By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Foundation

You never hear about the best long snappers. Usually, the only time you even hear their name called is when they mess up. If you don't know their name, it's a good thing.

And then there's Jimmy Landes.

As far as I can tell, he's the only collegiate long snapper that's ever been mentioned as a potential Heisman Trophy candidate. Of course, he was the one that mentioned it.

Baylor's fifth-year senior long snapper started his own campaign with the #Landes4Heisman Twitter blasts that gained some steam but no votes a year ago.

"I don't know what the Heisman voters were thinking," he said.

"One of my roommates even threw out, 'Well, you missed out on the Heisman, so maybe you should go for Mr. Irrelevant, the last pick in the NFL Draft,''' Landes said. "After the bowl game, I guess I'll have to start campaigning for that."

Other than snapping it perfectly every time on field goals, extra points and field goals, everything this guy does is for fun. Whether it's a Heisman campaign, snapping a ball from the top level of McLane Stadium or doing his Ray Lewis strut before practice, he never takes himself too seriously.

"Just over my career, I've tried to do everything I could with what college has given me and football has given me," he said. "I'm just not all serious about it. This is a game, it's fun. I'm just trying to have fun with it every day."

The funny thing is Landes wasn't even supposed to come to Baylor in the first place.

When he tore the ACL in his right knee as a junior and had to sit out the baseball season at Tyler (Texas) Lee High School, any recruiting attention Landes was getting died down. Oklahoma gave him a chance as a preferred walk-on as a long snapper for the football team, so his intention was to enroll in the fall of 2011 and join the team the next spring.

But that's where fate stepped in and changed his path forever.

With his Lee baseball team in the playoffs, Landes hit two home runs in a game that then-Baylor assistant baseball coach Steve "Hoot" Johnigan was scouting.

"I got a call from (Baylor assistant) Mitch Thompson, saying, 'Hey, if you'd like to come play, we've got a spot for you as a walk-on,''' Landes said. "And I said, 'Yeah, I would love to play baseball.' Baylor had just gotten to its first bowl game, and it was a small enough school where I was thinking maybe I could do football, too."

Because of an injury to regular deep snapper Marcus Santa Cruz, Landes ended up snapping for field goals and extra points for the last 12 games of the 2011 season. That included the extra point after Robert Griffin III's Heisman moment, a 34-yard TD pass to Terrance Williams in the Bears' dramatic 45-38 win over Oklahoma.

"I went out to snap for the extra point, and I remember I was shaking. I was so nervous," he said. "We had never beaten OU before, so the fans were storming the field. And even the first game my freshman year, we stormed the field after we beat TCU. And I was like, 'This is sweet.'''

The next year, Landes fulfilled one of his dreams as a catcher for the baseball team, starting five games and playing in 10 more. He hit .048 (1-for-21) and had 31 putouts with nine assists and a .930 fielding percentage.

Playing in Niagara Falls that next summer, Landes said he got a "taste of what the minors would be like, just traveling all the time, and I got burned out."

"I didn't really love the sport enough to do that," he said. "I came back here, did a few workouts and went into Coach (Steve) Smith's office and told him I had a better chance of long snapping in the NFL than making it to the majors with baseball."

Smith had actually put that thought in his head nearly two years earlier when he asked him, "Have you ever thought about just doing that?"

"That was the first time that I really thought maybe I could," he said.

After redshirting in 2012 and backing up Zach Northern the next year, Landes believes he had his own "Heisman moments" for last year's Big 12 champions, snapping for Chris Callahan's game-winning 28-yard field goal in a 61-58 victory over TCU and recovering a fumbled punt return against West Virginia.

But the Legend of Landes was born this summer when he snapped a ball from the top level of McLane Stadium into a trash can in the north end zone. Folks, you can't make this stuff up.

"I had seen videos of guys snapping into trash cans or snapping off the lower deck of a stadium," he said. "And I thought, 'Maybe I could do it from the top?' I went out there with some friends, and it took me about 30 tries. I actually made it on my 17th or 18th try, but the ball bounced right back out. So, we put the pylons in the trash can to catch the next one. I did it again, and luckily it stayed in."

He probably could have re-launched the #Landes4Heisman campaign that day.

"Twitter blew up, and it was on ESPN SportsCenter," he said. "That was one of my goals was to get on SportsCenter, just doing something dumb, maybe."

His Heisman hopes never materialized, but Landes' NFL dream seems closer than ever. He was invited to the Reese's Senior Bowl next month in Mobile, Ala., along with San Diego State long snapper Jeff Overbaugh, and will use that week to "show off what I can do" to the hordes of NFL scouts.

"Hopefully, they'll give me some Reese's Pieces," he said.

Landes is also one class and a three-week geology trip away from earning his undergraduate degree in geology. And if the NFL gig doesn't work out, he plans to add a master's degree in petroleum energy and eventually follow in his dad's footsteps.

"Snapping is a position where as long as you just stay in shape and keep snapping, then you might get a shot," he said. "Those guys are in there for 12, 13, 14 seasons. So, if one goes down, then they may call up another snapper to fly out the next week and play. I'm just going to stay ready until my body can't do it anymore."

DID YOU KNOW?
Baylor's had a history with NFL long snappers. Jon Weeks is in his sixth season with the Houston Texans, while Justin Snow had a 13-year career with the Indianapolis Colts and Washington Redskins. Snow actually critiques Landes after games and has flown into Dallas to give him private lessons. "He's just been a good guy to talk to and work out with," Landes said. "It's just little things, like if my weight is too far over my toes, the ball's going to go high. Or if I'm too far back on my heels, I can't finish with my legs and the ball's going to go low."