Kicked Around

Matt George, former Canyon High kicker, laughs when he calls himself a vagabond.

He’s certainly accustomed to living out of a suitcase.

Signed recently by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, George is being sent to play this spring for Amsterdam of NFL Europe.

It’s the latest of many stops for the former Cowboy, who earned second-team NCAA Division III All-American honors as a punter at Chapman University in Orange 18 months ago and hasn’t slowed down since.

He played briefly for the Pittsburgh Steelers and had tryouts with the Jacksonville Jaguars and Denver Broncos.

For the moment, if he’s not jumping the fence onto the football field at College of the Canyons with kicking tee in hand, he’s hitting the weight room or making the drive from his Canyon Country home to Orange for additional workouts.

It’s a nonstop lifestyle that has taught George to roll with the punches.

“If there’s one thing I have learned, it’s to adapt fast,” George said.

George grew up playing club soccer in the Granada Hills area and began kicking a football at Canyon as a freshman.

His sojourns began shortly after he graduated from high school in 1993. That fall he enrolled at Palomar College in San Marcos, north of San Diego, and kicked for a season with the Comets.

In 1994 he accepted a scholarship to San Diego State. He thought he was going to be the Aztecs’ primary field-goal kicker, but instead was assigned to kickoffs and long field-goals, which were long in coming.

So in early 1995 he transferred to Northern Arizona, where he quickly found more bad luck.

“They told me I would be the starter, but when I went up there they decided to redshirt me,” he said.

Frustrated and humbled, George left Flagstaff before playing a down. He was considering another transfer, this time to LaVerne, but wound up at Canyons taking classes in the spring of 1996.

Then a friend told him about Chapman. When he relocated to Orange in the fall of 1996, it didn’t take him long to realize he had finally found a place where he could cool his heels. George seemed to hit it off with everyone.

“I’m a really big fan of his,” said Ken Visser, Chapman football coach. “I’ve coached for 31 years and in that length of time there are a certain number of guys you really like. He’s one of them.

“He was a total team guy. Some kickers will root for the team to get stopped on downs so they can go in and make themselves look good. Not him. He was running up and down the sideline screaming for our guys to score.”

George made four of six field-goal attempts in his first season at Chapman and averaged kickoffs that went four yards into the end zone.

Not long after the 1997 season began, All-American punter Mario Acosta was injured. Visser, who previously coached at Whittier College and was an assistant at Long Beach State, asked George to fill in.

Visser was surprised by George’s response.

“A lot of placekickers that I have worked with would say no [to punting] because they thought it would take away from their chances as kickers,” Visser said. “He could have easily looked at me and said no. It’s a speech I’ve heard many times.

“He just looked at me and said, ‘Good.’ ”

George averaged 43.8 yards a punt and was named second-team All-American.

“It gave me the opportunity to market myself better and it was also a nice change,” George said.

He wasn’t too bad as a kicker either. In 1997, he made nine of 15 kicks, connecting for a 53-yard field goal and two 52-yarders.

Nevertheless, he was passed over in the NFL draft, but wangled a one-day tryout with the Jacksonville Jaguars. He didn’t stick, so he went to Denver for a tryout with the defending Super Bowl champions, where the ax fell quickly again.

He wound up in Pittsburgh last summer where he kicked a couple of field goals against Tampa Bay in the Hall of Fame game.

George thought he had a chance to catch on, but the Steelers sent him packing before the regular season began.

When the Steelers’ regular kicker, Norm Johnson, was injured midway through the season, George got the call to replace him against Tennessee. He kicked a couple of extra points, but the Oilers blocked a crucial 36-yard field-goal try.

Pittsburgh released George for the second time after the game.

Tampa Bay, meanwhile, had been keeping track of him.

“We were impressed with his performance against us during our first preseason game against Pittsburgh,” scout Mark Dominik of the Buccaneers said. “He stood out in that game. We followed him through the entire preseason and regular season and then, when he was available, we were eager to sign him.

“He has a good strong, accurate leg and is very consistent,” Dominik said. “We sent him to [Europe] to monitor his progress against quality competition because he played collegiately at a small school.”

George says he sees room for improvement in all three aspects of his kicking game.

For now, however, Tampa Bay only expects him to kick extra points and field goals.

“I’m hoping to take my rookie status and build it up by getting some more games under my belt,” George said. “I think I’ll be more comfortable.”

Visser said George has spent so much time on the road that he hasn’t had the benefit of consistent instruction that would help him fine tune his efforts, particularly in kicking.

“He can kick,” Visser said. “I really thought he did a good job in the Hall of Fame game. I feel that if he can settle in just on placekicking and work on it some more, and if he gets good coaching, he could be pretty darn good.”

The 10-week NFL Europe season begins next month.

“I’m excited,” said George, who has never been to Europe. “I get an opportunity to play football and travel. It’s an all-around good deal because I want to get into the NFL next year.”

And then maybe he can settle down for a while.

“I’m used to jumping around,” he said. “But maybe I’ll land a spot somewhere and stick there for a while.”