EAST LANSING - Only in America would anyone post this help-wanted ad:

"Needed: Athletic young man with ability to see upside down and snap hunk of pigskin between his legs as fast and accurate as possible. Salary starts at $225,000 per year."

Sound bizarre? Not to Tony Grant, a former MSU football player who hopes to fill that description for an NFL team this spring.

You see, Grant has a gift. One gift. He can sling a football 15 yards behind him in less than .8 of a second, spinning the laces so they land perfectly in a punter's hands. And that gift - known as long snapping - could make Grant a wealthy young man.

The 23-year-old Bay City native is working furiously this spring to land an NFL contract. He hopes to be picked in the league's April 20-21 draft or sign a free-agent deal.

Not a bad deal

Snapping is good work if Grant can get it. He wouldn't block or tackle much. He'll never throw or catch a pass or run with the football. He'd simply hike footballs.

"I never imagined it would go this far," said Grant, who is drawing interest from Detroit, Washington and Cincinnati, among others. "It blows my mind already."

Traditionally, college and pro teams let linemen snap for punts and field goals as a side duty. NFL clubs rarely used draft picks on snappers.

But that's changing as the chore becomes increasingly crucial to the outcome of games. Three NFL teams have selected long-snapping specialists in each of the past two drafts.

"If you do it well you can have a long career," said Grant's agent, Kevin Gold, a Pennsylvania attorney.

Yep. Long snappers have agents these days. Just one, actually. If hiking is your game, Gold is pretty much the name. He works exclusively with snappers, representing three - Green Bay's Rob Davis, Indianapolis' Justin Snow and New England's Ryan Benjamin - in the NFL.

"You can stay in the league 10 or 15 years and make a lot of money for not a lot of wear and tear," said Gold, whose Web site is titled longsnap.com. "The negative is there's no margin for error. Long snapping requires 100 percent accuracy."

Grant learned the trade from his older brother Greg, who snapped at Western Michigan for one season. As a high school lineman, Grant reluctantly gave it a whirl one day in the family's backyard.

"It just came natural to me," said Grant, 6-foot-2 and 260 pounds.

Prepared either way

Grant originally walked on at the University of Michigan and later transferred to MSU, where he snapped his final two years, finishing last fall.

The secret to snapping is simple repetition. Grant snaps dozens of footballs to friend and former MSU punter Craig Jarrett - who is also seeking an NFL deal - against goal posts and, his personal favorite, into a trash can.

"The sweetest sound in the world," Grant says.

That may soon change to the chime of a cash register. If Grant - whose snapping speed equals or beats NFL averages on punts and field goals - can make a roster, he'd earn the league's $225,000 minimum salary next fall.

If not, Grant won't, well ... snap. He'll trot out his electrical engineering degree.

"I didn't anticipate I might not need it," he said with a laugh. "I'm prepared either way. But one is a lot more enticing."