Zetts gets his ‘Rudy’ moment

The Struthers High graduate got to play one more down at quarterback for Akron.

By JOE SCALZO

Vindicator sports staff

In late October — more than two years after he came to grips with the end of his college quarterbacking career — student assistant Tim Zetts was attending an offensive staff meeting at the University of Akron when Coach J.D. Brookhart asked him, “Hey Zetts, can you be a quarterback?”

“He was joking at first,” said Zetts, a 2004 Struthers High graduate. “I was like, ‘Yeah, sure.’

“Then the next day he was like, ‘No, really, can you be a quarterback?’ And I was like, ‘Uh, well, I can still throw. I guess I could.’”

The coaches checked with the compliance department, discovered he still had a year of eligibility remaining and, just like that, Zetts was a player again.

The Zips began this fall with three-year starter Chris Jacquemain under center, but he was kicked off the team for breaking team rules. His backup, Matt Rodgers, started three games before suffering a season-ending knee injury.

That left a true freshman and a redshirt freshman on the depth chart. Things got so bad, the team actually took out a three-column display ad in the school newspaper asking for students with high school quarterbacking experience to contact the team.

Zetts certainly qualified — he was an honorable mention all-district quarterback for his father Gary at Struthers — but he wasn’t exactly in game shape.

Zetts had started his career as a walk-on at Akron, then transferred to Division II Saginaw Valley State, where he tore the ACL in his right knee in the spring game in his first semester. He transferred back to Akron the following spring to start his coaching career. He then tore the same ACL in a pickup basketball game. His knee was fine by this fall, but he wasn’t exactly running through tires in his spare time.

“I was not in football shape, let’s say that,” he said, chuckling. “I was pretty sore my first week and I actually had to get treatment on my shoulder after the first week.

“They didn’t make me do too much. I didn’t have to condition with the team, thank God.”

Wait. The story gets better.

Brookhart discovered Zetts was also a long-snapper in high school, so he added that to Zetts’ duties. Two weeks after resuming his playing career, Akron’s long-snapper got crushed on a kickoff against Kent State and was questionable to return.

“Normally when the defense goes on the field, we meet with the offense to go over some things, so it was one of those situations where I hear coaches yelling my name and I wasn’t really paying attention,” said Zetts. “They said, ‘Are you ready to snap?’ And I was like, ‘What?’

“I mean, I was as ready as anybody who hadn’t snapped in six years would be. What ended up happening was the kid toughed it out and stayed in to snap.”

Between classes, coaching and playing, Zetts’ hours started to add up. For a few months, he never had a day last less than 12 hours. He’d start at 8 a.m. and wouldn’t leave before 8 p.m.

Assistant coach Walt Harris, the former head coach at Pitt, would let him hold his own position meetings with the quarterbacks, so Zetts would practice with the players, then coach them afterward.

He got the nickname Jackie Moon, after the player-coach in the movie “The Longest Yard.” And it was not without its advantages. When he was on bus trips and the coaches got the traveling perks, he called himself a coach. When he was at team meals where the players eat first, he called himself a player.

And on Nov. 27, on the last play of the last game of his college football career, Zetts took his first snap, kneeling down to run out the clock on a 28-21 win over Eastern Michigan.

During the school year, Zetts lived with several lineman, who prodded Brookhart in the days leading up to that game to get him in for one play. When Zetts finally went in, he got a big hug from lineman Mike Ward.

“I said, ‘Mike, you’ve gotta get off me. We need to run this play,’ ” Zetts recalled, laughing. “It was pretty crazy.

“I’m going to toot my horn a little bit. The linemen carried me off the field after the game, so I was officially/unofficially the first player carried off the field at the new [Infocision] Stadium. It was like [the movie] ‘Rudy.’ ”

Zetts graduated on Dec. 12 with a degree in business and organizational communication and is hoping to continue his college coaching career elsewhere. (Brookhart and his staff were fired after going 3-9 this fall.)

His first preference would be as a graduate assistant at Youngstown State, which just hired Eric Wolford as head coach.

“I may just show up on his doorstep and see if he’ll give me the time of day,” said Zetts. “I really want to coach and I was lucky enough to work with Walt Harris, who is well-respected in the coaching world and really taught me a lot.

“Hopefully someone will see that on my resume and give me a shot.”

scalzo@vindy.com