Nobody coaches the kickers and punters at Clemson University , but that’s not much different than most anywhere in college football.

As Clemson’s special teams coach, Danny Pearman has kickers and punters under his supervision. Though Pearman has a great deal of experience with college special teams, he would probably be out of his element tutoring Clemson’s new kicker Greg Huegel and new punter Andy Teasdall on the finer points.

Most kickers have a mentor much like a golfer has a swing coach, but on a major college football roster the other 110 players often have several people qualified in blocking, tackling, running, throwing or catching.

“They’re here because they can all fundamentally do the job,” Coach Dabo Swinney said of Huegel and Teasdall. Assistance with focus and concentration come in generous doses. Sports psychologists are on the payroll, but no kicking coaches.

“As far as the mental part of it, absolutely, and we work hard on that,” Swinney said. “Kickers all have their gurus who they spend time with in the summers. That’s just kind of their own little world.”

Teaching the finer skills has become a lucrative cottage industry, attracting dozens of former pros as accomplished as Hall of Fame punter Ray Guy and 23-year veteran kicker John Carney.

Dan Orner, a coach for 15 years based in Charlotte , divides kickers and punters into “gamers” and everybody else, distinctive groups with fluid boundaries defined primarily by an ability – a proclivity actually – to block out all distraction and perform on demand.

Baseball closers and the best golfers are gamers, all highly competitive yet capable of disguising their emotions. Membership can be revoked after years in the club and a career undone by one errant kick or one lousy night, particularly if they intrude on the next kick or the next game.

Chandler Catanzaro, Dawson Zimmerman and Bradley Pinion are gamers who recently wore Clemson uniforms. Ammon Lakip was building a dossier as a gamer until an arrest in June placed his career on hold.

A couple afternoons in Death Valley and a Thursday night in Louisville , Ky. , should determine whether Huegel and Teasdall are card carrying members of the club.

Huegel of Blythewood needed two auditions just to win a uniform at Clemson then beat out scholarship kicker Alex Spence to replace Lakip for at least the first three games this season. His performance during camp this month was clearly superior, surprising Clemson coaches with the power generated by a smallish frame.

Most high school kickers use a device known as a block, which elevates the ball an inch or two and provides the holder a dependable spot. College kickers cannot use blocks. Huegel kicked off the ground in high school making his work with Orner more about fine tuning technique and generating torque.

“His ball striking was outrageous,” said Orner, who conducts camps at several college campuses and clinics in Charlotte . As many as nine of his pupils kicked in the NFL.

“He’s not the biggest guy in the world but he hits it like a ton of bricks,” he said. “He didn’t have a tough transition because he was already kicking off the ground.

“The biggest challenge from high school and college is the speed and feeling the pressure.”

Orner definitely believes Huegel is a gamer.

“He’s a laidback kid. He’s one of the nicest guys you’ll meet,” Orner said, “but when he starts taking his steps back he can flip a switch. It’s a great mentality. His reminds me a lot of Denver Broncos kicker Connor Barth (whose) laidback mentality is mistaken, that he’s not serious.

“Both of those guys have laser focus.”

Orner also worked with Alex Spence, whom Huegel beat out for the job, and former Clemson kicker Chandler Catanzaro, in his second season with the Arizona Cardinals. Catanzaro , who met Huegel while helping at a camp, told Orner, “This guy reminds me a lot of me, how he’s not afraid of the big stage.”

Teasdall doesn’t have a punting guru, but there hasn’t been a pressing need. As a walk-on redshirt freshman in 2013 he punted once in the S.C. State game for 42 yards, and last season he punted twice in the bowl game for a 43.5-yard average.

If he needs advice Teasdall can call his father, an orthopaedic surgeon in Winston-Salem , N.C. , and a former college athlete, and for technical wisdom Catanzaro or former Clemson punters Dawson Zimmerman and Bradley Pinion. Otherwise, the kickers and punters on the Clemson roster critique one another.

“In high school I went to a couple of camps then took it back to high school, created my craft and worked on perfecting it,” Teasdall said. “Now, you’ve got the other guys who watch you and you can watch film, and we help each other.”

At R.J.Reynolds High School he was a football player – receiver, safety, kicker and punter never came off the field — and an all-state lacrosse player. His biggest adjustment to college football was the down time at practice, particularly with Pinion punting.

When Pinion decided to leave after his junior season and turn pro, Swinney encouraged Teasdall to continue preparing as if the job would be his. Teasdall won it during spring practice, and last week Swinney presented him with a scholarship.

“A door opens and you’ve got to take advantage of it,” Teasdall said.  “Looking forward to this season I was working on mainly staying even keeled as possible, staying level, not getting too high and too low.

“If I do that, I know I’ll be good.”

With or without a coach.