Just For Kicks
August 24, 2005 10:14 AM | General
August 24, 2005
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| McAfee |
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Pat McAfee was looking for something more when he decided to go down to Florida to participate in a kicking competition before last winter’s college football signing day.
The Plum, Pa., resident had orally committed to Kent State but he felt he had the leg strength and the accuracy to compete at the very highest level.
“At the beginning they were really nice to me … Kent State was really good to me,” McAfee said. “But I thought I could get a bigger school and get more recognition … stuff like that.”
What McAfee didn’t realize was that while he was consistently hitting 50-yard bombs, sitting way up near the top of the stands was West Virginia University assistant coach Tony Gibson. The Mountaineers were desperately looking for a kicker not only for field goals, but one with the leg strength to get the football past the 15 on kickoffs. McAfee showed right away that he was the guy.
“It caught me off guard when West Virginia called me,” McAfee said. “I was looking around the stadium and there were a lot of smaller schools like Southeastern Missouri and schools like that. I didn’t see them.”
But Gibson was watching with great interest, got McAfee’s telephone number, and called him at 8 o’clock the next morning.
“I woke up to a phone call from Coach Gibbie, I took a visit that week, fell in love with the place and I came here,” he said.
In the blink of an eye, Pat McAfee went from being a Mid-American Conference kicker to performing for West Virginia University in the Big East Conference’s nationally televised season opener against Syracuse in the Carrier Dome on Sept. 4.
McAfee is used to making important decisions quickly. When he was a junior in high school the football coach saw him win a punt, pass and kick contest and asked him right on the spot to come out for the team. At that time McAfee was a soccer player.
“I had some friends who were kicking my sophomore year and they asked me and I just said, ‘No, forget it.’ Then the coach asked me my junior year and I agreed,” McAfee said.
He never went to the practices and only showed up about a half-hour before each game. He got his leg warmed up and then kicked. “I just kicked on my own twice a week,” McAfee said. “I had soccer games and stuff.”
The only real kicking instruction McAfee says he got came from Mark Schubert, a former straight-on kicker who lettered at Pitt from 1977-79.
“He studied soccer style kicking and I kicked for him a couple of weeks in high school,” he said. “My dad and I also worked at it.”
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| Pat McAfee says he once made a 74-yard field goal off the ground during practice.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
McAfee says his longest field goal in a high school game was 48 yards but he has hit one from as long as 74 yards off the ground in practice. The first day of fall camp he was comfortably reaching the upper deck on extra point tries. His leg strength has certainly caught the eye of Mountaineer coach Rich Rodriguez.
“The ball gets up in a hurry and it goes,” he said. “You can hear him kick; you don’t have to see it.
“I was watching him kicking them in warm-ups from 55 yards away and he banged it off the post,” Rodriguez added. “He was ticked off that it didn’t go in. And then he kicked another 55-yarder and it hit the post and banged out. He can make it from there. If he hits it right it’s usually going to be long enough.”
Rodriguez cautions that kicking in practice and kicking in games are two completely different animals.
“You don’t know until you get into the game but he’s been thrust into this role and he’s been able to handle everything so far like a veteran,” said Rodriguez. “I think he’ll do it in the games, too.”
McAfee admits his first day kicking live for the team was a forgetful experience.
“It was a rough day,” he said. “I missed like two or three and then I bounced back and went eight for eight. But the first time was bad.”
Paul Woodside, one of the most accurate kickers in NCAA history, says McAfee’s biggest task will be to stay focused. His responsibility is not to make every single kick – just make one kick at a time.
Woodside’s situation at West Virginia was much different than McAfee’s. Woodside, now living in Alexandria, Va., came to WVU as a walk-on without a scholarship or any expectations whatsoever.
“It was easy,” Woodside said. “It was a situation where ignorance was bliss.”
But Woodside showed immediately that he could perform under pressure and eventually went on to become an All-American in 1983. Today, he still holds school records for scoring (323 points), field goals (74) and field goals attempted (93). He made 79.6 percent of his field-goal tries and had one span when he made 15 in a row between the 1981 and 1982 seasons.
There was a misperception that Woodside, a carefree and colorful player who wore a checkered kicking shoe, could easily put the misses behind him and focus on his next kick. Woodside said the reason he was so accurate was because he simply couldn’t handle missing.
“My senior year after we lost to Maryland by a field goal my family came down for the game to see me and afterward I said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t see any of you.’ I put on my running shorts and went for about a 15-mile run,” he said.
Woodside says there is no composite for a successful kicker. They can come in all shapes and sizes. They can also either be hard on themselves when they miss or they can easily move on to the next kick. However, Woodside says the most important thing is for the coaching staff to recognize the type of personality their kicker has.
“If he’s hard on himself then the coaches will back off and if he’s not hard on himself then that’s when the coaches will start to apply pressure,” Woodside said.
So far Rodriguez is really impressed with McAfee’s temperament.
“He was missing from one spot and he stood there until he made it and made it several times,” said Rodriguez. “I think he’s a pretty competitive guy.”
Kicking a football, according to Woodside, is a trained reflex.
“The idea is you do the drills all the time,” he said. “You don’t need to kick a lot of footballs but when you do kick you don’t think while you kick. When you’re running out onto the field you don’t think, I’ve got to keep my head down, I need to do this and I need to do that. That is not the time you do that – all you do is respond.”
McAfee seems to understand that concept.
“Everything is the same kick,” he said. “I look at it that way. Whenever you’re kicking you’re looking at the ground and you don’t even see the people.”
His great leg aside, Rodriguez believes McAfee has the maturity and seasoning rarely seen in 18-year-old freshmen.
“The nice thing about him is most guys want to kick 65-yarders and show off. He knows he has to consistently make the 35 and 40-yarders because he’s going to try a lot more of those than the 60-yarders,” Rodriguez said. “He’s pretty conscientious.”
Senior punter Phil Brady also sees those qualities.
“The one thing I’ve been saying about Pat since I met him is that he doesn’t act like a freshman,” Brady said. “He’s come in here with a good attitude and a good mindset and I think he’s going to be successful just because of that.”
“I’m ready to start kicking in games,” McAfee said. “I’m ready to show people what I really have.”
