SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Not only do strangers not engage Rino Monteforte about Notre Dame’s admittedly obscure, two-man competition this spring for the starting long snapper, they sort of assume it wouldn’t be relevant to him anyway.
“Some people think I’m a fencer,” said the 5-foot-7, 195-pound walk-on junior on the Notre Dame football team. “Cheerleading is the biggest one that I get.”
“My whole life I've been undersized, doubted on a little bit. So, you kind of just laugh about it, laugh it off. And I think it's cool people don't know that you're on the football team. So, they'll talk to you for the person you are, first. So, I think it's cool, kind of like a disguise. Then, if they find out [about] football after the fact, then they find it out.”
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What they’ll also find out about the guy with the inside track on 6-3, 214-pound sophomore Andrew Kros to succeed Michael “Milk” Vinson in the strong Irish long snapper lineage is that he’s a Theology major, a part-time drummer and a guy who takes the requisite tackling drills the snappers rep with Irish defensive backs and linebackers in practice seriously.
“Right now, I'm not as good of a tackler as [linebacker] Jack Kiser,” Monteforte said with a straight face, “but the goal is to continue to work and watch them do those drills, right? You know, go to the back of the line and make sure that I watch them perform and do what they do.
“And then, hopefully, try to emulate that to the best of my ability and continue to improve.”
Vinson, for the record, had two tackles last season for an Irish team that finished 10-3 overall. The version that will play with his successor opens the 2024 season Aug, 31 at Texas A&M.
Monteforte didn’t have any tackles in 2022 or '23, but he did get in a couple of snapping cameos in games last season in Irish blowouts of Tennessee State and Pitt.
“My freshman year, I got a lot more TV time,” he said, “because, you know, as a freshman, you're kind of ball watching, right? You really don't know what to expect, but I'll tell you this year everybody's like, ‘Rino, we don't see you on TV anymore. Why is that? Blah, blah, blah.’
“And that was because I want to put myself in Milk’s shoes. You know, going from the 3 guy, the 2 guy, I'm with him. I was with him during every game, trying to put myself in his position, mentally walking through these situations. That way, in the two opportunities I got I was ready to go in and execute.”
Second-year Irish special teams coordinator Marty Biagi has taken notice.
“He takes a lot of pride in being really consistent,” said Biagi, who cites consistency as the No. 1 asset in determining who gets the job. “I would say if you walk through the locker room, he’s the very first player on the whole team that’s looking at his I-Pad and watching the clips from practice.
“He wants to know right then what he did. With Milk teaching him and being there for so long, this is the standard. It’s our job to never be talked about and never be noticed unless it’s media day. And he gets that.”
Getting that he could end up being a college long snapper wasn’t a direct route by any means for Monteforte, a graduate of Kellenberg Memorial High School in Uniondale, N.Y. The football dream was always there, but it got a serious testing the summer before he entered seventh grade.
Monteforte showed up at an elite football camp In South Carolina as a 5-foot-2, 110-pound defensive end and left feeling like a worked-over blocking sled.
“I talked to my mom and said, ‘How am I going to be able to play college football? It’s all I ever wanted to do. I guess I’m not.’” Monteforte recalled. “I spent the rest of the summer thinking about different ways to make it work.
“Play fullback or tight end? I didn’t want to give up the dream. Then one day I Googled ‘How to Long Snap.’ The first video I watched was of Joe Cardona, the snapper for the (New England) Patriots. That’s how I learned.
“Started going to [specialist] camps to get better. I’ve skyrocketed ever since. Self-taught and worked my butt off.”
Buffalo offered him a preferred walk-on spot with a chance to turn it into a scholarship, and Monteforte committed. Then Biagi’s predecessor, former ND special teams coordinator Brian Mason, offered Monteforte a similar scenario at Notre Dame.
He visited, flipped … and kept working.
“I've dropped 26 pounds, 10% body fat also,” he said. “I credit [new ND director of football performance] Loren Landow as well as Matt Balis, when he was here. Their strength staffs have really changed my body in the weight room.
Also credit to Alexa Appelman and Catherine Carbeck and nutrition. They're the best at what they do in the country, all around, the sports science team.”
And if Monteforte needed a little extra motivation, he has a reminder of that on his wrist. He wears a "Tripp Strong" bracelet in honor of his good friend East Carolina long snapper Tripp Smith.
“Tripp and I traveled the country together for four years in high school and became some of the closest of friends,” Monteforte said. There was a group of 10 to 12 of us long snappers that really worked together, and we all ended up going to play FBS football. We all arrived at college at the same time, different colleges all around the country.
“And as soon as Tripp got there, he started to throw up during workouts, and things weren't going so well. He ended up coming up with stage four Hodgkin's lymphoma. And it was devastating to all of us. It was just horrendous.
“He's been cancer-free, I want to say, for about a year now, which is a super blessing. Thanks be to God for that. I have this on my wrist, because Tripp is one of my closest friends. I say, if he was able to beat cancer, anything that I'm doing — any lift, any pressure situation — really isn't that big of a deal. I could just fight through it and continue to go.”
And Monteforte is going forward with a position he knows doesn’t get noticed, likely, unless there’s a mistake, but one in which he’s confident he’s making a difference.
“You see the line of long snappers that have come through here,” he said. “You think about Scott Daly. J.J. Jansen. John Shannon was the Patrick Mannelly Award winner. Milk was an All-American. There's some pretty important dudes who have done it here and done it at a high level.
“And it shows how important this is and what the lineage of what I would say is Long Snapper University here is. So, that makes me know my job is important and also really just all the work and time and hours that I put in overtime to continue to work as hard as I possibly can.
“Nobody's really seeing those hours in the dark. Right? Nobody really knows about them if you just look at me and see a 5-7, 195-pound long snapper. But just knowing that my work is meaningful, and I've known that for my whole entire life. So, just continuing to strive and push forward in everything I do.”
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