By Levi Edwards | Digital Team Reporter

Heading into the 2001 season, the Maryland Terrapins needed to find a long snapper – and fast.

Before the team reported for camp, their starting long snapper was ruled academically ineligible and was dismissed from the team. As for how teams universally handled the long snapper position, times were much different nearly 25 years ago.

Today, players tend to specialize in singularly playing long snapper as early as middle school. Since 2001, 10 long snappers have been selected in the NFL Draft, including two in the sixth round of the 2021 NFL Draft.

But historically, it was simply a position thrust upon a reserve lineman or skill position player.

For Maryland, the team combed through the entire roster to try and fill the void.

"The team literally had no one on the roster out of probably 100 plus guys. No one could long snap," said Jon Condo, a redshirt freshman outside linebacker heading into the 2001 season. "They kind of just went and took all the linebackers, tight ends, offensive linemen and said, 'Hey, can anybody do this?'"

The coaching staff believed Condo had the best snap of the players who tried out and was told to exclusively work on it the whole summer. He did this while also making his reps at linebacker a priority, fighting for any role the team saw fit.

"I took it seriously and by the time training camp started, they said, 'Here, it's your job.' And that's how it began. I loved it because it was my first opportunity to play in the ACC. By Week 5 or 6, we were actually undefeated, and I realized I'd became a specialist.

"My coach told me I could make a lot of money doing this someday. I kind of rolled my eyes and lo and behold, he was right."

Condo initially grew bored of playing the position, despite how good he quickly became. He contemplated transferring out of Maryland to exclusively play linebacker for another college program. But he was influenced by his father to stick it out and commit to this new craft.

He started 38 games for the Terrapins at long snapper as the team went 36-14 in that span. This included winning the 2001 ACC Championship and three bowl games. In his senior season, he was voted the Top Special Teams Performer, becoming the first pure long snapper to earn the honor in school history.

Agents began reaching out to him and NFL scouts were showing up to practices 20 minutes early just to see Condo warm up with special teams.

His NFL dreams didn't seem as farfetched, but being selected in the 2005 NFL Draft was still a stretch.

"As a kid growing up watching the draft, there's this outside hook where you're like, 'Man, I would love to hear my name called' but my agent was honest with me," Condo recalled.

"Fortunately, at that time for me, they said it could be more beneficial being undrafted because then you get to choose where you go and that was my scenario."

Multiple teams reached out after the draft and he decided to sign with the Dallas Cowboys, believing it was his best opportunity to earn a starting job. He was ultimately right in his judgement, beating out veteran long snapper Jeff Robinson.

However, his time in Dallas was short-lived. He was waived after three games. The following season, he signed with the New England Patriots but was released during the preseason.

In November 2006, he received one last chance with the Oakland Raiders. That's when things snapped into place, pun intended.

"I learned right away that the NFL was a business. I think things happen for a reason. Fortunately, when the Raiders gave me a call in 2006, I understood the business and I realized that you've got to make to make the most of your opportunities and you can not afford to have a bad day. And that's what really motivated me throughout my career."

Hard work and determination obviously played a factor in Condo's eventual success with the Raiders, but so did the two men he snapped the ball to. He spent seven seasons with perennial All-Pro punter Shane Lechler and 12 seasons with kicker Sebastian Janikowski. The trio became one of the best special teams units in the league, and was voted to the Pro Bowl together in 2011.

"To have their support and to have their trust in me, that allowed me to have confidence in myself," Condo said of Lechler and Janikowski. "And being a confident player is what you need, not sure you can make it in the league without being confident in what you do.

"It's always in the back of your mind whether you're going to get cut again, but whenever I got out there and made the team and spending time with them – them trusting me to do the job and to be a part of their group allowed me to take it to the next level."

Condo spent 14 years in the NFL, 11 of those as the Raiders starting long snapper with two Pro Bowl selections. He also ended his professional football career with 50 total tackles on special teams.

