COLUMBUS — Tyler Durbin’s Ohio State debut went simply.
All he did was become the nation’s leader in extra points with 11, earn credit for three unassisted tackles, win special teams player of the week on the team, delight his coach with six touchbacks — and send nearly everyone else scrambling for a roster to learn No. 92’s name.
Yes, this is real life, even if it might not feel like it.
Durbin is a fifth-year senior who played his first football game last week at age 22. As a walk-on, Durbin and his wife, Kristin, will spend this year living off her salary as a kindergarten teacher.
For now he’s the starting kicker for OSU, ranked fourth in the latest Associated Press poll. Those who didn’t know who Durbin was before the Buckeyes’ season-opening win had some company.
“I don’t know where the hell he came from,” Buckeyes coach Urban Meyer said. “He is really good.”
The answer on Durbin’s origin: Burke, Va.
The answer on how he ended up here, now, and on this stage: Even Durbin isn’t totally sure.
This season is Durbin’s second full year playing football.
A star soccer player in high school, Durbin flirted with the idea of being a kicker as a teenager, though his soccer schedule interfered, and soccer was the sport taking him to college.
Durbin played soccer for two years at James Madison University, but decided to transfer days into his junior season in 2014 and sought a new school with a civil engineering program. Durbin thought his big leg and football might be a natural pairing, and he sent a tape of him kicking on a high school field to four schools: Virginia, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, and Ohio State.
Of all of them, he was especially hoping for Ohio State.
“I wasn’t putting all my eggs in this basket, but I was really hoping it would work out,” Durbin said.
Durbin couldn’t wait forever for football to materialize, so he briefly moved on. He was set to attend George Mason University and planned to walk on to the Patriots’ soccer team when a package arrived two days after Christmas, 2014.
Greg Gillum, then an OSU assistant, noticed the tape and wanted Durbin to come to Columbus.
“He called me back a month or two after [I sent the tape] and told me that they had an open spot on the team, they needed a kicker, and I could be on the team in January,” Durbin said.
“My first day on campus was the day they won the national championship, and I started workouts with the team a week after that.”
He walked on to the team that spring, though no one — Durbin and his family included — expected him to be the Buckeyes’ No. 1 kicker this season. But there he was in front of 107,193 people in Ohio Stadium, kicking off and handling the Buckeyes’ field goal duties.
“The whole story has been crazy from the beginning,” said his father, Martin Durbin. “It’s gotten even crazier during the past month.”
Meyer’s favorite running joke this season has been to pretend he doesn’t know Durbin’s name. And until a month or so ago, he actually didn’t.
Durbin clobbered a few punts in practice, and Meyer came over to introduce himself. That didn’t stop the OSU coach from feigning ignorance about his kicker this week at his weekly news conference, when he went through the team’s standout players and arrived at special teams.
“On the special teams front, our kicker was our player of the game,” Meyer said.
“Right? Kicker. I think you spell that K-I-C-K-E-R.”
On their way back home from Columbus, Martin and Sandy Durbin heard of Meyer’s comments about their son and were cracking up in the car.
Meyer has since professed his admiration for the walk-on, and said Tuesday that Durbin will be the No. 1 kicker even when former starter Sean Nuernburger returns from an injury.
The Durbins weren’t quite sure what to expect when Tyler enrolled at OSU. Unanimously, none of them could have envisioned this.
“I don’t really know how all of this happened,” Durbin said, “But it’s been an incredible ride.”
Contact Nicholas Piotrowicz at: npiotrowicz@theblade.com, 724-6110, or on Twitter @NickPiotrowicz
First Published September 8, 2016, 4:22 a.m.
