Brendan Carney has such a sweet gig.

Doesn’t matter how well the team plays, he just goes out and punts and kicks-off and holds. He gets to be one of the best players on a Division I football team by only working on a few things and without taking any hits. His ability is such that he’s good enough for an NFL tryout but not good enough to tease him into believing he’ll make it.

‘I don’t think it’s going to work out, and that’s fine,’ he said.

He’ll worry about what to do after football down the line. Maybe law school. Maybe business like his dad and two of four sisters. One of them, Erin, just moved to help run offices in Australia. Maybe he’ll join her. But whatever, plenty of time for that a year from now.

He put his arms behind his head and laid down crooked on his bed, legs dangling off the edge with his outdated, kid-bought Eagles – the ‘Birds’ – Phillies and Flyers posters surrounding him.

‘I’m having fun, I’m hanging around with some cool people and I’m living it up,’ he said. ‘In the grand scheme of things when you look around in this world, it is pretty crazy and I’m pretty fortunate to be where I am. So I’m just trying to have a ball with it. I’m just going with the flow, man.’

Still, ‘that shouldn’t be confused with the fact he’s loose all the time,’ senior offensive lineman Mike Sklarosky said.

While Carney used the word ‘laid-back’ in reference to himself five times in one two-minute span, he does as much to perfect his few job requirements as everyone else does to perfect their many.

He breaks down close-up practice film of himself nearly every day. He lifts for 45 minutes most nights. He’ll stretch for more than an hour on Thursdays when the team works extra on special teams. No, he tells people all the time, he doesn’t just mill around.

He actually made a resolution to not overkick during pregame warm-ups and throughout the week this season because he’s so driven to become a better punter. This after starting every single game he’s ever played at Syracuse and earning first-team All-Big East honors last year with a school-record 82 punts.

But he couldn’t do anything about that. The scoreboard said fourth down.

It comes down to this: There’s a game within a game for him. Not that he doesn’t care if Syracuse wins – that shouldn’t even be brought up – but the little special teams games are the ones he can help win no matter what the big picture says.

He wants to punt better just to punt better. He wants to kick-off better just to kick-off better. He wants to hold better just to hold better.

He’s pretty good at what he does compared with his counterparts at the college level, but not too good. He knows that. Plus, he has a pretty significant influence on every game, but not too significant. He knows that, too.

Tack those onto the fact he doesn’t concern himself with that little thing called ‘the future,’ and that’s why he’s got it so made. He’s reached a perfect equilibrium.

He sat up on his bed.

‘People look at me weird, say, ‘You don’t really play football.’ Which is fine, they can say whatever they want. But I take pride in my positions. I actually really love being a punter and a kickoff guy and a holder.

‘You can really change the tone of a game if you blast a punt or if you drop a punt inside the 10-yard line. On kickoffs, you get five guys on the right, five guys on the left staring at you waiting for you. Then you got 11 guys waiting for you to kick the ball. Holding is such a cool position because you’re the quarterback out there. You get to give the cadence. Nothing happens until you say something.

‘I know it’s kind of corny, but I think it’s really cool.’

Besides winning, success on Saturday all depends on those 10-20 games within a game.

‘If I can keep the opposing offense pinned back and maybe some fair catches and some touchbacks, I consider that a good game. And if we make all of field goals and PATs.’

He cares, but doesn’t stress. He didn’t quite convey that concept until he happened to fall into a tale about Whiffle ball games last spring between friends.

‘I would demand – no beg – to be the captain because I wanted to pick my team and pick the best players and I wanted to win every single game,’ he said. ‘But sometimes people would get too competitive for me and you just stand back and say, ‘I’m just trying to have fun, I’m not trying to beat you at this or win at that.”

Maybe balance is the word.

Still, there is no question he wants to finish with his best season and earn that NFL tryout. After immediate criticism about his slow punt release freshman year, he’s shaved nearly a second off, down to the high ones (seconds). But he remains far from the lower ones of the NFL.

Punting under second-year head coach Greg Robinson helps.

For the first time, he watches up-close video of himself. More importantly, he only punts 60-80 times a week in practice as opposed to 60-80 times a day under former head coach Paul Pasqualoni. Robinson uses machines to kick to the punt and kick returners, not the punter or kicker.

Then there was that awful spread punt formation of two years ago – Coach P’s last. Three blockers would stand five yards behind the center while the others spread out along the line of scrimmage. That wasn’t such a sweet gig; opponents ate it up. One time Carney dropped the ball to punt and a West Virginia player practically caught it.

‘Completely ridiculous,’ Carney said of the whole philosophy with a laugh.

Even though he was concentrating more and more on a quicker release, he still crushed a career-long 71-yard punt against Florida State last year at Doak Campbell Stadium.

‘The ones that I hit long I don’t even feel them,’ he said.

He acknowledged feeling more tired at the end of the last season than the previous two. Twenty more kicks during a season makes a huge difference.

But the way he went about his business endeared him to teammates. He doesn’t consider himself one of the team’s primary leaders because he doesn’t work as hard as everyone else, but it’s clear he’s at least up there.

Robinson sent him as one of the team’s four representatives to Big East Media Day in Newport, R.I., in July. He still doesn’t speak up much when it comes to straight football, but finds younger players appreciate his ability to punting again and again without so much as a frown.

‘One of the things Coach Robinson always talks about is how our actions speak louder than our words,’ said tight end Brandon Darlington, who along with Sklarosky is Carney’s best friend on the team. ‘And I think Carney represents that well how he carries himself on and off the field. He knows when to turn the switch on and off.’

Ultimately, the switch is off. Football, while giving him such a thrill, remains work. When it comes to actually thinking about what he wants to do with his life, he just rather wouldn’t.

‘I’m definitely taking advantage of the chance to be laid-back,’ he said, literally lying back on his bed. ‘Eventually, I want to have a family and you have to provide for your family. You want to provide everything for them. Eventually, I’ll have to have a career.

‘But I know that it’s not right now.’

And while he’ll never hear the end of teammates and others razzing him for being a punter – and a kicker and a holder – they realize how sweet a gig it is. There’s a good amount of pressure, but not too much. And, he’s not sore after practice.

‘Guys are always coming up and saying, ‘Man I wish I was a kicker.”

Pause.

‘I wish I was a middle linebacker.’

Pause.

‘Well, maybe that’d be different if I actually was a middle linebacker.’

Published on August 31, 2006 at 12:00 pm