On Saturday night before a sold-out crowd, Cal Adomitis of Pitt won the third edition of the Patrick Mannelly Award. The Award, given annually to the FBS senior judged the best long snapper by a panel of experts, was founded by myself, Chris Rubio and Mannelly.

This post has some of my personal observations about Saturday’s event and the Award in general.

First, Bernie’s Book Bank benefits from the Award ceremony. They are an incredible organization and I saw first-hand it impactwhen we distributed books and two of the finalists, Alex Ward (UCF) and Damon Johnson (USC), read to the children at a Chicago elementary school. While all three finalists are incredible snappers, they are also incredible people as evidenced by the fact that Adomitis missed some Award events Friday because he was cutting his hair for a charity event in Pittsburgh that raised over $100,000.

It is amazing to see how this Award has grown in just three years. It is truly a labor of love and the founders work tirelessly to make the Award and ceremony the very best. There are always critics and personally I do not handle the criticism as well as I should. We try to objectively evaluate all senior snappers and solicit input from many sources since snapping can often be difficult to objectively measure. COVID also made things more difficult, as a senior can now get an extra year and the intent was to only include candidates in their final year of college.

Despite the critics, I know that this Award is making an impact, both by giving unsung snappers an Award and event to call their own and give back to the community while doing so. We are on to Year Four!