If you follow ISU football and don’t know who Dakota Zimmerman is, that’s fine. He likes it that way.

“As long as no one knows my name, I’m very, very happy because I don’t want to be known,” Zimmerman said.

While a handful of ISU seniors such as defensive backs Ter’Ran Benton and Leonard Johnson and left tackle Kelechi Osemele have spent more time on the field and in the limelight, Zimmerman has quietly but consistently been one of the most important four-year starters on the team.

“He’s been so steady for so long and the consistency at that position is not unnoticed, especially by a coaching staff,” said ISU coach Paul Rhoads. “He’s done his job as good as anybody on this team has in [my and his staff’s] three years.”

Give up yet?

Although he’s had his hands on the football more than 300 times and has made three tackles in his ISU career, Zimmerman hasn’t toted the football into the end zone or made a touchdown-saving tackle at the goal line. Among his teammates and coaches, he’s known as an unsung hero, a mentor and a leader of the group known as “The Bomb Squad.”

Dakota Zimmerman is Iowa State’s deep snapper.

Snapping leads to scholarship

The Haysville, Kan., native played a variety of positions in high school including fullback, tight end, linebacker and defensive end — where he was named all-state honorable mention as a junior and senior. Zimmerman also handled the snapping duties for all four years of his high school career.

Recruited by former ISU secondary coach Shawn Raney, Zimmerman was asked to put together a short highlight film of him snapping so that he could secure a spot at a specialist camp Iowa State was hosting in the summer of 2008. Despite howling winds outside, Zimmerman, sporting a cutoff T-shirt, went out in the front yard with his father Randy and filmed a short video of him snapping the football.

“I did 20 snaps and was like, ‘Is this good enough?'” Zimmerman said.

The film was good enough, and after Zimmerman showcased the quickest and most accurate snaps at the camp, former ISU coach Gene Chizik offered Zimmerman a chance to join the team as a preferred walk-on with the chance to eventually earn a scholarship. Zimmerman, who also considered attending Kansas, Kansas State and Texas Tech, was intrigued not only by the chance to play Division I football but also to obtain a degree in construction engineering.

After spending his freshman season as a walk-on, Zimmerman was awarded a scholarship when Rhoads took over as head coach in 2009. Zimmerman admits that as a freshman he had difficulty dealing with the pressure of making a quick and accurate snap, especially late in games but eventually he grew out of it.

As a sophomore in 2009, Zimmerman fired back nine snaps to punter Mike Brandtner and another on kicker Grant Mahoney’s first quarter 52-yard field goal as Iowa State upset Nebraska 9-7 in Lincoln. Zimmerman looks back at that performance both individually — the nine snaps on punts were in his words “perfect” — and as a team as his most memorable game in an ISU uniform.

Consistency, perfection, leadership

Since his first game on Aug. 28, 2008, at home against South Dakota State, Zimmerman has snapped the ball every time the Cyclones have lined up in its punt, field goal or extra point formations. In that time, Iowa State has punted the ball 227 times and has attempted 75 field goals.

Since 2008, the Cyclones have had two field goals and a punt blocked, but, Zimmerman said, none of the three blocks were due primarily to an errant snap. Consistency is a word that many, including Zimmerman himself, uses to describe his four years on the squad.

“The main thing is being consistent. I really like how this whole time I’ve really never, knock on wood, had that bad of a snap,” Zimmerman said.

ISU wide receivers coach Courtney Messingham has seen Zimmerman’s consistency on display as the coach of the team’s punt unit in practice and on game day.

“He’s consistent at what he does all the time, you know what you’re going to get; you know the time and effort he’s going to put in,” Messingham said. “It’s one of those deals where if you don’t have a reason to be looking for him, you’re not really going to know who he is.”

Zimmerman doesn’t mind being consistent but he’d prefer being perfect.

“I hate it when people say, ‘When you try to be perfect, you make more mistakes.’ I totally disagree with it because I have to be perfect,” Zimmerman said.

Zimmerman, along with the other snappers, punters and kickers on the team, heads out to practice an hour early so they can have the entire field to work with as they try and perfect their respective crafts.

Reserve quarterback and holder Brett Bueker receives Zimmerman’s snaps on field goals and extra points. Bueker relays any corrections Zimmerman could make on his snaps just moments after each kick in practice and games.

“Usually it’s right on the money, so I don’t have to do a whole lot of critiquing on him,” Bueker said.

Iowa State’s field goal and extra point units struggled early this season, but in its last four games has made five of the last six field goals and 10 straight extra points.

“He’s always really focused and dialed in with his snaps and everything, which we all are,” said senior kicker Zach Guyer of Zimmerman. “It’s a huge, huge part of what we do, it all starts with the snap.”

Messingham has seen Zimmerman emerge as leader of both the punting and kicking units — which collectively are known as “The Bomb Squad” — in a manner of leading by example.

“As his time here has went along, people gravitate to him and it’s easy, his personality is one of ‘don’t ask questions why, just go get it done’ and that’s kind of how he goes about his business,'” Messingham said.

Search for a successor

In many college football programs, a deep snapper tends to be a two-, three- or, in Zimmerman’s case, a four-year starter. That being said, Zimmerman’s impact on the team has become more of a realization as his college career draws closer to an end.

“The importance of it is becoming more real as we get to the end of his time and we’re having to figure out who is going to replace him,” Rhoads said.

There are two other deep snappers on the ISU roster in redshirt freshman Spencer Thornton and true freshman Luke Sims.

“You always get a little nervous when [a deep snapper] is finally a senior that’s been starting for you, it starts to hit home a little the farther you are along in the season that, ‘Oh boy he’s a senior,'” Messingham said. “We’ve got to find somebody to replace him and it will be tough to do.”

While the ISU coaching staff will face the task of replacing Zimmerman, the deep snapper will begin preparing for his future. Zimmerman, who will graduate in May, would jump at the chance to snap for a NFL team next season but has a backup plan, as he’s already been discussing job opportunities with engineering firms in the Midwest.

In the meantime, Zimmerman is focused on Friday night’s game against No. 2 Oklahoma State, the 25th and final time in his ISU career he’ll trot onto the field at Jack Trice Stadium unknown by most but appreciated by many.

“You grow up playing football all your life and it hasn’t really set in that it will be the last time I’ll get to play at [Jack Trice], but it’s going to be pretty emotional I imagine,” Zimmerman said.

The Cyclones will host the Cowboys on Friday at 7 p.m.