Editor's Note: Dick Weiss, a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame, has covered college sports in Philadelphia and New York for more than 40 years. He will be providing regular commentary for the American Athletic Conference during the 2013-14 season.
UCF and Louisville have received well-deserved attention during this football season, enjoying their top 25-rankings and likely winding up in major bowls.
But there are other American Athletic Conference teams with individual stars who have earned recognition for mastery of their positions.
Highly skilled players like USF redshirt junior kicker Marvin Kloss will have a chance to advance their careers and play on Sundays. A relative unknown outside the picturesquely Tampa campus prior to this season who was restricted to kickoff duty by the presence of all-time leading scorer Maikon Bonani, Kloss has burst upon the college footballl scene like a sky rocket.
The 6-0, 198-pound Kloss leads the nation with nine field goals of 40-yards or longer and four of 50-plus yards, putting up eye popping numbers that have made him one of the conference's four deserving Lou Groza Award semifinalists -- along with Jake Elliott of Memphis, Shawn Moffitt of UCF and Chase Hover of SMU -- in his first year as a full-time college kicker. Kloss has made 14-of-17 field goal attempts, including a school record 13 straight, with makes of 52, 50, 50, 50, 49, 47 and 47 yards and is a perfect 13-for-13 on extra point attempts. Kloss is averaging 62.9 yards on kickoffs, with 13 touchbacks on 34 kickoffs.
And the best is yet to come.
Kloss has blasted 65-yard field goals in practice and routinely makes 60-yarders in pregame warmups, which has piqued the interest of NFL scouts. "Kicking has become more of an important part of the program,'' Kloss said. "When I was in high school, you kind of had to walk on. But a lot of schools see the value of having a good kicker.''
The American is loaded with quality kickers.
Moffitt is a junior and three-year starter for UCF, who played for Dr. Phillips in Orlando and was a member of the Orlando Super 60 as a senior and caught the eye of Knights coaches after making field goals of 50 and 51-yards and setting a Florida state record with 130 straight extra points as a senior in high school. He chose UCF over interest from Ole Miss. Moffitt has made 15 of 18 field goals this year, with a long of 50 yards, and is a perfect 33-of-33 extra points this season for the nationally ranked Knights.
Elliott, perhaps the best freshman kicker in the country, has made 14 of 15 field goals and is a perfect 18-for-18 on PATs. He has not missed outside the 40 and set a school record last week when he kicked a 56-yard field goal during a victory over USF. Elliott was literally picked out of a crowd as a ninth grader at Lyons, Ill., when a high school teammate Connor Wasz encouraged Elliott to volunteer when pep rally organizers looked for someone out of the crowd to attempt a field goal. Elliott, who had never played football and instead excelled at tennis, split the uprights. Elliott would go on to qualify for the state tennis meet the next three years. But he became an overnight sensation after he was lured to the football team as a junior and was named to the Chicago Sun-Times all-area team after kicking a 52-yard field goals as a junior. Elliott began receiving national attention after he won a showcase sponsored by Kohl's Kicking camps and Jamie Kohls began calling schools on his behalf. Memphis liked what it saw and Elliott chose the Tigers over North Dakota, the only other program to offer him a scholarship.
Hover is a senior from Plano West, Texas, who started his career at Blinn Junior college, where he stayed for a year before transferring to SMU as a preferred walk-on. He became an immediate starter and has led SMU in scoring the last two years, making 15 of 18 field goal attempts and 31 of 32 extra points while making a career long 51-yard field goal this season.
USF coach Willie Taggert affectionately calls Kloss, "Money.''
He identified Kloss as a playmaker early in the season when the Bulls were struggling. Whenever USF was faced with the possibility of a long field goal attempt, Kloss would seek out Taggert on the sidelines and tell him, "I got this" or ask, "What do you think?'' and encourage him to attempt the kick.
"He's looking for people to step up,'' Kloss said. "If we tell him we can do something, he's going to give us an opportunity.''
Unlike other players in the football-crazed Sun Belt, Kloss did not grow up around the sport. He was born and raised in Germany until the age of 8. His father Thomas was a former professional soccer player in the Bundesliga with Frankfurt and until the family moved to Naples, Fla. His mother Petra is a former flight attendant with Luftansa and Kloss had a chance to visit countries in Asia and Africa when he was younger.
He never spoke English or experienced American football until he arrived in the States.
"I played soccer in Germany,'' Kloss said. "When I came over here, my dad was like, 'You need to play soccer' and I did all the way up to high school. I used to train with him. Then, my dad, being an ex-athlete, saw that soccer didn't have the effect football had on everyone in the state. You know, Friday night football in high school, college games on Saturday and he asked me one time if I wanted to play.'''
Kloss had played informally with his friends but never played in any organized league like Pop Warner. "Then, my high school football coach found out I was a pretty good soccer player and we were in need of a kicker and he approached me one day,'' Kloss said. "When I first started, I didn't even know how to put on my pads, but my freshman year, he saw I had some potential.''
Kloss was raw. He never any formal instruction and was elevated to varsity at Blaine Collier High in Naples as a sophomore. By his senior year, he was benefiting from training sessions with kicking coach Bandon Kornblue and, like Ellott, he built his resume by attending Kohl's Kicking camps. He was ranked seventh among kicking prospects by ESPN after he was a perfect 8-for-8 on field goal attempts and kicked a 57-yard field goal his senior year in high school. "I had a coach who was crazy enough to give me that opportunity, so I figured I may as well make the most of it,'' Kloss said.
Kloss received looks from schools like Florida, Purdue, UNC and Marshall. In the end, he opted to sign with USF, because it was only two hours away from home and he liked the idea of playing in warm, sunny weather in front of his parents, who are a huge part of his life. "In Germany, you can barely see the sun this time of year,'' Kloss said. "Here's, it's 80 degrees outside. I didn't feel like going to school in the North and having to dig my way out of snow drifts on the way to class.''
Kloss had to wait three years before he got his chance after Bonani, who is the school's all-time leading scorer and career field goal record holder with 319 points 69 field goals, graduated. "He was great with me,'' Kloss said. "He taught me a lot about how to use angles and hash marks because the uprights in college are smaller than they are in high school.''
Kloss has since put his name on a few of Bonani's old records, including consecutive makes (13) and most 50-yard kicks (4), and is on pace to eclipse Bonani's single season field goals record (19).
Unlike most kickers, Kloss is a product of extensive weight room training. "My high school coach was big on weight training,'' he recalled. “We actually had weight training as a class in school. It started in college and carried over into college. And now my roommate here, our starting fullback Ryan Epps, he's a gym freak as well. We work out six times a week, just trying to look out best out there so we look a little pumped in our uniforms. I don't want to be the stereotypical, scrawny little kicker. If I can look like something decent out there, I'll take that.''
Kloss goes back to Kohl's college combine in Wisconsin during the summers where he gets to compete against many of the best college kickers in the country. "I'm been doing well up there,'' he said. "I've made a 65-yard field goal and have an 80-yard kickoff. By the time I'm a senior, I should be in tip top form.''