By John McGonigal, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Rich Lackner can't quite recall the media outlet. Perhaps it was NPR. That sounds right to Carnegie Mellon's longtime football coach, but it doesn't matter much. What matters more than the interviewer is the interviewee — and a quip that will be outdated come Saturday.
Years ago, a reporter asked Lackner, who's coached Carnegie Mellon since 1986: “Have you ever turned out any professionals from your program?” He responded with a smile. “Oh, tons of professionals,” Lackner said. “I've got professional engineers, professional doctors, professional business people. I've got all kinds of professionals. But no professional football players.”
Fortunately for Lackner, he gets to retire that dad joke. One of his former players — Carnegie Mellon defensive end Brian Khoury — made it to the pro ranks. And all it took was a circuitous 10-year journey that tested his nerves and racked up airline miles.
Khoury, now a long-snapper, is set to debut with the XFL's DC Defenders on Saturday afternoon at Audi Field against the Seattle Dragons. It's the XFL's first game since its revival. The league, owned by WWE magnate Vince McMahon, failed after one season in 2001 and is banking on this weekend's slate of games to capture a curious audience craving football only a week after the Super Bowl, one year after the Alliance of American Football crashed and burned.
That doesn't worry Khoury, though. And if it does, his obvious excitement about playing in a real professional game on ABC's national broadcast masks any concern. Khoury is immersing himself in the experience. His path — from fast-tracked Ford employee to sleeping on friends' couches to showering in a sprinkler in the Miami sun — has allowed him to do that.
“I'm fortunate to be in a situation where I'm getting experience and building a resume as a professional football long-snapper,” Khoury said a few weeks ago over the phone from the Defenders' training camp in Houston. “In pro football, you don't really ever know what your opportunities are going to be. And there's always going to be risk. ... At the end of the day, that's the opportunity in front of me. You really get used to living in the present and making the most out of it and enjoying it.”
Khoury isn't the only Defenders player with Keystone State college connections. Former Pitt offensive lineman Dorian Johnson is one of three former Panthers to land on an XFL roster, joining Dallas Renegades linebacker James Folston and St. Louis BattleHawks pass rusher Dewayne Hendrix. Also on the Defenders is former Penn State wide receiver DeAndre Thompkins, one of three former Nittany Lions on XFL teams.
All six of those Power 5 players — Johnson, Folster, Hendrix, Thompkins, Matt McGloin and Saeed Blacknall — had stints in the NFL. Some brief, but experience nonetheless. And while those former Pitt and Penn State products pushed for time and recognition in the league, Khoury was learning an entirely new position, tasked with providing signs of progress to those who called him mad.
After graduating from high school in Iowa and using three gap years to play junior hockey — his time in Davenport, Iowa; Haverhill, Mass.; and Hudson, N.H., proved his stick-handling wasn't up to par — Khoury realized college hockey wasn't going to work out. A bright kid, now 21 years old, Khoury applied to every Ivy League school and got denied by all of them. His ACT score was apparently a couple points shy of Harvard's standards. But he was admitted to Carnegie Mellon, where he studied electrical and computer engineering.
When visiting campus, Khoury met with Lackner. He still had “the bug to compete,” and playing Division III football appealed to him. His interest caught Lackner's eye, too. “He's basically a man when he comes here,” the Tartans coach said. “He's not an 18-year-old kid who needs a year to develop and grow. He comes to us as a man.”
That man became a two-time finalist for the Cliff Harris Award, given to the nation's top small college defensive player. Khoury set a single-season Carnegie Mellon record with 13.5 sacks as a junior in 2015 and wrapped his senior season as the program's all-time sacks leader (29.5). It wasn't until after his breakout junior season that the 6-foot-4, 245-pound pass rusher considered professional football.
Khoury tried to make it as a defensive end. In the spring of 2017, his final semester as a Carnegie Mellon student, Khoury met with scouts from the Atlanta Falcons and Pittsburgh Steelers, went to a few Canadian Football League open tryouts, performed at Duquesne's pro day and held out hope he'd be picked up as an unselected free agent after the NFL draft. But his phone never rang and nothing came of the CFL tryouts.
“I just saw the writing on the wall,” Khoury said. “Seeing who the other guys were competing for those spots, I mean, I don't want to make excuses, but they had more experience than me. They were bigger, faster, everything.”
