William Herbert "B. J." Sander (born July 29, 1980) 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 wit ...

punter who played for one year (2005) 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 ma ...

(NFL) with the

Green Bay Packers The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. It is the th ...

. He was drafted by the Packers in the third round of the

2004 NFL Draft The 2004 NFL draft was the procedure by which National Football League teams selected amateur college football players. It is officially known as the NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting. The draft was held April 24–25, 2004 at the Theater a ...

. He played college football at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best pu ...

Early years

Sander attended Roger Bacon High School in

St. Bernard, Ohio St. Bernard is a village in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States. The population was 4,368 at the 2010 census. History St. Bernard was laid out in 1851 at the intersection of Main Street (now Vine Street, Cincinnati), the Miami and Erie Canal, ...

and was a letterman in football. In football, he averaged 43.5 yards per punt as a junior. As a senior, he was a first-team All-Ohio selection. William Herbert Sander graduated from Roger Bacon High School in 1999.

College career

Despite starting just one year at Ohio State University, he won the 2003

Ray Guy Award The Ray Guy Award is presented annually to college football's most outstanding punter as adjudged by the Augusta Sports Council. The award is named after punter Ray Guy, an All-American for Southern Mississippi and an All-Pro in the National F ...

for the best punter in the nation.

Professional career

He was selected in the third round of the

by the Packers. The following year, he played in

NFL Europe NFL Europe League (simply called NFL Europe and known in its final season as NFL Europa League) was a professional American football league that functioned as the developmental minor league of the National Football League (NFL). Originally f ...

, and punted respectably for the first half of the following regular season. However, once the cold weather started in Green Bay, Sander struggled, and ended up near the bottom of the punter rankings. Sander was released by Green Bay on August 21, 2006.

Jon Ryan Jonathan Robert Ryan (born November 26, 1981) is a retired Canadian professional football punter. He played college football for the University of Regina Rams, and began his professional career with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (CFL) after bei ...

became the team's primary punter. On March 5, 2007, the

St. Louis Rams The St. Louis Rams were a professional American football team of the National Football League (NFL). They played in St. Louis from 1995 to the 2015 season, before moving back to Los Angeles, where the team had played from 1946 to 1994. The arr ...

signed Sander; they released him on April 21, 2007.

External links

College football career summary
from the

website {{DEFAULTSORT:Sander, B. J. 1980 births Living people American football punters Green Bay Packers players Hamburg Sea Devils players Ohio State Buckeyes football players Players of American football from Cincinnati