The Long Snapper Page 5

  And as far as the snap itself: You don’t want to pick up the ball and throw it. Just pull it straight back between your legs—firing back with elbows inside your knees—and then release. Aim by extending your hands toward the target, thumbs turning out from the body as you extend and release.

  “You’re going to be a little erratic at first,” Lewis told Brian. “It’s just one of those things that you have to practice, practice, practice.”

  Brian was already plenty busy working with the offense during LSU practices. And teammate Chris Carrier, a defensive back, was firmly entrenched as the LSU long snapper. From time to time, though, Brian worked on snapping off to the side while the first-team punt unit went through its practice repetitions. With Lewis encouraging him, Brian became fairly proficient, and he was eventually asked to snap during a team scrimmage.

  When the time finally came for him to deliver a football to a real punter at full speed and with bodies crashing all around him, Brian went through all the same mechanics that had come to feel pretty routine and comfortable. Or at least he thought he did. Alas, once released from his hands, the football took two ugly hops and skidded along the ground before the punter could even take a stab at it. The experiment was over. Brian continued to dabble with snapping when he had nothing better to do. But he never got another chance to snap with the LSU punt team. Not even in practice.

  Brian still had a slew of significant moments ahead of him, however. The most memorable personal highlight of his college career came during his final season, in a nationally televised showdown against conference rival Georgia. LSU went into the game undefeated (four wins and a tie) and ranked seventh in the country. Georgia was ranked sixteenth and playing in front of a frenzied home crowd of 82,122. Trailing 23–19 late in the fourth quarter, LSU marched the ball down the field. On second-and-goal at the Georgia five-yard line, the Tigers went to a play called “Cougar,” which involved a fake handoff and two tight ends trying to further confuse the defense by crossing. As the play was designed, quarterback Tommy Hodson’s first two choices were passing to either tailback Sammy Martin in the right flat or tight end Willie Williams in the right side of the end zone. But neither option opened up. Hodson looked for the third choice in his progression…and there he was. After crossing from right to left, Brian was open about midway into the end zone. Hodson threw him the ball and Brian made a leaping catch. Touchdown! With 3:36 left on the clock, LSU had the winning points and Brian had the signature play of his college years.

  A week later, his good fortune turned to bad. Playing against Kentucky in Tiger Stadium, Brian was engaged in a block when one of his teammates unintentionally rammed into him. Brian went down with a broken left leg, and LSU announced that it would cost him the remainder of the season. It did not. Determined not to let a fractured fibula define the end of his LSU football journey, Brian was back in action five weeks later against Tulane. He also played in LSU’s 30–13 Gator Bowl victory over South Carolina—capping off both his college career and a tremendous four-year run for the Tigers. From 1984 through 1987, their cumulative record was 36–9-3. After the fourth game of the 1984 season, they never again entered a game without being ranked among the top twenty teams in the nation. And during each of those years they spent at least a couple of weeks in the top ten—climbing as high as number four in 1987.

  Although Brian was never able to match his dad’s LSU football legacy by winning a national championship, the father-son symmetry took on two other forms. The first came when Brian’s younger brother, Todd, signed with LSU to play football, just as Gus Kinchen’s younger brother, Gary, had done more than a quarter of a century earlier. When Brian was a fifth-year senior and Todd was a redshirt freshman, they made local sports history. Never before had pairs of brothers from two generations of a Baton Rouge family played for the Tigers. Todd went on to a stellar college career as a wide receiver and kick returner, twice being named All-Southeastern Conference, and then played in the NFL for seven years. Writing about the four football-playing Kinchens in his book Game of My Life: LSU—and noting that Brian and Todd’s mom was a cheerleader and twice the Darling of LSU—author Marty Mulé refers to the Kinchens as the First Family of LSU football. And that is without any mention of the second major parallel between the LSU experiences of father Gus and son Brian. Mulé says nothing of the fact that Brian also ended up with a head-turning cheerleader—and that the girl he would later marry was even part of the first LSU cheerleading squad to win a national championship of its own.

