If 2020 taught college football anything — aside from the ability to schedule games on the fly, the added value of the FCS playing in the fall and the inevitability of the coaching carousel no matter the outside circumstances — it was the value of the long snapper.
Long-only noticed when a certain head coach quipped, “He’s the long snapper,” out of exasperation during a halftime interview, an emergency long snapper situation seemed to arise somewhere in the country on a weekly basis. Most rosters have only one, and when that player was ruled out for a week due to coronavirus protocols, that team could no longer safely punt.