"I wanted the respect not only of my teammates, but my peers. I pride myself on being recognized as not just a guy out there on the field snapping a ball, but I wanted to be a guy that other coaches were talking about when they were scouting that week's game versus the Oakland Raiders punt team. I wanted my name to come up saying, 'Hey, this snapper needs to be controlled. We can't let him get out free, he's going to make a play, he's going to allow other players to make plays so we need to account for him.'

"That was my goal. I don't know if I changed the game in any way or shape but I definitely took pride in trying to."

"That's Otis Sistrunk. He's from the University of Mars."

Alex Karras blurted out this line to a national audience on Monday Night Football as the Oakland Raiders opened their 1974 season on the road against the Buffalo Bills.

Fans were left with more questions than answers to that line. Was this defensive tackle an extraterrestrial being?

To this day, there's been no proof of human life on planet Mars – let alone a university with a football program. It's plausible that Karras took the "U.S. Mars" next to Sistrunk's name – short for United States Marine Corps – and thought it was a shortened nickname for Mars Hills University in North Carolina, which has had a Division II football program since 1965.

As it turns out Sistrunk wasn't from planet Mars or Mars Hill. In fact, he never played college football at all.

Sistrunk had found a love for the game of football at an early age in Columbus, Georgia. He grew up with eight siblings and became a three-sport standout in his region in football, basketball and track. His mother didn't allow him to play football, so he got one of sisters to secretly forge the permission papers on his behalf.

Having come from an impoverished upbringing, the defensive tackle set his sights on providing for his family in other avenues after graduating from high school.

"Well, it's not that I didn't want to go to college," Sistrunk previously said. "The thing about it was that my parents, we already were struggling trying to get my sister out of college. And my oldest brother was in the Navy. So, I had some scholarships to Lincoln University. And most schools were looking at me. ... But [my mother] had already said she couldn't afford it."

Instead, he followed his brother's footsteps into the military, enlisting into the United States Marine Corps. After serving his contract, he played in several different semi-pro leagues, earning $300 a game playing for the Norfolk Neptunes of the Continental Football League.

"It was very few guys on the team [that went] to college. So, Neptune was good. It was good for me. I got a chance to meet a lot of scouts. They used to come around and look at us."

That included scouts from the Canadian Football League and the National Football League. Sistrunk eventually landed a tryout for the Los Angeles Rams in 1971.

But his tenure in LA came to an end once Al Davis got his eyes on him.

The Oakland Raiders were having joint practices with the Rams when Sistrunk exploded on the scene. Davis and Ron Wolf had built a reputation of finding talent in uncommon places, being some of the first in the league to extensively scout Division II programs and HBCUs.

They didn't know Sistrunk hadn't attended a college, nor did they care after watching him.

"That was a good Saturday for me. I think I got four or five, three or four sacks or whatever, I got it," Sistrunk recalled of the scrimmage against the Raiders. "And Monday morning we got up to go to practice and the trainer said, 'Coach wants to see you.' I said, 'OK. What did I do wrong?' That's the way you know, I went in his office. He said, 'Sit down. I got some good news for you. And I got some bad news for you.' And I was no doubt; I was on the next flight back to Georgia.

"He said, 'You know the good news, you did a good job this weekend. The bad news, we're going to lose you.' I really got sad, and he said, 'No, we're trading you to Oakland.'

With hindsight 20/20, trading for Sistrunk would change the trajectory of not only his career, but the Raiders organization. It did come with growing pains, though. Sistrunk could feel a target on his back going to Oakland as someone who never played college football. But the chip on his shoulder propelled him to new heights, along with the support of Head Coach John Madden.

"The thing about it is that I had a shot to make it in the NFL and I used it to my advantage," Sistrunk said.

"But John was a down-to-earth coach and he looked out for his players," he added. "And he never looked down on a player. He'd be wishing that every guy that [tried out] for the Raiders made it. But he had one of the best teams in the NFL and he was one of the best coaches you want to play for."

As a rookie, Sistrunk started all 14 games for the Silver and Black, racking up an interception and an unofficial 4.5 sacks (quarterback sacks didn't become an official statistic until 1982).

