Wrote about Brad Craddock today, because he’s really good. He could be the first two-time Lou Groza Award winner and the first Australian-born NFL placekicker. He’d never seen an American football game until his first college game, and that one was a 7-6 win against William & Mary with the difference coming on his extra point in the fourth quarter.

He arrived at Maryland as a punter, though, and had some shaky moments in his first season. He made 24 straight field goals across the next two seasons and remains one of the best in the nation as a senior. But getting to Maryland was a chore.

Craddock is from Adelaide, Australia, and his prep experience was spent in soccer, track, tennis and Australian rules football.

“I made some films,” he said. “Pretty much what a coach can see on anybody’s film.”

Craddock had a camera and a snapper. He’d catch the snaps and boom the ball into the sky. Hang time and distance accompanied every kick. There was also footage of Craddock kicking off and kicking field goals, and together those productions made up his recruiting package.

“I probably sent that to every Division I school in the country,” he said. “I probably sent that to people, depending on the school, about 10 times each and certain schools more than that.”

There weren’t a lot of responses, and the ones Craddock did receive weren’t particularly enthusiastic. No one was offering him a scholarship, which was what he wanted. Then Maryland, acting on a tip from an Australian punter who played for Edsall at UConn, took the bait.

“We’d like to offer you a scholarship,” the Terrapins told him.

“I said, ‘Yes’ as soon as they said that,” Craddock said. “I didn’t even try to go anywhere else. As soon as they offered, that was the end of it.”

YouTube has two of Craddock’s clip videos, and they’re fantastic illustrations of what he had to do to get noticed and just how unusual all of that had to be.