  They met soon after Brian broke his leg. He was on crutches, slowly working his way from Broussard Hall, the football dorm, over to the stadium, when he crossed paths with a shapely brunette who happened to be waiting for a friend outside a classroom building.

  “Hey, how’s your leg?” she blurted out.

  “Oh, it’s okay,” Brian said. “I’m going for treatment.”

  “Hope you feel better.”

  “Thanks.”

  And that was it. Brian was stunned that such a beautiful girl had initiated conversation with him. He was much more accustomed to the best-looking girls playing what he called “the hard-to-get card” and staying to themselves unless first showered with attention. Maybe part of it was the fact that he was not the most confident of guys around the girls. Working his way down the hill toward Tiger Stadium, Brian knew exactly what he had to do. He had to find Tommy Hodson. The star quarterback was much more involved in the LSU social scene than he was. Maybe Tommy could help him figure out who that girl was…and if he might even be able to get a date with her.

  Meanwhile, Lori Commagere could not believe she had finally spoken to Brian, even though it was only a brief exchange and he still had no clue who she was. She thought back to a time four years earlier—when she was just a high school freshman and Brian was a freshman at LSU—when she first noticed him. Actually, it was only a small head shot in the LSU football program that caught her attention. Lori was at an LSU game with friends from her hometown of Lafayette, Louisiana, and she immediately declared Brian both the cutest guy on the team and her future boyfriend. “I’ll just meet him when I get to LSU,” she said. One of the other girls countered with a harsh reality check: “If you ever go to LSU, he won’t even be there anymore.” But then someone explained to Lori that Brian was not actually playing that season because he was being redshirted. Therefore, they could conceivably be on the same campus for a year. “See,” Lori said to her friends. It never even dawned on her that Brian might already have a girlfriend. Or that he might by the time she arrived on the scene. Or that he might not be the least bit interested in some random girl who was then just a ninth grader.

  Crutching his way into the locker room four years after Lori had gone to that game, Brian went straight to Tommy Hodson and explained what had just happened. Tommy had never seen his friend so excited about a girl.

  “Don’t worry,” Tommy said. “We’ll find out who she is. What did she look like?”

  “Pretty short,” Brian said. “Black hair. Great body. Really fit and athletic looking. Big smile. The whole package.”

  Tommy laughed. “I love the description,” he said. “Doesn’t exactly help us narrow it down, though.”

  The conundrum continued until the next weekend, when LSU played Ole Miss in Jackson, Mississippi. Despite being out of action with his bad leg, Brian made the trip with the team. Ranked fifth in the country, LSU easily won the game, 42–13, but it was not until time had expired that Brian unexpectedly scored his most meaningful victory of the day. It came right after the post-game prayer—players and cheerleaders from both teams huddled in the middle of the field—when Brian looked up and locked eyes with his mystery girl. She was a cheerleader!

  “Hey,” Lori said.

  “Hey,” Brian said.

  He was still too timid to start an actual conversation. He once again walked off without even getting her name. But this time Brian at least knew how to find out who she was and track her down if
ever he could gather the courage to ask her out. He soon went to one of his Sigma Chi fraternity brothers, Greg Sample, who was also a cheerleader, and learned Lori’s name. It was a good start, but Brian also wanted a reconnaissance report. He had dated the same girl for six years, three in high school and three in college, and even after that relationship ended, he had typically gone out only with girls he already knew pretty well. As a result, he had almost no experience with the uncertainty of asking out someone new, and the fear of being rejected was simply too much for him. Fortunately for Brian, Greg was willing to play the junior-high-like role of go-between and soon delivered the news Brian wanted to hear. Yes, all he needed to do was ask, and Lori would be happy to go on a date.

  Brian finally called. They went to dinner and a movie—Nuts with Barbra Streisand—and he could not believe how easily the conversation flowed. Lori was fun and funny. She was confident yet down-to-earth. Brian felt like he was out with an old friend. Lori was truly amazed that her frivolous ninth-grade fantasy might actually be coming to fruition.

