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 {{Amfoot-punter-stub