Californian snaps to attention

NEW ORLEANS -- Meet Jacob O’Hair, the Californian in Monday night’s Bowl Championship Series title game.

If you are into tracking the progress of home-state players, better memorize that name now. You won’t hear it a lot Monday night, if at all, when O’Hair and Louisiana State play Ohio State in college football’s national championship game.

“A reporter asked me the other day what I hoped for in publicity,” O’Hair said here Friday. “I told him I hoped for nothing.”

And he meant it.

Besides being the only player from the Golden State who is certain to play, O’Hair is also the only player, other than perhaps his counterpart at Ohio State, who craves anonymity.

O’Hair is LSU’s long snapper.

He plays only on his team’s punts, field goals and extra points. Were announcers to pay any sort of extended attention to him Monday night, it would probably be for a mistake -- a bad snap. Then, he becomes a story. Matter of fact, that’s pretty much the only way.

“Sometimes, they say your name as the field goal team comes out,” he said, almost wistfully.

It is interesting that, from the approximately 200 players on the rosters of the current Nos. 1 and 2 teams in the country, only five are from California and only a long snapper from Rancho Cucamonga is likely to get into the big game.

The only other Californian on LSU’s roster is reserve quarterback Jimmy Welker from Sherman Oaks Notre Dame High. One LSU official said that, if Welker plays, it means “the game’s been really good for us or really bad.”

Ohio State has linebacker Mark Johnson from Los Angeles Dorsey High, tight end J.D. Larson from Ventura and defensive back Grant Schwartz of Dana Hills, all buried deep on the depth chart.

So, from one of the most fertile high school football recruiting states in the union, that leaves O’Hair.

“Hadn’t realized that,” he said. “Kinda neat.”

His road to this national championship stage actually started in the school registration line at Mt. San Antonio College in 2004. He had been a good offensive and defensive lineman at Rancho Cucamonga High and had done a little long snapping as a junior, but none as a senior.

When it was time for college, nobody recruited him.

“I wasn’t big enough. I was something like 6-1, 220,” he said. “Heck, our line here is something like 6-8 and 350 now.”

So, needing to work and still wanting to participate in football -- and knowing that registration day at Mt. SAC is a nightmare unless you are an athlete -- O’Hair came up with a plan.

“The first 800 that get to register are athletes,” he said. “But I also couldn’t just sign up as a football player because I didn’t have time to do it full-time. So I signed up as a long snapper. That way, I could get done quickly at practice and still get to work.”

Out of registration hell at a junior college, a star was born.

OK, a long snapper was born.

After two years at Mt. SAC, where he snapped well while working at a warehouse and an Outback Steakhouse at Ontario Mills, O’Hair decided he wanted to finish college and hoped somebody would pay for it. So he went to kicking and long-snapping combines to show off his skills.

“You pay your $200 and they promise that there will be college coaches there to look at you,” O’Hair said. “They aren’t supposed to talk to you, but they hand you their cards and then they call you later.”

Much like Elvis, O’Hair’s star rose in Las Vegas. LSU’s Bradley Dale Peveto, special teams coordinator and linebackers coach, discovered him at a combine there and offered an education in exchange for fast, accurate spirals.

O’Hair turned down Texas A&M;, which had also offered a full ride, and told Arizona State, which had been his fallback school, that he wouldn’t walk on there.

For two years, he has been the Tigers’ long snapper. It’s been more trying than one might think.

“My first four games last season I snapped on all extra points, field goals and punts,” he said. “But against Mississippi State, I was running down under a punt and tried to make a tackle and tore my knee ligament.”

Instead of having immediate surgery, O’Hair cut back to snapping just for kicking, where he could merely hike and block and not have to run downfield. But then, before last year’s Sugar Bowl, his backup suffered a knee injury and O’Hair, bad knee and all, went back to punt-snapping and hobbled down the field in that game.

LSU won, 41-14, over Notre Dame.

He had surgery two days after the game and did all of LSU’s long snapping this season.

Monday will most likely be his last game of organized football. His father, Tony Harbeck, stepmother Tina Harbeck, and half-brother and half-sister Anthony and Heather will be here. So will his mother, Nancy O’Hair of Dallas, whose name he was given at birth.

If he gets through the game without a miscue, it will mark an entire Division I career of the same.

Never had a bad snap, he said.

He’ll get his degree in general studies and make contacts with pro teams, just in case somebody wants to keep paying for his skills. If that doesn’t develop, he will come home to the Inland Empire and try to follow in the footsteps of his uncle and father, both firefighters.

“It’s been great here, and I love the hot, spicy food,” he said. “But it’s time to get home. I never thought I could live here. I get all messed up on directions. I’m always looking for the mountains so I know where I am.”

Spoken like a true Californian. Come Monday night, the only one.

Dwyre can be reached at Bill.Dwyre@latimes.com. For previous columns, go to latimes.com/dwyre.