MOBILE, Ala. – It's not often that an individual walks into the home of a college football program unknown only to become a starter. For confirmation, one can just ask University of South Alabama head coach Joey Jones.
"We had one, Jesse Kelley, who walked into our locker room and ended up starting and being one of the best players we've ever had," he explains. "Dom is the same kind of guy, he came in and we didn't know who he was really. But he is a really good player on the field and a great person, he has earned a starting job and is one of those guys who we can always count on on the offensive line. That's the kind of player we want here."
Dom is Dominic Esposito, the Jaguars' second-year starter at center. While it is not unusual for transfers — both from other four-year schools as well as junior colleges — to come to USA and make an impact, Esposito's path to Mobile might not have been conventional. Then again, with little tackle football experience prior to high school, his story is not about what is considered by most to be normal.
Esposito's first exposure to the sport wasn't even of the tackle variety. While living Jacksonville, Fla., he was considered too big to play in the Pop Warner league — "It was 100 pounds, and I was well above that," he laughs — so instead he played flag football at private elementary school. "I was able to play quarterback, wide receiver, everything but the line. When I moved up to Washington, D.C., I called it 'fat kid football' because they had an unlimited league, that's when I got my first true football experience."
His love of the game initially came from watching a fledgling National Football League franchise. "I guess it was the entertainment of it," Esposito recalls. "Growing up we had the Jaguars — I guess they weren't the most thrilling team to watch — but we would see guys like Tony Boselli around town, and watching them on TV I thought I want to be a part of that, it looks like fun. And it helped that my dad was a big football fan too, there was some influence there."
Esposito tried his hand in numerous activities as he grew up, moving back and forth between Jacksonville and the Washington, D.C. suburb of Springfield, Va. That included soccer, swimming, baseball — "I grew a lot quicker than the other kids, so a strike for me wasn't a strike for them and around the fifth grade I was done with baseball," he says — and lacrosse. "I loved lacrosse, I had so much fun playing. I was a defender so I had the long stick and was hitting guys with a stick, it was great. It helped the offseason go by quicker."
But it was playing in the unlimited league that would set the stage for the path he would follow. With little experience tackling, his first few practices were difficult, but once he figured it out Esposito was in for good.
"I've loved football ever since I was little, flag football is great but you are still missing the physical part of it," he says. "It took me a few tries to learn how to do it, because they had me at defensive end and I had never tackled or wrestled before in my life. So at the first few practices I would whiff, whiff, fall, until one day everything kind of clicked. And then they said, 'Good, let's try O line,' and here we are."
Not quite, exactly. While playing on the defensive side of the ball, Esposito noticed that some local private high schools were interested. Travel logistics would dictate that he instead attended West Springfield High, where he would letter three years and earn all-conference honors on two occasions. It was in his first season on the varsity that he thought a college scholarship might be a possibility.
"I'm not going to say it was early, but I could tell that I was capturing eyes," Esposito observes. "We had some private high schools up in D.C. that are really well known like DeMatha and St. John's, and some of them would come to my games and talk to me. That's when I thought I might be on to something here. And then going to camps I started to turn some heads, and this was all on the defensive line. I remember I got my first letter my sophomore year from Gettysburg University — I didn't know anything about them, all I remember is being ecstatic that I was on someone's radar."
It wasn't until after his junior season that Esposito fully committed to playing on the offensive line. That offseason he was put in contact with his physical education teacher's fiancé, the offensive line coach at a rival high school, who told him that "if I worked with him he would get me a scholarship," recalls Esposito. "He said 'Work with me and I will turn you into a beast,' so I didn't play lacrosse my junior year to commit full time; it changed everything."
The following fall Esposito did not allow a sack, and his efforts helped the Spartans qualify for the state playoffs.
After watching his film, Florida was prepared to make him a preferred walk on, but Esposito was "young and ignorant to the game, I didn't really know what it meant." His only offer for a full scholarship came from the staff at Monmouth, which he accepted because he could play and be debt-free coming out of college.
