James Rendell gets a taste of American football at Notre Dame, wants more

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The hot dog, at least the one James Rendell sank his teeth into at a baseball game this summer, is the taste of Americana the 24-year-old Australia born-and-raised Notre Dame punter could do without.

“It wasn't the cleanest-taste thing to put in my mouth,” he said earlier this week after Irish training camp practice No. 2. “But I had to do it. It's American culture.”

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It wasn’t repulsive enough, though, to say, give him pangs of homesickness for something a little more familiar, like his home favorite, vegemite. Or something more extreme, like sending him packing after spending two months in the U.S. for the first time.

In fact, quite the opposite. While acclimating to American life and grad school on the Notre Dame campus, Rendell has been working behind the scenes to extend his stay in South Bend and his college eligibility from the one year the NCAA allowed up front to the three years he’s requested that could be available.

“Absolutely, there is prior precedent,” he said. “We're working on that at the moment. We're hoping to have a response shortly. So, hopefully, I guess the sooner that we know, the better. But I'm just focusing on one day at a time. I'm focused on this season and playing my role for the team, And all that other stuff will sort itself out.”

In a small sample size of three training camp practices through Friday, Rendell already looks like an upgrade over Bryce McFerson, who abruptly hit the transfer portal in mid-April and landed at Maryland less than a month later. McFerson averaged a respectable 45.1 yards per punt as a sophomore and first-year starter in 2023, but Notre Dame’s No. 83 standing in net punting reflected inconsistencies in hang time and direction.

Those are two attributes Rendell has at least flashed from his background, first in Australian Rules Football, then his time training with ProKick Australia, a renowned program that has placed hundreds of punters in the college and professional ranks of American football since 2007.

During Wednesday’s practice — Rendell’s first official one in America and fully open to the media — Rendell lined up at the 25-yard line, with the line of scrimmage being the 40. He consistently booted balls inside the opponent’s 10 without any trickling into the end zone or out of bounds, and with hang time that consistently exceeded 5 seconds.

The NFL average is purported to be 4.5 seconds.

“I think direction, along with hangtime, is probably the most important thing,” Rendell said. “Obviously, you need distance as well. So back training with Prokick Australia, we would emphasize direction a lot.

“And I guess the direction comes from playing Australian Rules Football, where we're kicking into a moving target. So we have to sort of pinpoint it. So, if I can assist the team with my direction, it's great for everyone.”

“When you hear the oohs and ahs consistently,” Irish special teams coordinator Marty Biagi offered, “I think it starts to give you confidence. But it’s more for him, just showing he can do it rep after rep when called upon.”

It was Biagi who had the idea to check out potential Australian imports for the Irish even before Notre Dame was in the market for a replacement. McFerson’s exit just sped up the timeline.

“At previous places, I’ve used Australian punters,” Biagi said this week, “so I was very familiar with who I was gonna look at. And so I started looking in the spring. Then once I knew we were going to need a punter, I was able to go to [head] coach [Marcus] Freeman. Coach Freeman and I looked at each other and said, ‘You’re going to get an Australian, aren’t you?’

“I said, ‘I’m going to get an Australian.’ He said, ‘All right. Let’s go.’ He’s familiar with the one he had at Cincinnati. I’m familiar with the ones I had used, so we kind of looked at each other like, ‘We know what we’re doing.’ Which is great, to be on the same plan.”

The timing of Rendell’s arrival for summer school, however, really didn’t lend itself to Biagi’s coaching initially, given the NCAA’s calendar and its summer rules. But Rendell didn’t have any problem motivating himself to get the necessary work done largely off the radar.

“I’d been talking to James in the spring,” Biagi said, “and I think he is so intense and so driven. I’m sure he gets that from his dad [Matt, a former Australian Rules Football star], who had passed. But that just really taught him in sports, every single rep, don’t take everything for granted.

“And he’s constantly working, to the point that the strength staff, when we had an update when we came back from vacation, they’re like, ‘James is — we gotta pull him back. He’s wanting to do everything.’

“And then that sport [Australian Rules Football], if you go and watch that sport, that’s what he’s thinking. ‘Coach, I wanna be like one of the guys.’ I think that’s what the players love about him, but I think from a standpoint that he’s been able to be locked in and give elite effort.”

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That effort will have to carry him through a lot of firsts. The first snow he’s ever seen in his life, perhaps before the 2024 season is over. The first crowd of more than 25,000 he’s played in front of (six years ago in an AFL tournament), when the Irish open the season before one roughly four times that size at Kyle Field, on the road, at Texas A&M in four weeks (Aug. 31).

“I mean, there's always an element of nerves, but I try to reframe it as excitement,” Rendell said. “At the end of the day. I'm just incredibly grateful to be here, I have a lot of self-belief in my ability. So, I really think that the more you're able to feed on the gratitude and self-belief, the less room there is for doubt to creep in. So, I try to have a really positive mindset.”

And keeping an open mind, including about American cuisine.

“A few weeks ago, I tried the deep dish pizza [in Chicago],” he said. “That was pretty nice. I probably enjoyed it a little too much, to be honest.”

Biagi, in turn, is enjoying another evolutionary plunge for Notre Dame’s special teams.

“It’s a skillset that — punting is changing, and it’s changed even since I played,” said Biagi, a college punter and kicker at Marshall during his playing days that concluded in 2007. “And it’s one of those things, ‘Hey, we have to adapt or die.’ We have to understand that with the different style of punting, we’re gonna go get the best player that fits our system anywhere in the world.

“And that just so happened to be the case in Australia. Knowing those guys and having some success at previous places, it becomes a confidence thing that, ‘Yeah, this is the right transition.’”

Rendell couldn’t agree more, despite a trip that was supposed to take roughly 24 hours, extended to 33 hours by delays.

“It was all worth it as soon as I got here and stepped on campus because it's such a beautiful place and the people here are beautiful people as well,” he said. “Amazing people, so it's a special place for special people. So incredibly grateful to be here.”

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