Josh Davis may still get to show Derek Dooley his skills as a punter and kicker. If he does, though, it will be as an opponent rather than a University of Tennessee player.
Middle Tennessee State plays at Knoxville next year, and Davis as a first-year Blue Raider was the Sun Belt Conference special-teams player of the week for games of Sept. 18. The former Rhea County High School player punted four times for a conference-record 59.8-yard average against Memphis.
He had a 78-yarder to go with punts of 57, 53 and 51 yards, and three of them were downed inside the Tigers’ 20-yard line.
Davis averaged 45 yards on five punts this past Saturday in a 34-14 rout of Louisiana-Lafayette, and he is averaging 46.9 yards for the season. He also is MTSU’s No. 2 kickoff specialist and has averaged 56 yards on five of those.
He had been a walk-on at Tennessee in Lane Kiffin’s year as coach there and went through winter workouts with the Volunteers after Dooley arrived. Two days into spring practice, though, Davis was told by UT special-teams coach Eric Russell that there was no place for him.
“Coach Russell called me into his office and said, ‘There’s no easy way to do this, but I have to take orders, too, and Coach Dooley wants to get rid of some guys,'” Davis related last week, adding that he thought he and all the other kickers and punters would have through the spring to be evaluated.
“Obviously I wasn’t happy. I at least expected a chance to show what I could do, and the fact [Dooley] never saw me punt was tough.”
Davis’ father Brian, an assistant coach at Rhea County, wasn’t very happy, either, because his son had passed up other opportunities to walk on at UT.
“I wanted Josh to be able to go through [spring] practice, and if the coaches said he wasn’t SEC material, I could have lived with that, but he never got that chance,” Coach Davis said. “When I watched Dooley’s first press conference, I looked at it as a coach, as a parent and as a dad. He said everything a parent would want. But if he was to walk into the coaches’ office [at Rhea County], I would get up and walk out.”
Coach Davis found out his son could be immediately eligible at another Division I school.
“I knew there was a one-time transfer rule for walk-ons in other sports, but I wasn’t sure about football so I called the NCAA,” he said. “Josh asked for his release at UT and he didn’t get it right away, but he went to the compliance office and they said since he was never actually recruited that he was free to go wherever with no stipulations. Since he practiced with them, though, I guess he had to have a release.”
Added Josh: “The compliance office at UT confirmed the one-time transfer rule [for walk-ons], and I think MTSU got the transfer approved by the NCAA, although I don’t think anything specific had to be filed. People at UT said I was eligible for the transfer. I told MTSU and then MTSU took care of it.”
While UT dragged its feet on the release, according to the Davis family, Brian made calls to several schools because they were prohibited from contacting his son until the release came through.
One of the first calls went to MTSU, which had recruited Josh fairly hard out of Rhea County. He wanted to stay in-state and was willing to walk on there after being assured of a chance to prove his worth.
“His first real chance came as a holder for kicks, which is something I always thought he did very well,” Coach Davis said. “They knew he could punt, but then he got a chance to kick off when the regular kicker was ailing, and then he did some placement kicks. He’s now the backup kicker on the depth chart, and already he has held, punted, kicked some from placement and kicked off.”
His 78-yard punt is the third-longest in MTSU history and the third longest in the nation this year.
“Last Saturday was a whole lot of fun, and it was certainly my best day as a punter,” Davis said. “After all is said and done, I’m a lot happier here than I was at UT, but I have to admit I’m already looking forward to playing them up there next year. Maybe I’ll get the chance finally to show [Dooley] what I can do.”