Other than a late start in the sport, Esposito's story may sound standard. What happened next was not.
Figuring he would play guard for the Hawks, he arrived on campus to be told "here's a ball, you're a center" by the coaching staff. With two upperclassmen ahead of him on the depth chart, he travelled that fall but did not see action.
When those two graduated, Esposito found himself in competition for starting center with Alex Thompson, a transfer from West Virginia. The newcomer would beat him out, however he still figured to earn playing time at guard.
But when three individuals at that position went down and Esposito still found himself on the bench while freshmen played, the writing was on the wall.
"I saw my future there as being a back-up the whole time. It was a hard discussion but I told my parents I wasn't happy there," he says. "I had my exit meeting on Dec. 17 and I told them I was exploring going somewhere else and he looked at me asked where I was going to go. I had no idea but I knew it wasn't there.
"So I packed up and made the long drive to Salem, Ala., and went back to square one."
Salem — located approximately 45 minutes east of Auburn — was where his parents had relocated when he enrolled at Monmouth. He was too late to enroll at a four-year institution so instead took classes at Southern Union C.C. to stay in school and get some credits. Esposito was still working out, but to make ends meet he ended up with a job at Little Caesars. With scholarship offers to continue his football career coming only from junior colleges and lower-level schools, he wasn't sure what route he was going to take but knew those weren't the avenues.
"I went from full scholarship to flipping dough at a pizza place," Esposito explains. "It was a transition period, but I thought that I was meant to do a little more than make pizza. I told my parents I was going to choose a school first and a football team second."
His first option was a school he grew up in Jacksonville dreaming about, Central Florida. But he was two credits shy of the requirements for admission and was not interested in going back to community college for another semester. He also looked at Florida and South Florida, but eventually it was another member of his family who drew him to Mobile.
"My sister got job with Sam Adams in Mobile, she said come check out this place called South Alabama because she thought I would like it,"says Esposito. "So on a Sunday night I drive down and take a look through campus and the deadline to apply for that fall was the next day."
He was still unsure about the prospects of playing football, but continued to work out that first semester in the fall of 2015. "They had no idea I was there," he says of the Jaguar coaching staff.
This is how an eventual starter walks into a program off the street.
"I knew I could do more, that I was selling myself short," Esposito explains, so following winter break he walked into the field house after doing research to know which coach he needed to talk to. "I walked up to Ms. Deb [football secretary Deb Robinson, who works in the lobby of the field house] and told her I was interested in walking on and she said I was too late. She told me to fill out a sheet because coaches may come by and pull it. I talked to her about 20 minutes and told her I played at a Division I-AA school, she asked me where I played and went down the hall to grab Coach [Colin] Hitschler. He asked if I knew the wide receivers coach up there, and I knew him for a year so we started chatting. And he finally asked, 'Why are you just now showing up?'
"He took me back to see [offensive line] Coach [Richard] Owens, who was talking to Joe Scelfo and Steve McKenzie, and when Coach Hitschler introduced me he said, 'Good, get him some gear.'"
"At any point when you have a guy who walks in who is a bigger guy playing on the offensive line, it's hard to pass them up; those guys are hard to find," Owens says. "Then when you get to know his personality and the way he presents himself, Dominic had all the intangibles just talking to him. We welcomed him in with open arms.
"It took him a while to get on the field — I think his first day with the team was spring practice — and ever since then he has embraced it."
He worked that spring as a guard, but at the end of the semester Scelfo decided to transfer, at which point Owens recommend that Esposito start snapping. That work paid off last fall, when he appeared in all 13 games for the Jags — grading out at 84 percent, with 35 knockdowns and 22 cut blocks — while helping the program earn an invitation to the NOVA Home Loans Arizona Bowl. And despite sitting out the spring season while recovering from injury Esposito has picked up where he left off this season, starting each of South's first two games against Ole Miss and 10th-ranked Oklahoma State.
