According to Allen Trieu, Nebraska just got a committment from a long snapper named Gabriel Miller, continuing the trend of schools using a scholarship on long snappers.
According to Khols Kicking, Miller is the third best long snapper in this class.
http://kohlskicking.com/recruiting/national-rating-system/snappers/2013
Yeah, but he's the number
Actually
Actually according to the site I linked in the OP our guy is #14. I don't remember the site that had him ranked as number 2 so I just used the first one I found.
Practice makes perfect. Unless you're the Buckeyes. Then you have to cheat.
http://www.rubiolongsnapping.
Arizona.....
The Long Snapper State.
All right Lemmings. Bring the heat.
In the Year of the Long
In the Year of the Long Snapper.
"After all was said and done, there was nothing left to do."
Hoke is soooo ahead in all
Hoke is soooo ahead in all facets of recruiting this year.
I still feel like I missed
I still feel like I missed the year where long snappers became critically important
You haven't missed it, you
You haven't missed it, you are living in it. 2012- year of the snapper
so confused
so confused
“When your team is winning, be ready to be tough, because winning can make you soft. On the other hand, when your team is losing, stick by them. Keep believing” - Bo Schembechler
Incredible. 2012 is indeed
Incredible. 2012 is indeed the Year of the Longsnapper.
Should I worry about our 2-deep at long-snapper in the coming years if we don't have more than 1 scholarship allocated to this position?!
We will be two deep.
Glanda (RS Senior)
2012 Walk On
2013 Snappy Sypniewski
L.S.A. '88
Glanda is actually a redshirt
Glanda is actually a redshirt junior for this coming year.
So Courtney Love is
So Courtney Love is recruiting nowadays.
ty
I'm very clear on this being the year of the long snapper.
In fact, that almost begs to be the title of a book or movie. I am curious how it came to be, however. Is it just a case of "monkey see, monkey do", or has something else changed or shifted that phase of the game?
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
New MGoShirt?
Books and movies, certaintly. But how about a new MGoShirt emblazoned with "Year of the Longsnapper" and an old school Gerald Ford-esque lineman snapping the ball. I like it.
The Foxes & The Henhouse
It's interesting (to me) that the most respected sites for rating longsnappers just so happen to be run by the same businesses that train longsnappers. Conflict of interest, anyone?
Methinks there should be an entirely impartial site devoted to longsnapper recruiting rankings, much like ESPN, that can dispassionately rank longnappers based on whether or not they're going to an SEC school.
And this Gabriel Miller is ranked #3 by both websites linked above, while Snappy Snapniewski is # 2 according to rubiolongsnapping.com and #14 according to the other one. (And Rubio's #1 guy, Cole Mazza, who's 'Bama-bound, was not even ranked on the OP's link.) Did Miller attend both organizations' camps equally, while Snappy ("The Snapper") Snapniewski completely ignored Kphl's Kicking?
I submit that ol' Snap is actually the #1 longsnapper in the nation; that's why Hoke offered him before the other schools started scrambling like dominoes. He (Snap) just didn't attend Rubio's camp as often as 'Bama's guy.
As always, follow the longsnapping money.
[Side-note: I just saw that there's a longsnapper named Robert Longwell. Someone needs to snap him up, quick.
Conflict of interest sure but
Conflict of interest sure but I think the Big 4 sites still think that LS's are below them I mean hell they hardly even rank kickers and punters until they commit to a school so the fact that they skipped another specialist position is unsuprising.
Blue is Faster
I bet Nebraska kickers are
I bet Nebraska kickers are especially effective because the Cornhuskers apparently get to use two t's.
Also,
Nebraska players get to kick the ball to themselves in the endzone.
A little known fact is that
A little known fact is that this current rush to grab snappers started at the national coaching meeting earlier this year...when then Arkansas Razorback HC Bobby Petrino was heard making a comment about "how I need to get me some more snapper"...
Plus one!
I see what you did there.
Ha Ha!
Fools! Don't they know you don't need to waste a scholarship on a long snapper!
Mom, MGrad and life long fan living in So Cal
Times are changing.
Eventually recruiting services are gonna have to start ranking these LS at this rate.
If I say a duck can pull a truck, shut up and hook the sucka up!
Mr. President...
Mr. President, we must not allow a long-snapper gap.
If I knew long-snappers would
If I knew long-snappers would start getting scholarship offers at BCS schools 6 years ago, I would have been all over that. If only I had a time machine...
[insert Napoleon Dynamite quotes below]
Special Teams means special times!
Stop The Madness please.
90% of the time I give college and pro coaches credit for knowing way more than I and thus I defer to them, other than a few strategy mistakes in game theory that have been well covered in this blog. But not here. This new trend of full schollys for long snappers is deranged, and I think part of a new coaching fad to keep up with the coaches leading this trend. We all know that copying the successful is rampant in coaching, but this trend is batshit. Just as anyone that drafts a kicker in the NFL in the 1st round is nuts, no matter if it's Jason Hansen or Sebastian Janakowski, because you can literally get a Pro Bowl kicker on the waiver wire, this is even worse. Much worse. Because at least a kicker can get you points. A punter can pin a team way back in the field. But a LS? On their best day, they make what is successful most of the time anyway, uh, successful.
