Inside one opening kickoff: Saturday evening, 90,000 fans and a broken-field sprint with one thing in mind: the kill shot

Sporting News, The, Nov 18, 2002 by Marcus Carmouche

Sundays always are tough for him.

His back aches. His shoulders and neck are sore. Even rolling out of bed is arduous. Knees crackle as he shuffles about his apartment. Ankles throb with every step.

But the physical ailments are pittance to pay for what LSU's Ryan O'Neal experiences on fall Saturdays. Running out of the tunnel to the echoes of the school's fight song and lining up for the opening kickoff, he enjoys a pageantry and excitement unique to college football.

O'Neal, an all-state linebacker at his New Orleans high school, had plenty of scholarship offers from smaller state schools. But he chose to walk on at LSU and live out his childhood dream of playing for the Tigers.

Looking back on my playing days at LSU from 1992-95, I feel lucky enough to have started a handful of games at center until my knees suggested I'd be better off analyzing contests than playing in them. To those of us on scholarship, walk-ons were the Eighth Wonders of the World. We knew the exchange rate for our free ride was busting our tails 365 days a year. But non-scholarship players voluntarily subjected themselves to the grind of two-a-days and offseason conditioning with no promise of playing time, all while footing their own bill.

That is a small price to pay for O'Neal, who is listed as the third-team fullback but whose primary duty is special teams kamikaze work on the kickoff-coverage, kickoff-return and punt-return teams. In his first game in Tiger Stadium as a true freshman, O'Neal made the tackle on the opening kickoff against North Texas. Since then, he has been named LSU's Special Teams Player of the Week five times. Three years of hard work and dedication culminated in a scholarship awarded just before fall camp this season.

"When Coach (Nick) Saban called me in and told me that I got (a scholarship)," O'Neal says, "it was an unreal feeling.... The money doesn't really mean a thing; it's just the fact that I can say I'm on scholarship at LSU. I feel as though I'm living out a fantasy."

Game night

O'Neal's fantasy this particular Saturday begins with the team's cross-campus bus ride to Tiger Stadium, where LSU will play host to South Carolina in a pivotal SEC game for both teams.

He steps off the bus two hours before game time. Fans and well-wishers line the team's path to the locker room to greet the coaches and players. O'Neal hugs his totally and high-fives friends who have made the 80-mile trip from New Orleans.

After he enters the locker room, O'Neal begins to focus on the game plan and his role. If LSU kicks off, his job on the coverage unit is to line up square with the right goalpost and plug the middle. He visualizes the Gamecocks' formation for a kickoff return and goes through his countermoves; depending on the angle and alignment of the blocker, O'Neal will give him a dummy move right or left, then continue running downfield while maintaining his lane responsibility. If LSU receives, his job on the front line is to keep the defender in front on him and occupy the defender long enough to ensure a good return.

Waiting in line near the tunnel to get his ankles taped, he paces anxiously and glimpses at the clock--5:25 p.m., just 80 minutes before kickoff. He already can hear the murmurs outside as the crowd files in.

"Just being on the field psychs you up," he says. "Going out there during warm-ups, the adrenaline starts really pumping then. It's an unreal feeling. I'm ecstatic, nervous, focused. You see the crowd starting to come in, all the people on the field and you know it's almost that time."

Dressed in full gear with No. 49 on his back, O'Neal goes into the Ready Room, where the team stretches before taking the field for warm-ups. After the 10-minute session, O'Neal hits the field with the running backs for drills. He looks around a stadium that slowly is nearing capacity. In 30 minutes, 91,340 fans will be in the seats.

As LSU makes its way back into the locker room, O'Neal gets his fill of fluids. It's October, and the weather is pleasantly cool, but the humidity on The Bayou can be relentless. The team gathers for a final time in the Ready Room, where it receives a pregame speech and last instructions from Saban.

It's 10 minutes to kickoff now, and the team funnels from the Ready Room toward the tunnel. The intensity is building. Players are jumping up and down, shouting, pounding each other's shoulder pads. O'Neal is one of them.

At 6:42, the door to the tunnel opens and the players get a peek at South Carolina running onto the field from the south end zone. It's show-time.

The dash for a bash

O'Neal is on the left side of the herd, in the middle third of the throng of players. As he makes his way out of the tunnel, he touches a two-foot piece of a goalpost crossbar above the door that reads "WIN" in purple and gold letters.

The players make their way under the goalposts as the Golden Band from Tigerland serenades them with "Tiger Rag." The team rushes the field to deafening noise. O'Neal waves his arms to beckon for the impossible--more decibels. The run to the home sideline takes seven seconds.