SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Why Mitch Jeter perceived Notre Dame as the ultimate transfer portal fit almost supersedes the impact the former South Carolina kicker is expected to have in his first and only season this fall in an Irish football uniform.
Almost.
The 92% career field goal conversion rate (23-of-25), well ahead of Justin Yoon’s school-record 81% standard, may be good enough to make ND head coach Marcus Freeman recalibrate his prevailing fourth-down strategy.
But Jeter landed at Notre Dame, enrolling last month, because of Freeman, and Jeter’s belief that the third-year ND head coach was building something special. The 5-11, 191-pound grad student even mentioned competing for a national championship in 2024 during his first interview with the Notre Dame beat media on Friday. Twice.
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“I came up during a bowl practice, I believe it was in December,” Jeter said of his official recruiting visit, “and I kind of was able to watch this team. And [it] seemed like everybody wanted each other to do well, regardless of first-string guy or last-string guy.
“There was a really competitive spirit here, which I wanted to be a part of.”
And if everything goes according to script, he’ll be the third straight transfer kicker to win the No. 1 job but the first one to be backed up by a 30-year-old. That would be Citadel transfer Eric Goins, who last played college football in 2015 and who’s NCAA clock paused while he was serving in the U.S. Army.
Jeter, who turns 23 in August, vetted the Irish through the eyes of 2023 kicker and USF transfer Spencer Shrader, and 2022 No. 1 option and Arkansas State transfer Blake Grupe, the latter of whom converted 81% of his field goals and all 40 of his extra point attempts this past season as a rookie for the NFL’s New Orleans Saints.
Jeter actually kicked opposite Grupe in the 2022 Gator Bow, in which he nailed a 45-yard field goal and five extra points in South Carolina's 45-38 bowl loss to the Irish at the end of the '22 season.
He also had a previous connection with Notre Dame punter Bryce McFerson from their high school days in the Charlotte, N.C., area even though McFerson is two classes behind Jeter.
They also share the same consulting kicking/punting coach back in North Carolina, former Tar Heels and Minnesota Vikings kicker Dan Orner. McFerson will be the holder at ND on Jeter’s field goals and PATs.
It was Orner, who helped turn Jeter’s experimentation with football into a passion and one that came with a scholarship after growing up thinking he’d end up playing soccer beyond high school.
In the middle of my sophomore year in high school, one of my neighbors, there was a local college, a D-II school called Catawba College close to our house,” the Salisbury, N.C. product said. “And you know, we'd go out there on a weekend when the field was open or whatever and play football with some of the guys around. And one day we were messing around kicking footballs a little bit, and I think I made like a 40-yarder. And my neighbor [Blake Clark] was like, ‘You should really try to do this.’
So in the middle of the season, Jeter approached Cannon School head coach Brad Hoover, a former fullback for the Carolina Panthers, about being added to the roster after a tryout. Cannon not only didn’t have a kicker or a punter, it didn’t have enough players to field its own team, so it was combined with players from Concord First Assembly School.
“It was an open door for me to go,” Jeter said.
The next year, he started working with Orner on a regular basis. Low Division I and high Division II scholarship offers were still coming his way for soccer, when a handful of college football teams, mostly close to home, started offering preferred walk-on opportunities.
Virginia Tech, NC State, East Carolina and North Carolina were the early options.
“And then as I kind of went [on in the] recruiting process, some of those schools changed their preferred walk-on offers to scholarship offers,” he said. “Eventually, South Carolina, I kicked for their coaches and eventually got a scholarship from them as well.”
And that’s where he landed, learning behind incumbent kicker Parker White, who’d go on to be the school’s all-time leader scorer, and elite special teams coach Pete Lembo, who left South Carolina last month to become the head coach at MAC school Buffalo. Jeter dabbled with kickoff duties his first couple of seasons, then took over all the kicking duties once White moved on.
“Parker White was a very big-time asset for me, I feel, in my development as a kicker,” Jeter said. “I think that he helped me prep mentally as well as physically. So, going out there learning how to practice like a college kicker should, learning the right amount of reps to take and learning how to watch him through his successes and through his failures of how he handled the good and how he handled the bad.
“He was really an even-keeled kind of guy, and that is kind of how I wanted to be.”
He’ll get his first actual practice experience with Irish special teams coach Marty Biagi in about four weeks, when Notre Dame spring practice starts. Until then, he’s getting his direction from ND’s new director of football performance Loren Landow.
“Coach Landow has been great, kind of coming from that NFL side,” Jeter said, referring to Landow’s five-year run with the Denever Bronocs and his much longer relationship working independently with pro athletes, including NFL players.
“He’s talked to us a lot about specialists and guys that he’s been with — with the Broncos — such as Sam Martin, Riley Dixon and Brandon McManus. Those are just some of the notable specialists, but in terms of workouts I wouldn’t say he’s in there trying to grind us into the ground or anything.
“He’s really doing specific movements which can help our game on the field, which has been good for us. So, nothing too crazy to where you walk out of there and you feel like you’re dying. You go in there, you get good work in. That’s going to be good for your game outside of the weight room, and that’s what I really like about him.”
Unlike the quarterback transfer hamster wheel — three in the past four offseasons — Freeman has committed to moving away from in the next winter portal cycle, pursuing grad transfer kickers annually appears to be Notre Dame's preferred path to reloading at that position.
A position Jeter was thrilled the Irish — and others — are trending toward.
“I recognized that I had one year of eligibility left from COVID,” Jeter said. “That was kind of my opportunity. And I did my time at South Carolina, did my four years, got my degree — in biological sciences.
“So, I did that. I really just felt like I wanted a little bit of a change of scenery. A lot of different kinds of aspects are changing in college football, wanting to see what was out there for me, so I entered the transfer portal.
“And Notre Dame kind of really stood out to me with the opportunity that I'm able to build through this brand and this network, as well as get on the field and compete for a national championship.”
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