Recruiting Analysis - Special Teams

Special teams are special. We all know this. Houston Nutt knows this. James Shibest, Special Teams Coordinator of the year, knows this. Here are the super special special (s)teams stars we brought in for this season.

Tyler Campbell - P - Little Rock, AR - Catholic HS
Campbell should be expected to contribute right away his freshman season as Rob Park will no longer be on the team come graduation time (Congrats, Rob, I hope car insurance in Memphis is a blast). As a junior, Campbell averaged an impressive 47 yards per punt. Outside of that, I don't know a whole lot about the Natural State punter. He is rumored to have hit Mike Markuson in the back from 75 yards away during an Ole Miss scouting camp; a feat which he accomplished shortly after having coffee with Paul Bunyan and beating Davy Crockett in a crazy intense checkers game.


Saint Andrew of Ritter - Savior - Canaan - Jackson Academy
A kicker out of Jackson Academy, Ritter can boot the hell out of the ball. This past season, Ritter made two 58 yard FGs and kicked all but one or two of his kickoffs out the back of the endzone. Those kickoffs would place the ball two yards or so into the endzone at the collegiate level. Having earned offers from Arkansas, Ole Miss, and Southern Miss, Ritter became one of the most highly sought after kickers in the country.

Still, though, he's a kicker.

Ole Miss fans can be pretty stupid sometimes. Yeah, I know this applies to many people from many different fanbases, but we Rebels seem to have a disproportionate number of fans who just don't "get" football. You know, the kinds of folks who fail to see NCAA football for what it really is (The NFL's minor league) because of their false ideas of this being an amateur, gentlemanly competition among scholarly sportsmen. These are the kinds of people who love Andrew Ritter.

I shit you not when I saw multiple people saying that he was their biggest "want" in our recruiting class.

Wow. Just wow.

Look, he may be a damn good one, but he's still a kicker. He will see a grand total of, I dunno, TWO MINUTES of playing time over the course of the regular season. I'd rather take a stud lineman or quarterback 10 times out of 10 before I take a stud kicker.

"But he's white and went to a good private school in Jackson and his parents are Ole Miss alumni and it wouldn't cause my grandmother to roll over in her grave if my little Dorothy Jane brought him home for supper!"*

Yeah, I know... I completely get it.


*He's also a good kicker, sheesh. You people are just too touchy sometimes.