It wasn’t the prettiest win, but Penn State got it done in the end.

The Nittany Lions escaped Beaver Stadium with a 33-14 victory over Central Michigan Saturday afternoon. Most of the units did enough for the blue and white to pull out the victory but still didn’t have their best stuff, except for Penn State punter Barney Amor.

You might have first heard of Amor when Eli Manning announced that the Doylestown, Pennsylvania native was being put on full scholarship. Now, the redshirt senior is tearing it up as Penn State’s starting punter.

Amor booted four punts today, averaging 44.5 yards on each punt with three sitting inside the 20-yard line and a long of 51 yards. One of his punts today literally took a 90-degree turn and went out of bounds at Central Michigan’s three-yard line. That’s some good stuff.

When asked about the highlight, Amor stayed humble.

“I would say it’s like 70% skill and 30% everything else,” Amor said in his postgame press conference.

The punting position is one of the most overlooked positions in football, and probably one of the most important. Pinning an offense inside the ten-yard line and giving up nothing in the field position battle will always help you win games, and that’s what Amor is giving to Penn State. The entire team feeds off that type of play.

“I don’t know how he does it, but I tell you what, he does it,” defensive tackle PJ Mustipher said in his postgame press conference. “He’s been a huge part of our success because any time you can pin them back in their own end zone, that allows us to tee off, go make turnovers – you saw in the Ohio game, we had a safety. And today we were just able to tee off and cause havoc and get the offense the ball back where they wanted.”

For Amor, having an “underdog mentality” has been a key to that success so far this season.

“I think the biggest thing is kind of having that underdog mentality where nobody really expected anything besides the people on our team,” Amor said.

The team has also been behind Amor’s back all season. When a punt doesn’t go his way or he doesn’t give the ball his best boot, the team is there to lift him back up.

“It’s nice knowing that everyone’s got your back,” Amor said. “Obviously, the first punt today isn’t exactly what everyone wants. Everyone wants a 50-yard boom down the field. I walked off the field and Charlie Katshir was the first guy, and he was like ‘Hey man, no worries. It’s not catastrophic. That’s good enough. We got good field position, let’s go from here.'”

Amor went on to mention that type of support has made a huge impact on him on the field. He also attributed a lot of the punt team’s success to the chemistry between the group.

“I think the more and more chemistry you build on the punt team is huge that people really don’t consider,” Amor said. “I’m standing back there, and I see three dudes and can’t see who’s in front of me because they’re so big, it makes my life a lot easier and a lot more comfortable.”

Even though Amor is now finding success, it hasn’t been the smoothest journey for him, though. Three years ago, Amor was punting for Colgate University and was ranked second in the Patriot League in punting average with 42.1 yards per punt. His senior season was canceled due to COVID-19, so he decided to transfer to Penn State.

Unfortunately for him at the time, he transferred to a school that had one of the best punters in the country in 2021. But that didn’t stop Amor from rising to the starting position and learning a lot from Stout in the process, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

“I learned so much from being behind [Stout],” Amor said. “I’m having success now, but part of that’s because I was behind Stout last year. When he’s not doing something right, I’m looking at him going ‘Oh, hey. You’re doing this wrong.’ And now I’m looking at myself and thinking ‘That’s what Stout used to do. I should just do this’ And that’s how I fix it.”