Sam Rodgers could hike a football in his sleep. Sometimes, when a make-believe game sneaks into a dream, he actually does.

Standing in the middle of Syracuse’s Iocolano-Petty Football Wing, Rodgers closed his eyes and put his hands at his sides —acting as if he was in his bed. Then he jolted his body forward and threw his hands between his legs, his head toward his waistline and spread his legs apart.

Whoever was on the receiving end had just received a perfect snap.

“I’ve just been here doing this so long,”said Rodgers, the Orange’s starting senior long-snapper. “It’s like you do something enough, over and over, and you really start to live it and think about it all the time.”

Rodgers, a four-year starter, was named a team captain alongside running back Prince-Tyson Gulley, offensive tackle Sean Hickey and linebacker Cameron Lynch toward the end of training camp. Gulley has been a primary piece of the Orange’s backfield for three seasons, Lynch is considered one of the conference’s best linebackers and Hickey and “NFL”have often shared sentences.

As a long-snapper, Rodgers’status isn’t comparable. But he’s played the most collegiate games of the four and —along with his charity work with Uplifting Athletes in honor of two-time SU captain Rob Long—become a steadfast leader in the process.

“It’s weird for a long-snapper to be a captain but also think about the role,”Rodgers said. “My job is to go out every day and be as consistent as possible. And when you’re looking for a captain you need someone with a consistent attitude. I pride myself in that consistency.”

Growing up in State College, Pennsylvania, Rodgers was in the heart of a football town. When he was making his college decision, he considered long-snapping at a Division I school or playing baseball at a Division II or III school. To this day, he calls baseball his best sport but there was something pushing him toward football.

Every time he went for a jog in high school, he ran by Beaver Stadium, the home of the Nittany Lions. That was all he needed, and it wasn’t the only path that Penn State would lead him down.

In 2003, when PSU wide receiver Scott Shirley’s father was diagnosed with kidney cancer, the Nittany Lions turned a weight-lifting competition into a fundraiser. Later that year, Shirley and two of his teammates started Uplifting Athletes, a nonprofit organization that helps college athletics raise money for awareness and research of rare diseases.

Uplifting Athletes now has chapters at 21 schools, with each chapter run by a student-athlete. Rodgers started the Syracuse chapter before his junior year, adopting brain cancer as its focus with Long in mind.

Long, who was both a two-time captain and standout punter with the Orange, missed the Pinstripe Bowl in 2010 —his senior season —for surgery to remove a brain tumor. He graduated before Rodgers got to Syracuse and has since beaten brain cancer. Rodgers leads the SU chapter in the punter’s name.

“Sam and I have grown very close since he started the Uplifting Athletes here,”Long said. “Just to know that he took to my story and is continuing to work to help raise awareness — it’s amazing.”

Along with Uplifting Athletes, Rodgers has also made two mission trips to Haiti to work with children at an orphanage. There, he taught children English, built greenhouses and ran a soccer clinic for more than 100 kids in the village. After it was done, he gave away soccer balls, shoes and cleats.

Still, Rodgers has kept up with his craft on the field.

Since he’s been a starter for the last three years, he’s started to zero in on second-level nuances. When a holder usually catches a snap for a field goal, he has to turn the ball so the kicker doesn’t strike the laces. Rodgers is working on hiking the ball with the perfect speed and rotation so punter Riley Dixon, who moonlights as the team’s holder, doesn’t have to turn the ball.

The two worked tirelessly over the summer, with Dixon looking to build on a breakout season and Rodgers calculating the ideal snap.

“He’s the best long-snapper I’ve ever had,”said Dixon, who is also the vice president of the SU Uplifting Athletes chapter. “I mean really, Sam’s just a guy that doesn’t do much wrong.”

Behind Rodgers’confident smile is a matching self-awareness. He can talk about the nuances of hiking to punters and holders —joking that field goals are high-pressure while punters sometimes feel a mile away —but sees football as a starting point.

“When you’re a college athlete people want to hear what you have to say,”Rodgers said. “I have one more year on the football field and one more year to make a difference in the community. This platform doesn’t last forever.”

Published on August 26, 2014 at 1:32 am

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