said O’Neill, who helped pay his way through school in Australia that way. “It’s a pretty lively industry in Melbourne — fashion modeling, the catwalk, anything. I was a little budding Zoolander.”
Are his new teammates onto this part of his background?
“Of course they are,” said a smiling O’Neill, adding that they occasionally post his modeling shots on his locker.
Has he acquired any nicknames based on “Zoolander,” the 2001 movie spoof on modeling which starred Ben Stiller as Zoolander and Owen Wilson as his modeling rival, Hansel?
“No,” O’Neill said. “I haven’t gotten any yet.”
These days, he’s a model punter.
O’Neill was sixth among Football Championship Subdivision punters last year at Weber State with a 44.1-yard average, and is at 42.8 yards after two games for the Wolverines.
“It was another strong performance by Blake O’Neill,” Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh said after Saturday’s (Sept. 12) win over Oregon State.
O’Neill’s most impressive punt came in the opener at Utah. He delayed on a kick to allow his coverage team to get downfield, and then dropped the ball into the waiting hands of Dymonte Thomas at the three-yard line to pin the Utes up against their own goal line.
“It’s basically just reading the defense,” said O’Neil, “and seeing what they bring. And it’s about trying to let my guys get down there, and Dymonte did. We just treat it like Australian football, where you’re kicking for a mark. And it’s great to see those guys make a play around their own goal line. It’s unreal.”
* Ohio State’s punter is also an Aussie. He had a fine game yesterday, pinning Penn State inside their 5 yd line several times. The announcers kept going on about how many other teams’ punters would have kicked the ball through the end zone.
* True, but what was missed was that that Aussie style punter hit an 80 yard punt earlier in the game due to his unorthodox kicking style. Can’t see this not making the NFL game in a few years. An 80 yard punt is the field position equivalent of nuclear weapons. Can’t put that genie back in the bottle.
* A possibly Sailer-esque connection: the Utah returner who threw that ill-fated forward pass in the end zone was Britain Covey, grandson of Stephen R. Covey, who wrote “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”
* I am old enough to remember the first wave of foreign kickers in the NFL, the soccer-style place kickers who changed the whole approach to kicking field goals and extra points. There was Pete Gogolak with the Kansas City Chiefs, followed by his brother Charley with the Redskins and Jan Stenerud (sp?) with the Raiders and probably a few others I can’t remember. You don’t see too many foreign place kickers in the NFL today. What you have instead is American kickers who learned and mastered the new kicking technique. (I can only recall the Polish place kicker for the Raiders, who kicked for the Miami Hurricanes.)
Then there was Garo Yepremian, the place kicker for the Miami Dolphins from Cyprus. In the 1973 Super Bowl, he had his attempt for a field goal blocked, caught the blocked kick and attempted to pass it, but it was intercepted and returned for a touchdown by Mike Bass to cut the score to 14-7, almost costing the Dolphins the win to cap their historic undefeated season. Yesterday’s miscue by the Australian punter brought the Yepremian incident to mind. What each foreign kicker demonstrated, in his actions immediately following the miscue (blocked field goal, muffed punt snap), was that they were not natural American football players, so it follows that their actions did not resemble the actions of players who had been playing the game since they were kids. Yesterday, O’Neil could have salvaged the disaster by simply holding on to the ball and taking more time off the clock. The ball was at the 50 when it was snapped, which meant O’Neil was standing roughly at his own 35. If he managed to hold on to the ball, instead of attempting that utterly awkward pass, he could have picked up enough yardage to give MS the ball at Michigan’s 40 with maybe 5 seconds left. Since MS was out of timeouts, that would have been only enough time for one play, obviously a field goal attempt. Add seven yards to the 40, and that would mean a 57-yard FG attempt. I wouldn’t have bet money on MS making that kick.
