Zachary Levine: Aussie making best of tough breaks

To use a punting analogy, Daniel Gold got a bad snap.

Gold was living out a dream. The Melbourne, Australia, native spent his exchange year in 2005-2006 as a backup punter for the Penn football team, and once that was over, the "punter from down under" didn't want the dream to end.

He successfully obtained a rare third semester abroad from the University of Melbourne to stay at Penn and was about to enter his second football season. He'd even spent time in the offseason working with Darren Bennett, the first Australian to punt in the NFL.

But less than a week before the season started, the adventure did.

Just days before preseason practice, Gold found out that he was not eligible to play football because, as a junior exchange student, he hadn't completed enough of his degree at his current institution.

"This opportunity means so much to me, I'm going to do everything in my power to get back to Penn to play football and to graduate from this place," Gold said he thought to himself at the time. "You spend a year with those guys, and, given everything we went through last year as well, you really develop some close friendships. I just really wanted more than anything else to be back with those guys."

Evidently, everyone else wanted to be back with him.

Gold received signatures from the entire team, including coach Al Bagnoli, as part of his application for permanent transfer into Wharton, where he spent his first two semesters abroad.

No luck there, either.

And just like that, Gold's football career was over.

"My experience last year with Penn football - that was the coolest thing I've ever done in my life. I had so much fun with it; I was working real hard in the offseason to get better," Gold said. "A week later, I'm not playing football."

As his roommate, linebacker Brian Raike was in a special position to see how the ordeal affected him.

"I think he'd sacrifice anything else in his life to be back here," Raike said.

Maybe so, but the closing of one door led to the opening of lots more.

It's a punter's job, even when he gets a bad snap, to be cool in the face of pressure.

So once again, Gold turned to a friend he met through football.

Former football and sprint football player Scott Pickett helped Gold land a job at Morgan Stanley, where he works on private wealth management.

Even after dropping 25 pounds when his football career turned into a club swimming career, the look isn't quite right.

"I came here with my boots and footballs, and the next thing I know, I have to buy shirts and ties and jackets," Gold said. "I think I've kept that bloody men's store in Liberty Place in business."

While Monday through Friday were consumed with stocks and bonds rather than shanks and bombs, there's only one place to be on Saturday.

On the night of the Villanova game, I walked by Daniel in the concession line, but he wasn't alone: He had a football in his hand.

"Do you throw it around during the game?" I asked.

"I kick it around during the game. We Aussies don't throw - we just kick."

But the Aussies don't agree on exactly what sort of kicking should be done.

"In South Australia and Western Australia, [Aussie-rules football] is religion," Gold said. Rugby is "virtually non-existent. Up north in Brisbane and Sydney, rugby is king. There's quite a bit of friction. You get some rugby players coming into one of our pubs back home, and there's always a bit of chit-chat. We don't like them. They don't like us."

And with that disagreement comes opportunity.

Since the end of his football days, Gold has turned his eye toward business. And not just Morgan Stanley.

Picture this. Take the best from the Australian Football League. Match them against the best from the National Rugby League. Combine the festive feeling of the home-run derby with events similar to the NFL combine and the goodwill of a telethon, and you have Gold's vision.

At this point, it's more than a vision for Gold, who has already started the company All-Star Sports to market the idea, and who intends to take a course over his summer (our winter) so that he can better pursue the business after he has returned to Australia.

"If I commit to this, I feel I'm going to have to commit fully," he said. "All my friends and girlfriends at home think I'm out of my mind, but my heart's telling me to give this the best chance possible to succeed."

At this point, after feeling the sting of rejection that he hadn't felt too many times before in his life, there is no other option. He's gotten advice from the best, including Wharton professor Scott Rosner, who specializes in sports business and law, and Comcast Spectacor CFO Sanford Lipstein. Much of his time is spent analyzing competitions like ESPN's Pro Bowl Skills Challenge and the NFL Network's QB Challenge in order to draw some ideas for his concepts of fitness, speed and punting contests.

"Dan is one of the most motivated and entrepreneurial students that I have ever taught," Rosner said. "It would hardly surprise me if he achieves a tremendous amount of success in his endeavors."

Part of reaching his goals involves never ceasing to think about the project, even aloud.

"We talk about it at least once per evening when I get back from practice or work," Raike said.

As a punter, you do everything you can to prepare for the bad snap. Sometimes, they're so bad, you have to improvise. And that's what Gold did.

Leap to field it. Take a step to the right. Hope for the best.

"In hindsight, things have worked out tremendously well," Gold said. "You've just got to make the most of your opportunities, and I'm just living a dream with this."

As he spends his final month in America, he's unfazed by the bad snap.

Leap to field it. Take a step to the right. Boom it 50 yards downfield.

That's what punters do.

Zachary Levine is a senior mathematics major from Delmar, N.Y., and is former Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is zlevine@sas.upenn.edu.

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