"Everyone gets dumped Gabe. Let me give you some advice: a little coverup on your Adams Apple will make it appear smaller. Which will make you appear less like a transvestite."
You do realize what's going
You do realize what's going to happen, don't you? We're going to win a championship one day because the other teams long snapper blows it and we will all stop and think, my god that could have been us if we would not have invested well. Haha
I disagree
I disagree 100%. Take Michigan for example. With the job Hoke's been doing recruiting wise, we don't have any glaring holes, and most of our remaining spots that we'd like to improve are being addressed (ie Treadwell). The rest of the spots can be used for depth/luxury purposes, and one of those luxuries can be taking a top line LS.
To put it another way, as you said, LSers are succesful most of the time. But when they're not, the results can be catastrophic. If we ever lost a game because of a botched snap, everyone would be freaking out, saying "We're Michigan fergodsakes!! Why can't we get a decent longsnapper?" Well this is how. Find a great one, and give him a scholarship to make sure he comes here. If this is what it takes to prevent any future meltdowns or losses, I'm good with it.
Practice makes perfect. Unless you're the Buckeyes. Then you have to cheat.
Yes, long snappers are
Yes, long snappers are important, but why do we think our scholarship long snapper is never going to make a mistake? Our highly touted scholarship punter dropped the ball against Ohio. Heck, even Charles Woodson occasionally got burned for a TD (rare, but it happened).
This kid will be an upgrade, but will not guarantee 100% successful snaps.
It will
It will not guarantee 100% successful snaps, but it will give us a better shot at it. And the difference between a longsnapper and those other positions is that the long snapper doesn't have to deal with any outside factors. It's just him and the ball. The only variable is basically wind, which I've never seen make that large a difference on a snap before. There's no one rushing at him while he's making the snap. There's no receiver he has to cover. He just has to snap the ball.
And your point about Hagerup just helps prove my point. Look how big a deal that was, it almost cost us the game vs OSU. Imagine if our punter wasn't Hagerup but just a random walk-on whose not as good as Hagerup. Maybe we have more dropped snaps during the season.
Practice makes perfect. Unless you're the Buckeyes. Then you have to cheat.
"Outside Factors"
I believe that long snappers do in fact have blocking assignments, and they do help cover the kick in punting situations - the LS almost immediately gets into a blocking position upon the snap. They certainly do deal with external variables beyond the wind. One of the reasons that teams want the snap to occur in under a second (Sypniewski has executed it in 0.69 seconds, which I believe is in the neighborhood of what they look for in the NFL for speed) stems from the guys trying to foil your field goal, extra point or punt.
There is a lot more that goes into this decision than I think you're recognizing, and as others have said, they are human as well.
"Funny isn't it, how naughty dentists always make that one fatal mistake."
Follow the random tweets of a Michigan alum - http://twitter.com/#!/LorneEC3
You shut your filthy mouth
You shut your filthy mouth about Snappy (Sypniewski)
"There will be blood on the field and it
won't be mine. … Quote it. Let them
know."
Kyle Kalis
For all you guys hating on
For all you guys hating on Long Snappers, it used to be my go to pick up line with the ladies. Just tell them I was the back up LS at Michigan, a high stakes job where I was one botched 4th down snap away from entering the game, and not much else was necessary to make the night a success. And then came the night when I hit on George Morales' girlfriend....
Who cares?
We have must bigger fish to fry. For example, WHY DO WE HAVE NO COMMITMENTS FOR '14 IT'S ALREADY JUNE ALREADY WTF HOKE...
/running out of things to complain about
We could complain about food concessions in the Big House
Current complaints:
Your opinion has no value.
Also
The lack of FRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE PIZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAA
There are Free Curly Fry's
There are Free Curly Fry's though
If you're doing nothing, how do you know when you're finished?
does this mean we are going to see long snapper posts all year?
Do we have to see this every time a LS commits? It's ridiculous...
We are the dead.
BackUp
Because the backup center needs to be putting his time into learning his reads for setting up blocking schemes.
"You're fat and you're mine". Bo to Dan Dierdorf.
Clearly some nerves have been
Clearly some nerves have been touched in coaching circles. Some schools apparently are willing to spend a scholarship on LS this year.
Abort, Retry, Fail?
Nebraska coach Ross Els on the position's importance:
"Have you ever seen a punt team when they can't snap it? It's an absolute disaster. .....(once) we didn't have a guy who could get it back 14 or 15 yards. So we used a guy who could get it about 12. Had to change our entire punt team, our entire punt protection, and every fourth down we just held our breath. You can't go through that. You have to have a guy. A lot of people might say, that's a wasted scholarship. Try snapping a few over the punter's head and it just looks ridiculous. That's not how you win Big Ten championships. That's a huge, huge position, and that's why we're recruiting it."
Like most schools Nebraska tries to fill the spot with a walk-on, such as their current 4 year starter, but didn't feel like a good replacement was on the roster. Nebraska has a big recruiting class this year--25 to 28---and could afford to offer a scholarship.
"And right now we have a need in our program to come in and fill that spot, just like any time if we were to have a senior in that position and not a proven backup, we'd probably bring in a recruit at that position," Els said.
Yeah, but he's the number THREE long snapper, and we got number TWO.
Suck it, Nebraska.
Twitter - Recruiting Update: May 20