  Their lives would never again be the same.

  By the spring of his fifth year at LSU—with a new relationship blooming and classes finally winding down—only one major item remained on Brian’s college to-do list: get picked in the NFL draft. The idea of playing football at the highest level—the challenge of competing against the biggest, strongest, fastest players in the world—was by itself enough of a draw for him. But Brian also saw the money and the status that went with playing in the NFL, and he was equally drawn to the possibility that being a professional football player would somehow make him feel whole as a man. Brian was not yet using the word validation when thinking and talking about what it would mean to become a big-time player in the NFL, but the general concept was nonetheless intertwined with his NFL dreams and aspirations.

  The afternoon of Sunday, April 24, 1988, Brian hunkered down in front of a television at his grandparents’ Baton Rouge home and watched early coverage of the draft from the Marriott Marquis in New York. Not that he was expecting to see his name called during the live broadcast of the earliest selections. ESPN’s coverage would be long done by the time he was hoping to be picked, in the fourth or fifth round. But this was a good way to get in the mood and build up to the moment he’d been working toward for years. Then he would sit by a telephone and wait for someone to call from one of the twenty-eight teams then in the NFL. There was only one problem: nobody called. Five rounds of picks were made that day. Seven tight ends were selected. But the knocks on Brian—that he might be too small and too slow to thrive at tight end in the NFL—were clearly hurting him more than he had anticipated. He would have to wait for the second day of the draft.

  After a restless night, Brian began the next morning with a workout at LSU. When he returned to his grandparents’ house, he was surprised to find a scout from the Dallas Cowboys waiting for him. The scout wanted him to know that if he was not selected in the remaining seven rounds of the draft, the Cowboys would be interested in signing him as a free agent. Perhaps Brian should have been pleased that someone wanted him. But his reaction—kept to himself as best he could—was the complete opposite. Does this guy actually think I’m not going to be drafted? I’m good enough that the Cowboys want me as a free agent but not good enough for them to use a draft pick on me? Brian was even more upset than he had been the night before.

  The scout left, and hours passed without any activity. When the phone finally rang, it was Kurt Schottenheimer, a former LSU assistant coach then with the Cleveland Browns. Brian was happy to hear from someone he knew. The good news was that the Browns were thinking about picking him. The bad news was that the draft was already in the ninth round. Brian could hardly believe it. “Sit tight,” Schottenheimer told him. “Don’t go anywhere.” But the Browns never called again. Brian went from frustrated to fuming. After a while, he stormed out of the house and went to play golf—anything to get his mind off the minute-by-minute deterioration of his hopes and dreams.

  Brian had just hit an approach shot to the fifth green when he saw his brother Cal running across an adjacent fairway, calling out to him: “You were drafted. Miami Dolphins!” Brian’s favorite team of all time—how could it be any better than that?

  “Awesome,” Brian said. “What round?”

  “Twelfth.”

  So much for the joy of the moment.

  “Oh, come on,” Brian said. “You’re kidding me.”

  Cal was not kidding.

  “Mr. Irrelevant” is the title playfully awarded each year to the last player taken in the NFL draft. As the 320th selection, Brian was only thirteen picks from being tagged with that moniker. With his ego bruised, Brian would begin training camp with the Dolphins as a long shot to make it in the NFL. Clearly, this was not the ideal point of entry for someone who sought his affirmation in the unforgiving, win-or-lose world of professional sports.

