Of course Cole Tracy will be back for the Auburn game.
Did you think the former LSU placekicker was going to miss it?
It’s barely been over a year since Tracy’s last-second kick beat Auburn in what was then an upset in Alabama. That 42-yard game-winner is Tracy’s legacy, the first thing associated with his name, the memory that will never go away.
“I’m not even bull****ing you,” Tracy said. “It’s something that I think about just every day. I go back in my phone three times a week and just scroll through pictures.”
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Perhaps the images still come clearly in your own mind: the down-the-middle kick, Tracy being chased into a dogpile, his teammates hoisting him on their shoulders toward the visiting locker room, where he planted an LSU flag near Auburn’s iconic hedges.
Zach Von Rosenberg remembers players were closing their eyes on the sideline.
LSU’s punter watched the whole thing, saw Tracy’s reaction when the kick fell true, sprinted to be the first to reach the Tigers’ newest hero. Von Rosenberg still laments that he was second. Nickel safety and track sprinter Kary Vincent beat him to Tracy and gave the push that started the dogpile.
“That was a hell of a moment,” Von Rosenberg said Monday.
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Tracy knows those memories will be relived once he flies into town Thursday, when he walks the tailgates for the first time on Saturday morning.
The placekicker who set seven school records in his one season in Baton Rouge knows there will be a common question, too: Just what has Cole Tracy been up to?
Since his last kick in LSU’s Fiesta Bowl victory over Central Florida — made field goal No. 29, the school’s single-season record — Tracy has attended the Senior Bowl, tried out for two NFL teams and waited in vain for his name to be called in the inaugural XFL draft last week.
The 23-year-old continues to train for a shot at professional football at home in Southern California, especially since only one of the XFL’s eight teams drafted a kicker (St. Louis BattleHawks; Elliot Fry, South Carolina). Tracy’s agent still peruses NFL transaction boards and keeps his client’s name in the minds of general managers.
But until a pro gig calls, Tracy has focused on what may be another common question: Just where did all that money go?
What money?
The over $20,000 in donations that more than 200 LSU fans sent to the graduate transfer’s first school, Division II Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts. The heaps of digital cash that arrived in sums like $54 — the same number of the school record-tying distance that Tracy kicked in LSU’s 33-17 win over Miami in the season opener — and with comments such as “Thanks for sending us Cole!”
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It was a unique effort that Tim Stanton, Assumption’s vice president for institutional advancement, said still gets “amazed” reviews when he tells other people in the fundraising world.
None of that money has actually yet been spent.
Tracy said an Assumption administrator called him in the summer and said: Hey, Cole, how do you want to spend the money?
He said he was confused. It was Assumption’s money, in his mind, and they were free to spend it on whatever they felt best.
Stanton said they wanted to honor Tracy’s input, and the former placekicker began to draw up a few plans to divvy up the money across assets within the athletic department.
Five thousand here. Five thousand there.
In the initial wide-ranging plans, Tracy noticed the money “kind of went away really quickly.” So he focused on one specific plan: updating the athletic training room.
Tracy said he’d always been somewhat of “a freak about staying healthy” and keeping his body ready. Plus, the training room had a wide impact. Assumption College, Stanton said, has a total enrollment just under 2,000 people, and about 30% of them are athletes.
The Assumption College training room serves all 24 sports within the athletic department.
The training room is “super outdated,” Tracy said. The small room resembles more of what he had access to in high school. There aren’t many training tables. Tracy had to do his stretches and warmups in the hallways. He’d go to a nearby CVS and buy ice bags because the program’s one ice tub would be taken.
“The resources, equipment is not anywhere close to what a real college needs,” Tracy said.
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So Tracy jumped into the fundraising world. He wrote up a 25-page proposal that tells his personal story and compares Assumption’s training room to the other Division II colleges in the northeast. He outlined three specific goals that Assumption could spend money on, ranging from $50,000 to $1 million.
Three weeks ago, Tracy flew to Massachusetts and met with a few of Assumption’s donors, and Stanton said one has already committed a four-figure donation.
And when Tracy returns to Baton Rouge, he’ll bring up the fundraising efforts at the tailgates, hoping that the same rabid fans that helped before might again even though he calls himself “the old-news kicker.”
“I’m trying to do good with the money LSU donated,” Tracy said.
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