While this is all played out, Khoury was no longer living in Pittsburgh. He was shacking up in an Extended Stay America hotel for four months in Livonia, Mich., 30 minutes from Detroit. Khoury was set to begin a rotational program with Ford Motor Company as an engineer in July 2017, and he figured being in Michigan would help establish a training routine while easing his transition into the real world.
It was around that time that Khoury picked up long-snapping. He had never done it before, but at those CFL tryouts, Khoury noticed he had the build for it. So he practiced incessantly in his new Michigan apartment, meticulously watched YouTube videos of long-snappers and, in January 2018, Khoury attended a combine in Mobile, Ala., hosted by former NFL placekicker Michael Husted.
The showcase served as an eye-opener and offered a lifeline. It was the same weekend as the Senior Bowl, so pro scouts swung by the specialist camp. Khoury didn't qualify for the one day in front of those scouts. Flat out, he wasn't good enough. Not yet. But while down there, he met Drew Ferris — a former Florida Gators long-snapper who shared a mutual friend with Khoury. Ferris went to high school with someone who helped Khoury build a 24-foot, solar-powered boat at Carnegie Mellon.
It wasn't your normal networking connection. But it worked out.
Khoury and Ferris hit it off in Alabama, where the latter offered a long-snapping lesson at a local high school. “When we first started, I mean, he was rough,” Ferris said with a laugh. “Let's just say he was a blank canvas.” After that meetup in Mobile, Ferris told Khoury he should come out to California to train if long-snapping was something he wanted to take seriously.
“After a month or so, I realized that if you want to do this, now is the time to do it,” Khoury said.
So from February to November 2018, he flew to San Diego periodically to work out at Carney Training Facility, operated by 24-year NFL veteran placekicker John Carney. Khoury was still working and paying rent in Detroit. He didn't have his own place in San Diego, and hotels were too expensive.
So in San Diego, he bounced around on friends' couches and even one night slept on a gym floor. He didn't disclose which gym exactly. "The landlord might not be happy about it," he said. But that was the lifestyle he chose. Khoury also hopped around to different camps. And at one point, already checked out of his hotel, Khoury showered in a sprinkler in a Miami parking lot after he finished up at a specialists showcase, before heading to the airport.
“That was my option,” Khoury said with a laugh. “So you just do it.”
Eventually, Khoury settled in and moved from Detroit to San Diego. He worked remotely, then locally for Ford. And, more importantly, he improved as a long-snapper. In January 2019, Khoury went to an open tryout for the San Diego Strike Force, an upstart Indoor Football League team, and made the squad, his first real break.
“I probably underestimated his attention to detail and his commitment and his perseverance. Because he's off the charts in all those areas,” Carney said. “He's an engineer. He knows how to problem solve. He's phenomenal at time management. He's a master planner.”
That master planner, now with a couple games of live tape from his time with the Strike Force, attended The Spring League, a two-week showcase and scouting event in Austin, Texas, in April 2019. The place was populated with XFL coaches as the revived league looked ahead to its October draft. There, Khoury met DC Defenders special teams coordinator Steve Wilson for the first time.
Six months later on Oct. 16, Khoury received a call from the Defenders out of the blue. He was drafted. And now he had a decision to make: Khoury, while he finagled his full-time job up until this point, had to pick the XFL or Ford. He couldn't continue on with both. And against conventional wisdom (and a stable payday), he chose long-snapping.
Khoury said his parents were hesitant of the decision, but ultimately supportive. Ferris, who thought Khoury was a little nuts for pursuing long-snapping in the first place, was proud of his friend and peer. Khoury himself thought he was kind of loony for giving up the Ford gig for an unknown like the XFL.
“I've tried to focus on the fact that there are not many people that get the opportunity to play professional sports or even just do something that they love to make a living,” Khoury said. “Realizing how fortunate I was with that drove me to see through some of the crazy stuff. But I definitely am a little bit crazy.”
Lackner, Khoury's coach at Carnegie Mellon, doesn't even see that “little bit” of insanity.
Lackner, who remembers Khoury hitting the sled an extra 10 minutes after every CMU practice, isn't surprised the former defensive end took this unorthodox path to pro ball. In fact, Lackner called him “a great example of what hard work, determination and focus can do for you,” someone all Division III football players should look at as a beacon of hope.
A beacon of hope they can see for themselves if they flip on ABC on Saturday afternoon.
“I don't think he's crazy,” Lackner said. “He's the kind of guy who, when he puts his mind to something, holy crap, he doesn't let up. I admire him for this. It's a passion.
“Why not?”