Two years later, he was named a Pro Bowler and Second-Team All-Pro after recording three fumble recoveries and an interception. In the 1976 season, he started every game for the Raiders as they went 16-1 en route to their first Super Bowl title in franchise history.

"We had to treat the Super Bowl like work," he recalled. "Just another day on the job. Just go out, do your work, win, and go home.

"We did and we won. When I played with the Raiders, it was like being part of a family. I loved every one of the guys from those teams."

Sistrunk remains the only player who's never attended college to be a Super Bowl champion. And his teammates, and Raider Nation, still consider him the University of Mars' sole alum.

Tom Flores' path into professional football was quite the peculiar journey compared to today's NFL standards.

Born to Mexican immigrants, the Flores family lived in Sanger, California, where Tom found his lifelong love of football entering junior high school. After spending two years at Fresno City, he transferred to University of Pacific and was put at the quarterback position for the first time – while also playing a plethora of other positions to keep him on the field.

"First of all, you had to play 60 minutes in those days, so by senior year I averaged 56 minutes a game," Flores previously said. "Never came out. Very rarely came out. I played
defensive back and I was a punter and quarterback. The summers were hot in the heat of the sun, and long. And when you have to go both ways, you got very few breaks."

After earning his bachelor's and master's degree from Pacific, he searched for opportunities to play in the NFL. To no avail, he traveled north to the Canadian Football League to sign with the Calgary Stampeders.

"I had no choice but to go to Canada because that was the only place I could go," Flores said. "The NFL did not draft me. I was kind of disappointed. I was hurt in a way, so I went to Canada. I went to Calgary, and I spent a couple months up there and ended up getting released after a few games."

After being cut ahead of the 1958 season, he drove back to California to play semi-pro football for the Bakersfield Spores. He played one game before being cut once again.

After a failed tryout with the then-Washington Redskins, it seemed Flores' playing career was over. But in 1960, an upstart professional football league was introduced – the American Football League.

Not knowing anything about the league upon its inception, he signed with the Oakland Raiders for their inaugural season. Even after winning the starting job, it still didn't feel like the big break Flores imagined it would be.

The Oakland Raiders went 9-33 in their first three seasons in the AFL. Flores' performance suffered due to lingering shoulder injuries from college and he missed the entire 1962 season with tuberculosis.

In 1963, former Los Angeles Chargers receivers coach Al Davis stepped into the building, taking over as Raiders head coach and general manager.

"He called me in and we sat down. We weren't engaged more than 10 minutes when he was on the board, drawing this and that and offense and I was watching it and looking at it and I said, 'Wow, this really kind of neat stuff,'" Flores recalled.

"And from then on actually, I was on the same page with him because it was a quarterback's dream what he was drawing up on the board. I always felt I was meant to throw the ball. It brought back memories of drawing all those crazy plays when I was in high school. They were all passes. There were no runs involved, all passes. Big plays."

The big plays quickly followed suit.

After going 1-13 in 1962, the Raiders went 10-4 in their first season under Davis. Flores went 8-1 as the team's starting quarterback and threw 20 passing touchdowns. Three seasons later, now with Davis as the minority owner of the team, Flores posted career highs in passing touchdowns (24) and passing yards (2,638) and was selected as an AFL All-Star. The Raiders ultimately defeated the Denver Broncos in their regular-season finale to win their first AFL Championship.

Ultimately in 1972, Flores returned to the team that gave him a chance to prove himself – this time as a wide receivers coach. Following John Madden's retirement, Davis named Flores head coach in 1979. That decision would lead to Flores winning two Super Bowls with the Raiders.

As he was enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2021, he's one of two men in NFL history to win a Super Bowl as a player (with Kansas City Chiefs), assistant coach and head coach.

"The Raider life has not been easy. It's been extremely hard, but always with the light at the end of the tunnel. I've gone through it with pride, to coin a phrase, pride and poise, dedication, and loyalty. All of the above.

"It's been a good life."