Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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WHERE HAVE YOU GONE? "Because of his level of intelligence and also his personal humility and his spiritual undergirding, Hunter was a perfect fit." The project started as more of an autobi- not surprise me at all." Smith's wide variety of talents date back ography, but shifted to a wider perspective when the two authors realized that win- ning the Super Bowl taught Smith and his teammates some unexpected lessons. Sev- eral of the players in the book talk about the surprisingly empty feelings they felt after reaching the pinnacle. "Winning the AFC championship was wonderful because you still had another game to win," Smith said. "When the Su- per Bowl was over there were no more games to win, and it's kind of a lonely feeling. Everything I worked for has been accomplished. And really, it doesn't feel any different than any of the other wins." ambitions and talents to keep him busy when football started to lose its appeal. He already had a well-established music career that started with his old group Con- nersvine and continued with The Hunter Smith Band, which he formed in 2010 when he was playing with the Redskins. The fact that he turned to writing as well didn't shock any of his family or close friends from Notre Dame. "Hunter has always been sort of a Re- naissance man — preacher, musician, ath- lete, just a multi-talented guy," said Jerry Wisne, a tackle for the Irish during the late 1990s and Smith's college roommate. "When I heard that he wrote a book, it did Luckily for Smith, he had plenty of other THE RENAISSANCE MAN to Sherman High School where he was a star for the football, basketball and track teams. He cleared 6-10 in the high jump as a high school senior, which would have put him in second place at this year's Big East Tournament. His Irish teammates learned about his leaping abilities during the sum- mer before his junior year when new head coach Bob Davie decided to hold a team- wide Olympics. One of the events was a slam dunk contest, and Smith beat out the rest of the football team to take gold. "I had played a lot of basketball," he said. "It was kind of an interesting anom- aly. Here's this guy that's one of the faster guys on the team and can jump higher than anybody on the team, but he's a punter." Smith said the Irish had a few tricks in the playbook to try to take advantage of his rare abilities as a punter, but he never got to run them in the games. As a pro, Smith's claim to fame (besides his 43.0-yard aver- age over the course of 691 career punts) is being the only special teams player to ever pass and run for a touchdown in the same season. He established himself as more than just a punter during his second season in the league when he caught up to and dragged down punt returner Deion Sanders from the Dallas Cowboys to save a touchdown. Away from the field, Smith was a bit of a cowboy himself. Wisne said he and Smith used to have roping competitions in their dorm room and made frequent visits to the Elkhart rodeo when it was in town. He said AUGUST 2012 114