In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a moment that’s particularly memorable. But don’t tell Philip Florenzo that.
Even if he’s a little fuzzy on some of the details himself.
It was officially garbage time for Clemson’s football team late in its non-conference rout of an overmatched UConn team in November 2021 inside Memorial Stadium. The Tigers’ first- and second-teamers had been out of the game for a while as Clemson emptied its bench to get some playing time for younger players and walk-ons who typically don’t get much.
One of them was Florenzo, a long snapper buried on the depth chart during his first season with the Tigers. But when then-freshman tight end Jake Briningstool skied over some of UConn’s smaller defensive backs to catch reserve quarterback Billy Wiles’ jump ball in the end zone with less than 4 minutes left, Florenzo’s moment had arrived.
Florenzo took the field with some of the Tigers’ other special-teams reserves for what was literally his first career snap on Clemson’s last point-after attempt of the game. It’s a routine play in football for those who execute it regularly. For Florenzo, though, it felt like anything but.
“The best way I can describe it is it was like a movie, the first time you get out there,” Florenzo said. “It’s like a POV (point of view) when you’re running out. I remember running out there, lining up and looking to my left and right and seeing the giant o-linemen that are next to me. I’m like, ‘Oh OK, what are we waiting on?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, we’re waiting on me.’
“So I get down in my stance, and that’s about all I remember, to be honest with you. I blacked out from that point on.”
Florenzo calmed his nerves long enough to get off an accurate snap. The hold was good. So was the kick. Clemson won 44-7, and a dream that required plenty of persistence and a little bit of luck was realized.
“It was surreal,” Florenzo said.
Getting started
Florenzo played his high school football in Maryland at Loyola Blakefield, a private Catholic prep school where he was also a member of the Dons’ lacrosse team. He didn’t experiment with long snapping until his senior year when he was suggested to give it a try.
He was willing to try just about anything that would help give him a shot at his ultimate goal of playing college football. Florenzo said he could have possibly done so at the University of Miami at Ohio, which showed some interest in bringing him on as a preferred walk-on. But Florenzo decided to visit some other schools before making his college decision, including Clemson.
“My dad always told me, ‘I’m not paying for you to play sports. I’m paying for you to get an education,’” Florenzo recalled. “But I fell in love with Clemson.”
He enrolled at Clemson in the fall of 2020 to pursue a degree in financial management, but he was just as motivated to pursue a walk-on spot at one of the nation’s top Power Five programs. The coronavirus pandemic kept that from happening during his freshman season, but Florenzo trained throughout that year hoping to eventually get a tryout. He also bombarded Clemson’s football staff with one email after another begging for that chance.
Mike Dooley, the program’s player personnel director, eventually responded to Florenzo with some bad news. With the NCAA granting eligibility relief in response to the 2020 season affected by COVID-19, Clemson had scholarship upperclassmen returning the following season that weren’t initially expected to do so. Those returning players didn’t count against the 85-scholarship limit for the 2021 season, but they did count toward the overall number that teams are allowed to have on the roster in a given season, shrinking the number of walk-on spots. There was no room to add more.
“That was a rough day for sure, but I just stuck with it,” Florenzo said. “You have a dream, and you just chase it. And that was kind of the goal.”
That summer, Florenzo was back home working a restaurant job at Ropewalk Ocean City, where he struck up a conversation with a Clemson alum during a shift. The way Florenzo remembers it, after learning he still wanted to try to walk on to the team, the alumnus informed Florenzo he knew Clemson President Jim Clements personally and wanted to know if he wanted him to put in a good word for Florenzo.
“I was like, ‘Let’s see. Let’s see how that goes,’” Florenzo said. “Maybe if the president of the school emails (Dooley), something good will happen.”
Florenzo received some more good fortune later that summer when the NCAA expanded the football roster limits. That along with a recommendation from former NFL special teams coach-turned-private instructor Gary Zauner, whom Florenzo trained with for a few days, helped clear the way for him to land the tryout he initially thought he wouldn’t get heading into his sophomore year.
“I call myself a crawl-on because there are walk-ons that get asked to come here, and I’m a crawl-on because I had to ask them to let me be on the team and to try out,” Florenzo said.
A spot on the spot
When Florenzo showed up at the on-campus tryout in late August, he did so with roughly 20 other long snappers hoping to also catch the eye of Swinney and his staff, he recalled. But Florenzo needed about 15 minutes and five snaps to maximize the opportunity he’d been waiting on.
“I’d never seen Coach Swinney before, but I had some guts that day,” he recalled. “I was like, ‘OK, watch this.’ I threw it, and I threw one of the best punt snaps I’ve ever thrown. And he was like, ‘OK.’ And he walked away from me for a little bit.
“I felt good about it, but they said they were going to send an email three days later, which was going to be the most nerve wracking three days of my life if that’s true.”
But Florenzo didn’t have to wait that long. Swinney approached him a few minutes later with an ultimatum.
“Coach Swinney was like, ‘If you make this snap right here, we’ll make you a Tiger,’” Florenzo said.
His last snap was also a success, and Swinney followed through on his word. Florenzo also remembered Swinney making a prediction for the Tigers’ newest walk-on.
“As I’m walking away, he goes, ‘Hey Florenzo,’” Florenzo said. “I go, ‘Yeah, coach?’ He goes, ‘You got a girlfriend? I was like, ‘No, I’ve been too busy doing this.’ And he was like, ‘Well you’ll have one soon.’ I remember it like it was yesterday.
“It was that big moment in my life. It was amazing. It was everything I dreamt of and the beginning of the journey for me.”
Florenzo has gotten on the field more since his initial appearance late during that 2021 season. He was the Tigers’ short snapper in all 14 games last season and enters his third year with the program as a more integral part of it than he ever could have imagined.
“So glad I stuck with it,” Florenzo said. “Being a part of this team is just the best thing of my life right now. I love every second of it.”
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