All American D2 Baseball at Eastern Illinois.
All American punter 1977 D2 at Eastern Illinois.
Jeffrey Alan Gossett (born January 25, 1957) is a former
American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...
punter who played in the
National Football League
The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...
(NFL) and the
United States Football League
The United States Football League (USFL) was a professional American football league that played for three seasons, 1983 through 1985. The league played a spring/summer schedule in each of its active seasons. The 1986 season was scheduled to be ...
(USFL). He played college football at
Eastern Illinois University where he was a member of
Sigma Pi fraternity. He was the
starting punter for the
Los Angeles/Oakland Raiders from 1988 through 1996. During the 1996 season, at age 39, Jeff was the NFL's oldest punter. Gossest had an amazing ability to extend the amount of time his punts stayed in the air (known as "hang time"), which allowed his fellow players to get down the field to converge on the punt returners and/or down balls inside the 20 yard line. He ended his football career after the 1996 season. One of the top punters in the NFL in the 1980s he averaged a career high 44.2 yards per punt in 1991 and earned a spot on the
Pro Bowl
The National Football League All-Star Game (1939–1942), Pro Bowl (1951–2022), or Pro Bowl Games (starting in 2023) is an annual event held by the National Football League (NFL) featuring the league's star players.
The format has changed thro ...
roster. He also played in the USFL for the
Chicago Blitz
The Chicago Blitz was a professional American football team that played in the United States Football League in the mid-1980s. They played at Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois.
Team history
The Blitz were one of the twelve charter franchis ...
in 1984 and the
Portland Breakers
The Portland Breakers were an American football team that played in the United States Football League (USFL) in the mid-1980s. Before moving to Portland, Oregon, the franchise was previously in Boston, Massachusetts as the Boston Breakers and ...
in 1985.
Drafted by NY Mets 5th round (107th pick) 1978. Played 2 years in minor league, Third Base and Outfield. Made All Star team in 1978 with Lynchburg Mets.
Baseball career
In 1978, Gossett was drafted in the fifth round by the
New York Mets
The New York Mets are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of Queens. The Mets compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member of the National League (NL) East division. They are one of two major league ...
and played in their
farm system for two seasons as an
outfielder
An outfielder is a person playing in one of the three defensive positions in baseball or softball, farthest from the batter. These defenders are the left fielder, the center fielder, and the right fielder. As an outfielder, their duty is to c ...
and
third baseman
A third baseman, abbreviated 3B, is the player in baseball or softball whose responsibility is to defend the area nearest to third base — the third of four bases a baserunner must touch in succession to score a run. In the scoring system us ...
.
References
External links
Profile page on NFL.com
1957 births
Living people
American football punters
Eastern Illinois Panthers football players
Kansas City Chiefs players
Cleveland Browns players
Los Angeles Raiders players
Oakland Raiders players
American Conference Pro Bowl players
Chicago Blitz players
Boston/New Orleans/Portland Breakers players
Minor league baseball players
Players of American football from Illinois
People from Charleston, Illinois
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