FORT WORTH, Texas — He’s 29 years old, has his degree, and still plays college football.
TCU punter Jordy Sandy has it good.
“There are times when I say to myself, ‘The maturity level I’m at, I do think I should be at a different stage of my life,’ ” he said.
Kids.
“But I do love it here,” he said.
If he wasn’t punting for TCU, Sandy has a pretty good idea where he would be. He would be back home in Traralgon, Australia, working in a paper factory.
He literally punted his way to America, and to a different life.
Sandy recently made the decision to return to TCU next season.
“Yep, I’m going to be a 30-year-old college football player,” he said.
It really beats the alternative.
Sandy’s hometown population is just over 26,000, and located about two hours southeast of Melbourne.
According to Britannica.com, his hometown was “First settled in the 1840s, its name is Aboriginal for ‘crane feeding on frogs.’ ”
So apparently it’s fate that brought Sandy to a place where he is Horned Frog.
Sandy said most of the people he grew up with finish school and stay in his small town after they land a blue collar job. It’s what he did.
He worked at a paper mill.
“I helped make reams of paper, or bags for McDonalds,” he said. “That was my job, and if this didn’t happen I’d probably still be there.”
Although Australia offers major metro areas such as Melbourne, Perth and Sydney, Sandy said most of the people he grew up with choose to stay in Traralgon.
Some of his friends left for the big city, to pursue opportunities, but the majority remained where he grew up.
A place where he grew up playing Australian rules football, where he kicked a football all the time.
Aussie rules football has become a factory for American rules punters.
Darren Bennett, Mat McBriar, Micheal Dickson, and the list goes on.
“It’s something I’ve done my whole life, and most people (in the U.S.) aren’t familiar with the game but it sets us up to play well here,” he said. “It’s a chaotic game, and it’s a massive space and everybody has to be able to kick the ball. It’s like a game with a bunch of punters.”
When he was 24, and working, he decided to enroll in a kicking academy in Melbourne. To complete the academy required a four-hour commute back and forth to Melbourne three days a week.
The first few months were not great. He had to learn how to kick an American football, and make a different type of spiral.
In about the fourth month he got it down.
A Texas Tech special teams coach saw some of Sandy’s work on YouTube, and he was in the process of being offered a scholarship to be a Red Raider.
But that coach was fired, and in 2019 then TCU coach Gary Patterson offered Sandy a scholarship.
Sight unseen, two weeks later, “I went to the other side of the world,” he said.
He was a 25-year-old freshman college football player.
TCU and Fort Worth was not what he was expected.
Sandy expected Fort Worth to be some version of a Hollywood Clint Eastwood western movie, and the city would be full of cowboys.
They’re there. They’re just in the Stockyards.
The scholarship offer worked; Sandy has developed into a reliable, all-conference punter.
Against Michigan in the Fiesta Bowl, he averaged 44.5 yards on six punts; his last attempt, with TCU protecting a six-point lead with 54 seconds remaining, traveled 50 yards.
The other part of this adventure wasn’t the culture shock as much as the age shock. Sandy isn’t like Tom Brady, but he is 10 or 11 years older than many of his teammates.
“They do keep me on my toes but hanging out with kids is a bit weird,” he said. “I have a girlfriend now, and I play a lot of golf.”
He is roommates with TCU kicker Griffin Kell.
Sandy’s parents recently returned to Australia after visiting their son for about four weeks. The trip included the TCU graduation ceremonies, where he walked the stage in cap and gown and was awarded his degree in communications with a minor in psychology.
His parents normally wake up at four or five in the morning to watch TCU games online.
Sandy plans to pursue his master’s degree next year, and eyes a career in real estate.
“I do think about it often, what if I was still back home; what would I be doing?” he said. “A lot of people get that job and that’s the rest of their lives. I’m so grateful I’ve done this.”
Maybe being a 30 year old college punter will be a bit weird, but Jordy Sandy has it good, and he knows it.
