The German Three

CHESTNUT HILL, MA – Turns out they breed dudes in sports other than football.

Boston College head coach Steve Addazio revealed Monday that Max Schulze-Geisthovel (not pictured) will handle kickoff duties for the Eagles this fall. Schulze-Geisthovel is no ordinary new addition; he is a German native that currently plays for BC’s men’s soccer team.

“Guy is going to really help us on kickoffs,” said Addazio. “He’s got a strong, live leg. He’s working on his field goals. But I know right now he’s going to help us on kickoff. He puts it high and deep and pretty consistently. He’s as strong a leg as I’ve seen here.  So that’s a good thing. We’ll see how he does on the field goal part. Every once in a while, you get a little something. We don’t have a huge walk-on population, nature of the place. A lot of state schools have things like that pop up a little easier. But this is great. Nice little gift there.”

A 6-foot-2, 190-pound midfielder from Drensteinfurt, Germany, Schulze-Geisthovel appeared in 19 games as a senior last fall and led the club with seven goals.

Mike Knoll handled kickoffs and place-kicking duties for the Eagles last fall, averaging 61 yards on 55 kickoffs while hitting 12-of-14 field goals. As a team, Boston College ranked 69th nationally in kickoff average.

First things first - that's an electric opening line of the article. When I first heard BC had invited a soccer player into the kicking competition, I was skeptical. I mean, you have Mike Knoll, who ranked 2^nd in the ACC in field goal percentage and was very reliable within 35 yards. After having an extremely tumultuous kicking situation the previous three years, why mess with the positive momentum Knoll has going into his senior year? But as a soccer guy, I was also intrigued. Back in high school, without any practice, I could nail 40 yarders no problem. Granted, I wasn’t kicking in front of 50k fans with an all-out blitz coming at me, but how different can it be? In fact, if my four years didn’t coincide exactly with Nate Freese, the best kicker in BC history, I 100% would have gone out for the team. And I hate to nitpick since Freese was so good otherwise, but I guarantee I could have made that 23-yarder in the final minute vs. Duke junior year that he plunked off the upright.

History is on our side here. Flashback to October 7, 2006. Starting kicker Ryan Ohliger is grabbing a couple of Busch Lights at Mary Ann’s, when an overserved fellow Eagle tells him he sucks (which, to be fair, he kind of did). Ohliger punches the guy in the face, the cops come, and he gets suspended from the team. Superfan Steve Aponavicius, who played soccer in high school but had never played organized football before, gets spotted by an assistant coach horsing around with his buddies kicking field goals at Alumni. He walks on as an emergency kicker, and all of a sudden gets thrown into the fire in a primetime game versus Virginia Tech under the lights. He goes 2-2 on field goals, 4-4 on extra points, and handled kickoff duty. He becomes a folk hero, and the rest is history.

From a technical standpoint, there is hardly any difference between kicking a football and a soccer ball. Obviously, with field goals, the key difference is that you are trying to get the ball over the crossbar rather than under it. But the kickoffs in particular are essentially the same thing as a goal kick in soccer. If it was me, I would have Knoll focus on knocking in the short FGs and extra points, and have Max handle anything beyond 35 yards. I love that this Max character is German. Give me a German any day of the week that doesn’t understand the magnitude of what he is doing versus this new generation of snowflake mental midget millennials. You think they give a shit about college football in Germany? Good luck trying to ice the German, Dabo!