Davenport’s Sojourn Has Been a Kick

Matt Davenport is not Midwestern, not precisely suited for physical football and not even half of Aaron Gibson on the monster right tackle’s lightest day.

Actually, Davenport’s probably not even half of his heartily proportioned coach, Barry Alvarez, either.

So how in the name of Garo Yepremian did this 5-foot-10, 170-pound (if you believe the generous listing in the Wisconsin media guide) kicker end up as one of the key members of this broad and burly Wisconsin team heading into the Rose Bowl game?

“I don’t know,” Davenport said recently. “It’s a story sometimes that I don’t know myself how it all happened.”

Davenport grew up in San Juan Capistrano, famous for monks and swallows but not for Big Ten football players or really for football players of any kind.

He even remembers rooting for UCLA against Wisconsin in the 1994 Rose Bowl, though he will not do so in this Badger-Bruin edition.

Now, four years after graduating from Capistrano Valley Christian High, the senior is Wisconsin’s all-time field-goal accuracy leader, an emotional touchstone and someone who looks right at home wearing red and leading the Badger charge.

“It’s just crazy--it’s so full circle,” Davenport said. “I was speaking with my dad the other day, saying there are a lot of easier ways to get to the Rose Bowl than from Southern California to Wisconsin and back. . . .

“When I was coming here, even I didn’t know what was going to be out here. I didn’t know if it was going to be just a farm and had a couple buildings here or there.

“That’s what I pictured, you know, cows roaming when you go to class. But I was confident about it. And now when I go back, [his friends and family] kind of say, ‘Oh, you were right.’ They just can’t believe it.”

At Capistrano Valley Christian, Davenport played soccer, baseball and football, then went to Saddleback Community College looking for a baseball scholarship.

But after his freshman season, he heard from Wisconsin assistant coach Kevin Cosgrove, who was recruiting another member of the Saddleback team: Would Davenport like to walk on at Wisconsin?

Lacking offers in any other direction, and, as he recalls, sensing that kicking at Wisconsin “just felt right,” Davenport set off for Madison.

Big-footed but inconsistent John Hall, now kicking for the New York Jets, had struggled during his junior season with Wisconsin, and Alvarez wanted somebody the Badgers could count on to press Hall in practice.

Hall kept the job his senior season, but Davenport made an impression in 1996.

“I call him the little rat,” Alvarez said. “He walked on here and I told him we would put him on scholarship if he could be our short kicker.

“One of the coaches out there said, ‘From 50 in he’ll nail everything.’ I swear, honest to God truth, first day of practice in two-a-days, I put him out to a kick a [short] field goal and I swear the ball just barely got over. And I’m thinking, ‘He’s the one supposed to kick it 50 yards?’ ”

The next fall, with the kicking job open after Hall’s departure, Davenport made no bones about his belief that he’d win the position, earning the nickname “Money” after casually telling a reporter that he considered himself “pretty much money from 45 in.”

Said Cosgrove: “When he first started kicking, his kicks were just like a poof. The extra points were barely going over the goal posts. We’d back him up and each field goal would barely go over the goal post.

“But we’ve watched him improve and improve. He’s earned his name, ‘Money.’ He goes out there with a lot of confidence. He doesn’t flinch.”

Though Hall’s thunder foot seemed ideal for Wisconsin’s workmanlike style of football and the blustery Big Ten weather, Davenport fits the Badger blue-collar sensibility more directly in one very real way.

Alvarez’s program is built on consistency and dependability, and Davenport has been a soaring example the last two seasons.

It did not hurt, either, that after missing his first attempt (a 23-yarder against Syracuse) Davenport made consecutive game-winning field goals against Indiana (a 43-yarder) and Northwestern (48), both with fewer than 10 seconds remaining, to open Wisconsin’s Big Ten campaign in 1997.

Take away those two pressure field goals, and the Badgers don’t have eight victories last season, don’t have an Outback Bowl bid and probably don’t have a winning season.

Overall, Davenport was 14 for 17 on field-goal tries last season and made 31 of 33 extra points.

Suddenly, he was a Wisconsin stalwart.

“Last year, my first year starting, it’s something I was prepared for,” Davenport said. “I was ready for it. But all the accolades, I wasn’t expecting that. . . .

“I just started to realize, these are not just kicks to be worried about being five for five or five for six. These field goals are a huge part of the team.”

Because Wisconsin was so dominant this season--and so dominated by Michigan in its one defeat--Davenport was not called on to make any game-winners. But he made about everything else: He was 18 for 20 on field-goal tries (including four for four against Minnesota), and made 37 of 39 extra-point kicks.

“If it ever comes down to [a win-or-lose kick] again, I’m pretty confident I’ll do the same thing, have the same result,” he said. “But I always said, I’d like to kick extra points all game long.

“This year has been a little different. I haven’t had any game-winning kicks. But I’ve had kicks where I make a field goal and all of a sudden the momentum changes. If I would’ve missed, things might have been different. It’s a different kind of pressure.”

His career percentage on field goals of 86.5 is, by far, the best in Wisconsin history. One of the misses this year came after he made a 31-yarder against Illinois that was wiped out before he missed from 46. His other miss was from 51 yards against Penn State.

Any wild soccer player can pound the ball hard in the general direction of the goal posts and get oohs and aaahs even as the ball spins off course.

Davenport, in the mold of the Vikings’ Gary Anderson, knows that the only way you get points is if the ball goes through the uprights, not by how forcefully it veers into the stands.

“You know, anybody can miss from 58 yards,” Davenport said. “Guys are always saying, ‘Yeah, he nailed that. He had the distance.’

“I always thought, whether it’s 45 yards or however long it is, I want to get it right down the middle. I never try to overpower it.”

His cocksure attitude, coupled with standout punter Kevin Stemke, has helped the Badger special teams become a major factor in Wisconsin’s success, even as Ron Dayne and Gibson batter the opponents and the Badger defense swarms the ball.

The other players realize the kicks mean good field position, momentum changes and possibly the difference between victory and defeat.

So even a Southern California native with a wise smile and a devilishly accurate foot is part of the Big Red machine.

“It’s been easy for me just because I’ve been able to fit in socially, not just as part of the team but I came in and I made some good friends,” Davenport said.

“But it is funny [that] in class people either think I’m like a frat guy sometimes or if I have a sweatshirt on or something, they think I’m in crew or something.

“I don’t even see [being so much smaller] as anything. I think maybe part of the reason I’ve done well is [because] that never bothered me. I’m not intimidated by anybody. Some guys are bigger, some guys are smaller.”

After he leaves Wisconsin, Davenport said he wants to go to graduate school, probably back on the West Coast, but nothing, for obvious reasons, is set in stone.

“My family’s there, so my heart’s there,” Davenport said. “But I’m leaving it wide open.

“You know, three years ago I was in California--now I’m in Wisconsin. So three years from now, who knows what I’m going to be doing.”