boomboomsroom

People that really get into sports spend a lot of time talking to people who really get into sports.  Regardless of your favorite sport or sports, you often offer or are offered the following line, “Did you see the(pick one) play, kick, punt, bunt, goal, throw, hit, catch, run, shot, swing, jump, roll, fake, block, or tackle that so and so made in yesterday’s(pick one) game, match, set, event, or meet?”  It’s what sports fans do.  They live for the next greatest something and they talk about it.  Players one up players, and conversational high points one up conversational high points.

Athletes train smarter and harder than ever before.  Most focus on one sport early and attempt to master it.  Parents, coaches, trainers, nutritionists, and camps all focus on making the next generation better than the past.  In many areas this has taken good to great and great to elite.

One such area is place kicking a football.  Field goals have evolved from a hope to an almost certainty inside of forty yards over the last quarter century.  Similarly, field goal accuracy from fifty to sixty yards has improved to the point of no one being surprised when a game winner is struck from these distances.  The decade by decade percent converted improvement is geometric at all levels of competition.  This is but one example of many areas of improved expertise in athletic endeavors over time.

But one area has improved to the point of so near to perfection that we don’t even talk about it anymore.  Perhaps we don’t even see it when we look at it.  What is it?  Long snapping the football is what it is.  Think back through this year to date.  The NCAA FBS schedule is eight games in.  The NFL is seven games in.   Have you seen a bad snap on a field goal or a punt this year at either level?  Has there even been one?  Not the rain, nor the wind, nor the pressure has had even a marginal effect apparently.  This writer hasn’t seen one in person, live on tv, or on any high(low)lights.

A .43 second Google search for “long snapping” turns up thousands of potential matches.  You can watch “how to videos”(even the setup and approach prior to the snap), sign up for any number of snapping camps run by seasoned pros, or even see who has been offered a scholarship to a FBS school to snap.  Smart college coaching staffs value special teams.  Those that value special teams certainly recruit and sign a great snapper as one of their allowed 85 scholarships.

Great college snappers vie for 32 pro jobs.  Every NFL team has one excellent snapper.  That snapper makes the league minimum at a minimum.  How much is that? Well, for 2018 its $465,000 for a rookie and the scale increases gradually by years of employment.  If you are in your tenth year the min is a smooth $1,000,000.  The best of all make even more.

Long snapping might be the specialty of special teams play.  Every punt has a snap and a punt.  Every place kick has a snap, a hold, and a kick.  We watch the kicks.  We don’t even see the snaps anymore.

It’s great work if you can get it.  But shy of perfection you need not apply.