US universities are filling up with former AFL players hoping to torpedo, banana kick and drop punt their way into a career in American football.
| On a cloudy, gusty morning last month, three dozen students, teachers, construction workers, electricians and bartenders wore helmets and shoulder pads and boomed torpedoes, banana kicks and drop punts.
Both punters in last season’s national championship game between the University of Georgia and Texas Christian University were Aussies. This season, 12 of the 14 teams in the Southeastern Conference, the most formidable college football league, carry Australian punters, according to the league office. Of the 14 teams in the Big Ten Conference, eight list Australian punters on their rosters, and a ninth lists a punter from New Zealand.
“Our guys really believe in the way they’ve trained punters and the transparency through the process,” said Neal Brown, the football coach at West Virginia University. “They send you film, you get to know the punters, and, what we’ve really enjoyed is, we can kind of tell them, this is the scheme we run, this is what we’re looking for.”
“I know that style of punter has forced changes in how returners are coached, given the nature of the ball off the foot is different,” Troy Dannen, the chair of the NCAA football competition committee and the athletic director at Tulane University, which has its first Aussie punter this season, wrote in an email.
Even with months of preparation, though, the punters face cultural, social and athletic pressure upon arriving in the United States.
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