What has been a key to Esposito's ability to adjust quickly and make an impact where he goes? That too can be traced to his family.
His father, Paul, was a captain and helicopter pilot in the United States Navy, serving multiple deployments to the Middle East and at one point controlling all helicopters on the East Coast. As such, the Esposito family moved back and forth from Jacksonville to Springfield multiple times before he accepted a position with the ROTC at Auburn.
"Moving from place to place definitely teaches you to adapt, and you also learn to be more independent and figure things out on your own," states Esposito. "With that, you also make a lot of new friends because when you're young everyone is happy. When we moved my dad wanted to make sure we stayed at one high school, and football helped with making new friends there because as I got older you could tell it was harder being the new kid; playing sports with your buddies, you don't miss a beat."
Not only did it help him learn to adapt to different situations, but it helped instill in him a discipline that has led to success at every level. Although he is in his second season starting on USA's offensive line, Esposito has not become complacent.
"Snapping is something I still work at all the time," he says. "I'm obsessed with trying to make sure I get it right on Cole's [Garvin, the Jags' opening-week starting quarterback] hands each time; if he tells me they are a little low I'm over there practicing trying to get them up. In a game it's almost like second nature because during the week I obsess over it.
"It's that military lifestyle — do it right or what's the point doing it at all? There is a purpose to it, so make sure it is done 100 percent, because if you do it halfway it's not going to be right."
"The things you hear about the military, the qualities that they have, you see in Dominic — he is disciplined, he has attention to detail, he's tough," observes Jones. "All those attributes are the ones we try to teach as well, but he already had them before he got here."
Adds Owens, "I think Dominic is a student of the game, he studies and understands it. He spends extra time doing all the little things right that he needs to do to be successful — in the training room taking care of his body, in the film room, attacking weights in the weight room. When he comes on the field he is a winner, that's him.
"I'm sure it helps a lot, he does all the little things and never complains or gripes; he goes and attacks it. I think that speaks of his background, he is very disciplined in what he does and he works hard at everything."
That discipline extends to his preparation and goals for his final season at the collegiate level. When asked if he has thought about the potential of a professional career in the sport his response is, "At the moment no because I am just so focused on this season. Nothing is guaranteed after, next week isn't guaranteed — I saw that when I broke my arm at the Arizona Bowl, if that was midseason I would've been done for the year. So let me focus everything right now to make sure that I get this season right. I want some hardware, my whole football career I've been to one championship game; that was in middle school, and we got whooped. I want a conference championship, a bowl game and a ring on my finger and go out happy. That's the big goal.
"It's very task-at-hand, what am I trying to get done. This week I am trying to beat Alabama A&M. It's about what is on your plate right now and make sure you finish that and don't leave any scraps. In football it is week-to-week, you can't look too far ahead."
Where will Esposito's path lead to next? He is scheduled to receive his degree in business management from South at the end of this semester, but one shouldn't be surprised to find another curve in the road.
"This is going to sound a little ridiculous, but growing up not too far from Daytona Beach NASCAR was huge and I've always wanted to be a part of the pit crew," he explains. "I love cars, just being in the mix of that would be an awesome job. I've talked to some people about it and it is a possibility, but it's not exactly what most people think about. Most people don't say they want to fill up gas in the No. 24 car."
To those who truly know Esposito, it does not sound far out since growing up both he and his father had an interest in cars. "When I was little he had Matchbox car sets and I had mine, I had a wall full of diecast cars, and Hess trucks were huge — every Christmas I had to have a Hess truck," he says. "I remember up in D.C. there was an Aston Martin dealership and we would walk around there all the time and we were on a first-name basis with one of the salesmen. We just have a passion for it. I can't tell you how to tear down and replace an engine, but I can tell you what kind of car it is."
It might sound unusual to the casual college football fan, but for Dominic Esposito it wouldn't be the first time he's opted for a different path.
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