photo by: Cal Athletics

Cal long snapper Rino Monteforte yells out during a game against Minnesota on Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025, in Berkeley, Calif.

Long snapper Rino Monteforte received his first Division I scholarship offer on July 26, 2019, from the University at Buffalo after he put on a masterful performance at one of the school’s kicking camps.

“He was unbelievable,” recalled Taiwo Onatolu, who was the Bulls’ special teams coordinator at the time.

Almost seven years later, now four seasons into his collegiate career with two as a starter, Monteforte still considers it the best day he has ever snapped.

He and Onatolu have been able to joke about that recently because the two are reunited: Monteforte came to Kansas this offseason to serve as the Jayhawks’ long snapper for the 2026 campaign.

“For a guy to kind of walk on at Notre Dame and earn a starting position there, play at Cal, start there, I was excited because I had a prior relationship with him,” Onatolu said.

He is the first snapper Onatolu has ever recruited in the transfer portal.

“He offered me that day in the ninth grade before I’d ever played a snap of varsity football, and that to me was so awesome,” Monteforte said. “It’s crazy how everything comes full circle, you know? I’m a believer in God, a practicing Catholic in my faith here and so blessed to be here at Kansas, and truly believe that eight years later — he believed in me then, he believed in me now — God put me here for a reason.”

The fifth-year senior from North Babylon, New York, has already emerged as a leader of sorts in a young special teams unit that currently includes redshirt sophomore long snapper Hollis Moeller, redshirt sophomore kicker Martin Connington, redshirt freshman kicker Dane Efird and freshman punter Matt Gill.

“We talk about in our leadership meetings with Coach (Matt Gildersleeve) that a good relationship always has to have some friction,” Monteforte said. “So for me to be able to best serve Martin, Matt, Hollis and Dane, we need to have a little friction, which is good. That’s a really good thing, because at the end of the day, our little friction here and there right now is going to be what’s going to allow us to kick game-winning field goals, hit tight punts with one second left on the clock to help this team win football games.”

Monteforte knows a thing or two about that.

He doesn’t necessarily fit the profile of a typical Division I football player at 5-foot-7, 208 pounds, already bearing a degree in theology from Notre Dame, and having previously stated during his time at Cal that he hopes to teach theology while serving as a principal, athletic director or coach.

But he climbed the depth chart in three years at Notre Dame to serve as the Irish’s primary snapper on extra points and field goals in 2024. That was of course the season that they not only made the College Football Playoff but reached the national championship.

Along the way was Monteforte’s snap on Mitch Jeter’s game-winning field goal to beat Penn State in the Orange Bowl and punch Notre Dame’s ticket to the title game.

It was an emotionally significant moment for Monteforte. His father, Benito Monteforte Jr., died of brain cancer in 2011, when Monteforte was 7. Ever since his death, which took place at 11:11 a.m., Monteforte has found a lot of meaning in the number 11, and it popped up in multiple places on Jeter’s game-winning kick. Not only were there 11 seconds left on the play clock when Monteforte snapped the ball, but in his mother’s video of the play, a clock in the stadium reads 11:11 p.m.

“So my dad was with me in that moment,” Monteforte said.

The snapper thought that would be a valuable story to share in his first meeting with KU reporters on Tuesday, just as he decided to share it with his new teammates when they were talking about heartbreaks in an attempt to get to know each other earlier in the year.

In an attempt to lighten the mood, he pointed out that Jeter’s kick had knocked out a Penn State team for which KU associate head coach Andy Kotelnicki — also in the room at the time — was the offensive coordinator.

“I kind of threw a shot in at Coach K to lighten the mood a little bit, and he was like, ‘Now you’re talking about my biggest heartbreak,'” Monteforte recalled with a smile.

After spending three years at Notre Dame, Monteforte went to Cal on scholarship and served as the Bears’ starting long snapper for a season. Following a coaching change, he made the move to KU, where he has found himself quite impressed.

“The way this place is structurally run here is on par with the best of the best that I’ve experienced in this game, from strength and conditioning, Coach Sleeve and the staff, they are incredible,” Monteforte said. “And they push you to the point — it’s not like a push-you-to-the-side ‘push you,’ it is ‘We want to get the best version of every single person, all 105 people on this roster, every single day.'”

He said that the facilities are so impressive that he never wants to leave — and he follows through on that, sometimes spending 10 or 11 hours a day in the facility, he said.

“I’m so grateful that I have the opportunity to be here now and be a part of this brotherhood,” he said. “So special. So excited to go get to work.”

The snap in the CFP, Monteforte said, is obviously his favorite so far, “but I’m looking forward to making so many great memories here at Kansas and hopefully a lot of high-pressure kicks — or hopefully lots of PATs, that’s the goal, right?”

The work that will help him thrive when he does get to those high-pressure moments, which will inevitably arrive, is already underway.

“Each year I’ve had a different big moment that kind of defined that season,” Monteforte said, “and we talk about it a lot here: If I go into one of these situations saying ‘I want to put the ball on the right hip,’ ‘I want to snap laces out right to the holder’s hand,’ it’s not just going to happen by me wishing it.

“It’s about attacking the process to achieve those goals by making sure that I continue to enhance my process and be the same person, be as consistent as I possibly can every day at practice, every day in the weight room, meeting room and such, is what is going to allow me to achieve what we want to do.”