Pope blesses LU’s special teams

By Chris Lang
Sports writer
Published: September 23, 2008

Chad Wilt racked his brain Monday evening, trying to remember Dan Pope’s last bad snap.

“It was Gardner-Webb, 2006,” Liberty’s special teams coach said, before correcting himself. “No, actually, we won the game that he had the bad snap.”

That narrowed it down to either the home game against Western Carolina or the matchup with Charleston Southern. Neither Wilt nor Pope can remember which one.

That’s a telling statement of just how strong Pope has been as the Flames’ long snapper since arriving on campus in 2005. In 2007, Pope became Liberty’s first All-American since 2000. He’s asked to do one thing and do it well, and he does it all under a veil of anonymity.

That’s a good thing as far as he’s concerned.

“If someone knew exactly who I was, I guess that would mean I had messed up at some point,” Pope said. “Most long snappers get known because they screw up, not because they’re doing what they’re supposed to do.”

Wilt certainly appreciates Pope. He’s been the special teams coach at Liberty since his arrival in 2006. Not once has he had to worry about how well the long snapper would perform.

“You need a guy that’s consistent and dependable,” Wilt said. “Those certainly aren’t glamorous words to use, but they are highly critical. You know every time what you’re going to get as far as snap placements and snap times, and so far, that’s what Dan Pope has been able to give us.”

Pope helps Liberty in other ways, too. He’s athletic enough to get downfield and block on a punt return. He’s big enough to handle most defensive linemen after snapping on field goals. But on Liberty’s roster, not many players are as specialized as he is.

Wilt explains just how proficient Pope is at that one job. His times, Wilt says, are NFL times. And we’re not talking how fast he can run the 40-yard dash.

On punts, Pope’s snap time is in the “low 70s”, Wilt said. It generally takes him about .71 seconds for him to hit the punter’s hands with the football. NFL long snappers get the job done microscopically faster, in about .68 or .69 seconds. Most college snappers deliver the ball in closer to .80 seconds.

What does a tenth of a second mean to a punter, especially a freshman like Liberty’s Mike Larsson?

“If it’s a little high, or a little low, it gives me a little extra time to set it up just how I like it,” Larsson said.

(As an aside, Liberty last had a punt blocked in 2006 in Game 3 at Towson, and Wilt said the center-to-punter delivery had nothing to do with the block.)

Pope, who transferred to Liberty from Florida Atlantic after the 2004 season, never really planned on making a career out of being a long snapper. He was a quarterback at John Carroll High School in Palm City, Fla., who kind of stumbled upon his skill while messing around with a friend one day.

“I was with my friend, who was our center,” Pope said. “One day before practice, or after practice, I can’t remember, we were long snapping. I was on the JV team, and the varsity coach saw me doing it. The next day, they pulled me up to varsity, and I was long snapping.”

Which brings us to Pope’s most embarrassing moment as a long snapper. During his junior year at John Carroll, he tried to avoid a defender on third down and was hit hard while trying to get out of bounds. He was short of the first down, which means he had to go right back out and snap.

Pope said he was a bit woozy, and he put a little extra muscle into the snap. From his own 20, Pope snapped the ball so hard that it sailed over the punter’s head, through the uprights and out of the end zone.

“But we won the game,” Pope said with a laugh. “I guess I can say I accounted for all (the points), because I threw two touchdown passes and they had two points because I gave them the safety.”

At 6-foot-3 and 200 pounds, Pope will need to put on some bulk if he wants to continue his career in the NFL.

He said he’s always had trouble adding weight, (“I must have a fast metabolism), but he hopes to at least get a chance at making it to an NFL training camp.

The work’s good if you can get it. NFL long snappers are often just as specialized as ones in college are, so a good, steady paycheck awaits the best, and without all the pounding most NFL players take.

Pope’s realistic, though, and he isn’t counting on the NFL to be there. He’s a business management major and aviation minor who has logged about 125 flight hours, mostly in Cessna single-engine plans. He said he isn’t sure he wants to get his commercial pilot license, but he’d at least like to try to work on the business side at an aviation company.

Until then, he’ll slip back into the shadows. It’s where Pope does his best work, after all.