  Five

  His initial road trip as a professional athlete would have been quite memorable even without playing any football, because the Dolphins went to London for their first pre-season game of 1988. Brian had never been to Europe. Now he and his jet-lagged teammates were visiting Windsor Castle and checking out Big Ben. But the Dolphins did not cross the Atlantic Ocean only to see the attractions; with the NFL trying to expand its international appeal, they also were an attraction. They played the San Francisco 49ers the evening of Sunday, July 31, at Wembley Stadium. Both teams offered extraordinary headliners. Don Shula of the Dolphins and Bill Walsh of the 49ers were among the most-acclaimed coaches in football history. And they were accompanied by five players who would later join them in the Pro Football Hall of Fame: Dan Marino of the Dolphins; Joe Montana, Steve Young, Jerry Rice, and Ronnie Lott of the 49ers. Of course, an early pre-season game was never actually about the star players. They would make only cameo appearances. This was really a chance for untested rookies and borderline veterans to show why they deserved to be kept for the regular season.

  Brian was assigned to play on the kick-coverage unit. And he was slated for limited time at tight end in the fourth quarter once veteran starter Bruce Hardy and fellow rookie Ferrell Edmunds were done for the night. Brian ended up with a solid showing in both roles, making a few good hits while covering kicks, and hauling in a fifteen-yard reception on a critical third-down play that set up the winning touchdown late in the fourth quarter. Not a bad start, he told himself. Got to keep doing stuff like that if I’m gonna make this team.

  But the most significant development for Brian in the Dolphins’ come-from-behind victory (27–21) had nothing to do with his own performance. It happened on the opening kickoff. Charging downfield on the Miami coverage team, reserve linebacker Scott Nicolas was hammered on a hit he never saw coming. The six-year NFL veteran went down with considerable damage to his right knee and would never again play. That left a critical void: Nicolas had also been the snapper on the Miami punt team. (Starting center Jeff Dellenbach snapped for field goals and extra points, but Shula preferred to use a more athletic player for punt snaps, someone who could not only snap and block but also sprint downfield and make a tackle.) Bruce Hardy took on the job for the game in London. But that was only a short-term fix: Hardy was an eleventh-year veteran whose career was winding down. Once the Dolphins were back on American soil, Shula would want to find a younger guy who could snap for punts. As it turned out, he already had one in the Miami training camp.

  In the silence of his mind, Brian had never stopped hearing that old football adage to which he had been introduced at LSU: The more things you can do, the better chance you have of sticking around. With those words as motivation, he had decided to do some snapping in practices with the Dolphins. At the time, each NFL team could keep only forty-five men on its roster, so few teams could afford the luxury of dedicating a slot to someone who was strictly a snapper. The evolution of the snapper to a full-time specialty job would not come until years later with the expansion of rosters—eventual
ly, in 1994, to the current limit of fifty-three men. For now, though, Brian was just thinking that any little extra might help his chances of survival. So what if he had never even snapped in a game? He knew that Shula liked taking a good athlete and finding something new for him to do. Versatility had long been a catchword in the Miami locker room.

  The week after playing in London, the Dolphins had their second pre-season game, in Chicago against the Bears. At the team hotel the morning of the game, special-teams coach Mike Westhoff told Brian that he would be the punt snapper that night. Brian quickly concluded: If I can do this well, I’m going to make the team. The thought both excited him and made him nervous. But he snapped the ball well—four straight strikes to punter Reggie Roby—in the Dolphins’ 20–17 loss to the Bears.

  Brian kept snapping throughout training camp and in all the pre-season games. He did not possess all the tools that Shula generally looked for in a tight end, most notably the ideal size and speed, but the veteran coach was still impressed. He saw Brian as a very intelligent guy who worked hard, always tried to do the right things, and seldom made mistakes. Of course, fighting against the odds of being a last-round pick, Brian still needed to show that he could contribute something special. “Snapping was probably the biggest factor,” Shula would later remember. “Brian was very dependable. We had a lot of confidence in him.”

  When the time came for final roster cuts, nobody on the coaching staff said a word to Brian, which he took to mean that he should keep showing up for work. He was right. The depth chart showed him as first-team punt snapper and third-string tight end. Brian was officially a member of the Miami Dolphins—a full-fledged player in the National Football League. “Not a lot of people can say that their boyhood dreams have come true in life,” he told an Associated Press writer. “Right now, mine has.”