A day after Michigan punter Blake O'Neill became the infamous Michigan Punter, he called Australia, reaching his former coach and mentor.
"He said to me: 'I'm glad that was me. Someone else may not have been as well equipped to deal with it,'" said Nathan Chapman, owner of Prokick Australia.
O'Neill is no scared rookie. He's 22 and working on his master's. He is one of the nation's most-effective punters, despite his last-second gaffe against Michigan State. The coaches who got him to Michigan know he's confident enough to brave this. O'Neill also has a fraternity of fellow Aussie college punters he can lean on for support.
More than a dozen FBS punters got their start just like O'Neill at Prokick Australia, an organization that trains Aussie footballers to punt American footballs and helps find them scholarships in the college game.
Six Associated Press top 25 teams -- Ohio State, Utah, LSU, Michigan, Memphis and Ole Miss -- are counting on Aussies to handle its punting duties this season. The last two Ray Guy Award winners, Memphis' Tom Hornsey and Utah's Tom Hackett, trained at Prokick. So did Pittsburgh Steelers punter Jordan Berry.
"They stick together," Chapman said. "At the end of the day they'll always support each other."
Chapman didn't get to watch the fateful end of Michigan's loss to Michigan State. He and his coaches were speeding 100 km/h down a highway after a Sunday morning training session, listening to a radio stream of the game from a cell phone. The car went quiet when it was over.
"It's funny that a game over there could get all the way back to Australia," O'Neill told reporters this week, "but it did."
And when word of some angry fans' death threats reached O'Neill's coaches back home, Prokick coach John Smith sent out a message on Twitter: "PROKICK AUSTRALIANS, ASSEMBLE!"
It didn't take long for O'Neill's mates to step forward and back their guy. Even the rival Buckeye offered encouragement.
I & all the boys from @ProkickAus are here for you @blakewoneill , people need to pull there head in & think before they say! #itsonlyagame
— Cameron Johnston (@Cam_Johnston) October 18, 2015Find it strange when I'm reading death threats written to my good mate @blakewoneill, the game is full of mistakes...head up mate.
— Tom Hackett (@TomHackett33) October 18, 2015Don't know if it could have been said any better. @blakewoneill @ProkickAus We got u mate, live to fight another day https://t.co/yGfoTfmLlf
— Jamie Keehn (@JKeehn38) October 18, 2015Chapman said O'Neill told him he'd felt as calm as ever going into his final punt against the Spartans. Nerves weren't the issue. He just took his eye off the ball. O'Neill was more annoyed than depressed, really, because it was just that simple.
"That's the good thing," Chapman said. "The guy doesn't sit there with his head in his hands. He just got back to it the next day."
Weber State coach Jay Hill watched his former punter's fateful moment and knew exactly why it happened. The natural instincts O'Neill possessed from his days of playing Australian rules football kicked in.
"He was just trying to get that sucker out of there," Hill said. "If you watch Australian rules football, they're kicking in a crowd all the time and just trying to advance it. That's what they do."
Hill was one of the first believers in Prokick. He was the one who signed Hackett while coaching special teams at Utah. Hill has taken several more Prokick students since, and even took a trip to Australia one spring to see the training.
Chapman maximizes their get-offs, distance, hang times, all the required traits. He helps them refine a variety of kicks. What he can't prepare them for is the pressure of the college game.
"They've never played in pads ... They've never had to do it with 10 guys rushing down in their face with full pads on looking to knock the crap out of you," Hill said. "That's really it. Can you do it when someone's trying to pressure you?"
And when something goes wrong, what instincts can they rely upon?
"When you think about it, they're well-removed from the actual action," Chapman said. "They can't just go and watch a game of college football here unless it's on TV. And we can't simulate 4.4 runners who are 6-foot-6 linemen coming at you."
It's up to the college special teams coaches to train their Aussie transfers on how to handle the unexpected. LSU coach Les Miles has former Prokick pupils Jamie Keehn and Josh Growden on his roster and said the transition once they arrived was never difficult. "You teach the situational strategy. But that's easy," Miles said. "These guys are mature and they get it, they understand."
Still, you can't prepare for everything. When asked if Michigan coaches told him to fall on the ball in the event of a bobble, O'Neill smiled and replied: "You never really go in planning for the worst."
In his lone season at Weber State he was one of FCS' best, with a 44.1 yards per punt average that ranked best in school history and, Hill thinks, O'Neill will return to form.
"He's going to bounce back and be a hell of a player just like he was before the mistake," Hill said.
Chapman reminded O'Neill Sunday that one good thing will come from the Michigan State gaffe: He's going to train the next punters from Down Under even harder.
"Now they understand that comes with the territory of playing in the environment for such prodigious schools," Chapman said. "Do not take this lightly. This is not just going out for kicks. His misfortunate makes me change everything that I do."