Adam Sandler, meet Damon Duval.

He’s Auburn’s best player, and he’s — gasp — a kicker/punter. He may spend much of his time on the sideline, but when the senior does trot onto the field — be it for kicking or punting — he sticks a foot into the long-lasting notion of the feeble, lonesome special-teams player.

Little shoulder pads aside, few characteristics about Duval resemble the reticent kicker in Sandler’s “Lonesome Kicker” parody song. Consider that the 6-foot-1 all-everything special teamer was projected as a mid-round NFL draft pick had he elected to leave Auburn after his junior season.

Instead, he returned for a final season, bringing attention to a pair of positions that too often go overlooked.

“You’re always hearing the other players say that they wish they were kickers because sometimes we sit around or stuff in practice,” Duval said. “Well, yeah, they wish they were kickers until it actually comes down to kicking it.”

For now, the Tigers are happy to delegate all kicking and punting duties — as well as the outcome of any nailbiter — to Duval’s right foot. This season, Duval’s made just two of his first five field-goal attempts, but his booming 48.8-yard punting average ranks him second in the NCAA, behind only a thin-air beneficiary from Colorado.

Better yet, if Duval’s punting average was inserted into NFL statistics, he’d be a full two yards above the best pro punter.

“When he punts,” Syracuse head coach Paul Pasqualoni said, “the punt returner better back up 50 yards — which is 10 more than he usually does — and then you could still be backing up. He’s got a very strong leg.”

Entering the season, that leg earned Duval a spot as a finalist for the Ray Guy Award, given every year to the nation’s best punter. He’s also a candidate for the Lou Groza award, the corresponding hardware for kickers.

That’s mainly because of Duval’s performance in a three-game span last season, when he connected on lengthy, heart-pounding, game-winning field goals at the end of each contest.

The most impressive of those back-to-back-to-backers came against Florida — ranked No. 1 in the nation at the time — when Duval boomeranged a 44-yarder through heavy rain, 25-mile-per-hour wind and, eventually, the uprights at Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium.

Two minutes later, those same uprights were twisted onto the ground, taken to a 10-count by a jubilant mob of Tiger students.

“I wouldn’t mind if every game ended like that,” Auburn wide receiver and holder Justin Fetsko said. “That was a great streak Damon had.”

“I’ve kicked for so long that the pressure is pretty easy to deal with,” Duval said. “When I line up, I can’t really feel the pressure. It’s just the snapper, the holder and me. If someone calls a timeout (to ice the kicker), I just think it’s kind of funny. I’m just going to do the same thing every time.”

That is, unless he’s called upon to punt. Last season, Syracuse tried to saddle Mike Shafer with both duties, but he struggled with accuracy on field goals. Duval — who last season became the first player in SEC history to make the all-conference team at two positions — is the rarity who succeeds at both.

On the sideline during games, he pays meticulous attention to the situation and decides whether to warm up for punting or placekicking.

“As a coach looking scholarship-wise, if you can get one player to fill two positions like we have with Damon, that’s the ideal situation,” Auburn special teams coach Eddie Gran said. “Obviously schools look for a player like that, but there aren’t many players like that out there.”

Duval, raised in Chattanooga, Tenn., might never have emerged as a football player without a dazzling career in soccer. At Central High, soccer was his first love, and with good reason.

Despite playing football in the fall, he earned a spot on the U.S. National soccer team. The majority of his college letters offered him scholarships for futbol, not football. And while still in high school, a European professional team offered him an $800,000 contract to play overseas.

Duval elected to stay home but still played with three or four soccer teams at any given time.

“His first sport was always soccer,” Duval’s mother, Cynthia Lindenmuth said. “You would know why if you ever saw him streaking downfield with the ball. He looked like a wild horse.”

When Duval signed with Auburn, he still had a feral streak. In an ESPN game against Tennessee his freshman year, Duval failed to execute a fake punt, infuriating Tigers head coach Tommy Tuberville.

Upon returning to the sideline and throwing his helmet, Tuberville exiled Duval to the locker room. Still, Duval flashed a “peace” sign to the nation as he passed cameras.

“He’s matured a lot since then,” Gran said. “Freshmen think everything they do is right, and it takes a while to find out otherwise.”

Said Duval: “I’ve learned this from my freshman year: as mad as coaches or fans might get when I fail to do something, I will still get that much madder at myself.”

Duval still cherishes the competitiveness that makes him slightly volatile — and nothing like the prototypical kicker hiding under the single-bar facemask. After all, his accomplishments since the sideline incident against the Vols validate his intensity.

With 41 more points, he’ll surpass Bo Jackson’s all-time scoring record at Auburn. On kickoffs, roughly 90 percent of his boots sail into the endzone. Two years ago, Duval even flashed his soccer skills by tapping an onside kick — one which Auburn recovered — with his left foot.

“What strikes me the most about Damon is that kicking seems to come so naturally to him,” Fetsko said. “Don’t get me wrong, he works hard, but sometimes the skill seems so effortless.”

Published on September 25, 2002 at 12:00 pm