Carson Voss remembers the pre-football game tailgates with his friends and family on the banks of the Red Cedar in the fall. He remembers watching the Michigan State Spartans play basketball with his family during the winter.
A dual-sport athlete from Dansville – his home just a short 20-minute drive to campus – Voss had always dreamed of one day playing in either the Breslin Center or Spartan Stadium.
Turns out that day is now and his childhood dream is about to be fulfilled.
After three years at Western Michigan University, Voss made the decision to bet on himself and entered the transfer portal, ready to find a new home to continue his dream of punting on the gridiron while pursuing his post-football goal of going to dentistry school.
He will now join Michigan State's 2024 roster as a preferred walk-on punter.
It wasn’t easy mentally, though, as the days dragged on, and the offers were few.
In fact, it came down to the very last day.
Voss is a man of faith and saw divine intervention in how he ended up a Spartan.
“God is a god of the fourth quarter,” Voss said, referring to the fact that his dream came true at the last possible minute before spring semester started. “It had been such an uncertain time in the transfer portal. The specialists are the last group that people get to.”
Portal visits ended at midnight on Sunday, Jan. 7. The Spartan coaching staff called Voss at noon that day, with twelve hours to go – “can you get up here today so we can all meet up face to face?”
Voss and his parents – Jim and Krista – jumped on the opportunity.
“The visit was incredible,” Voss said. “We got to sit down with Coach [Jonathan] Smith for a good 30 minutes and just talk and meet him. We got to tour around the facility for a while, talking to both special teams coordinators, Coach [Chad] Wilt and Coach [Keith] Bhonapha. Sat down and talked with them for a good 30 to 40 minutes, too. We were pretty awestruck with everything. It was pretty spectacular.”
Voss really appreciated the time he got to spend with new head football coach, Jonathan Smith.
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“Coach Smith was great,” Voss said. “Very laid back, very relaxed. He was very straight forward with what he wants to do with the program. That this is a place that he can really build something great and special – and that Michigan State deserves this after going through a handful of hardships over the last 5 to 10 years.”
Voss was really impressed with Coach Smith.
“Especially that late at night,” Voss explained about Smith. “We were talking with him about 6 to 7 p.m., they had been working all day, had just gotten back from the coaches conference, but he was willing to give us a bunch of time to ask any questions we wanted. A lot of coaches want to sell you their program. I didn’t feel like he was trying to sell us the program – he was talking about relationships and that the player comes first. I’ve read a lot of that stuff from other guys in articles that you guys [at Spartans Illustrated] have posted. He was pretty incredible.”
Smith and Voss bonded over the fact that they both took the walk-on route to their dream school.
Voss had one important question for Smith: How can I earn myself a scholarship here?
He liked the answer he received.
“One of [Smith’s] favorite things to do as a head coach is to be able to offer walk-ons scholarships because it means so much to him,” Voss said. “It was really nice to hear that, especially as a walk-on coming in and competing for a job when there is already a guy who is really good at it. I felt like I’d be valued, for sure.”
While Voss will be walking into a Michigan State specialists room with a very talented punter in it already in Ryan Eckley, he was assured by his new coaches that “every position will start from scratch on the depth chart and I’ll have an equal opportunity to chase after the job.”
In the fall, Voss will be a redshirt junior with two full years of eligibility remaining.
“I’m very confident in my abilities,” Voss noted. “I know [Ryan] Eckley is really good but, like [the MSU coaching staff] said, it’s a clean slate at every single position and I’m ready to go and compete and attack this thing. I’m going to go after it hard.”
Eckley ranked second in the Big Ten Conference and seventh in the FBS in 2023 with a 46.8-yard punting average, the fifth-best in MSU single-season history. But Voss knows he has been given this opportunity for a reason.
“Me just being there is better for Eckley – it gives someone to push him,” Voss said. “It’s nice to have competition. It makes you work harder. He’ll make me work harder and I’ll make him work harder. I didn’t start playing until I was a senior in high school, so it’s all been about the grind and getting better and better every single day.”
Growing up, Voss put most of his focus on basketball but played quarterback and cornerback during football season. Starting in seventh grade, he added punting to his list of football duties. But he didn’t really train as a punter until his senior year of high school.
“I never took [punting] seriously until COVID hit and Ryan Anderson, Rutgers' 2018 Big Ten punter of the year, came back into town and offered training sessions and told me that if I really worked on it, I could go anywhere I wanted,” Voss explained. “That’s when I really began to take it seriously.”
With the Broncos, Voss spent his first two years training behind Western Michigan team captain Nick Mihalic, a five-year player who mentored him and taught him everything he knew about punting.
“It was huge being there while [Mihalic] was there and able to use him as a resource,” Voss said. “I felt pretty comfortable in my progression to be able to go in and attack it and earn the starting spot in my third year.”
His third year at WMU went well as he earned the starting punting spot. He played in three Power Five games and those games were his best performing games. One of the things Voss is most proud of is the fact that he earned Academic All-MAC status while studying Bio-Med.
Western Michigan was overextended on scholarships and didn’t have one to offer to Voss at the end of his redshirt sophomore season. That’s when Voss decided to enter the transfer portal and follow his dreams.
“Going to those [MSU] games [as a child] with my brother and parents,” Voss remembered fondly. “It’s been a dream for a really long time. I’ve been bleeding green from the get-go. Now here I am.”
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