Alex Bauman didn’t necessarily think he would be here.
Surely, if you asked him as a freshman at Tulane, there was little thought about the College Football Playoff, even less about winning a national championship and not even the glimmer of a possibility that he might start in the aforementioned pinnacle of college football. Similarly, you don’t root for or expect a teammate to get injured. But with fellow tight end Elija Lofton officially out for No. 10 Miami’s championship bout with No. 1 Indiana (15-0), Bauman will be an integral part of the Hurricanes’ offense.
What are the emotions? A little bit of everything.
“It’s another hill to climb,” he said — a brief glimpse of the nerves that’ll surely populate Monday night. His approach is simple, though. “I’m just trying to be that same person each and every day. Not getting too high, getting too low, is something I kind of pride myself on.”
Let’s clarify a common misconception. Bauman played more offensive snaps than Lofton this season: 645 of Miami’s 1,035 plays, compared to Lofton’s 451. After Lofton left early in the Fiesta Bowl, Bauman played 82 of Miami’s 91 snaps. Notably, Miami used each tight end differently. The Tulane transfer has 144 yards to Lofton’s 218, but Bauman was a blocker on 61.6% of his snaps — much more than Lofton.
So more than anything else, his value has been in sparking UM’s rushing attack, which has topped 150 yards in each playoff game. Bauman’s willingness to “stick his nose in there” stems from his belief that his job is to help the team in any way he can. Even if he wasn’t a pass catcher after transferring from Tulane, he aimed to add value elsewhere and set out to become “the best run-blocking tight end in the country.”
That’s not so far-fetched.
“Especially in this playoff run, the 1-on-1 matchups in the run game that he has had to go in and battle each day, you can’t talk enough about that as you watch tape and realize how important that is as our run game has really progressed throughout the playoffs,” Miami tight end coach Cody Woodiel said. “He’s our unsung hero.”
UM offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson glowed when asked about Bauman — “a vital part of our offense,” he was sure to note — and emphasized that Monday shouldn’t be much of a jump, meandering down an intriguing line of thought.
Woodiel and Dawson were both clear that Bauman is a leader. You have to be, if you’re going to transfer from a Group of 5 school into a preseason top-10 team and start on Day 1. And during Miami’s playoff run across some of the sport’s grandest stages, the Tulane transfer, surprisingly, has been the experienced figure.
Some three years ago, for those who didn’t have anything better to do on a Monday afternoon, a day after New Year’s Day, they may remember the Green Wave toppling USC in the Cotton Bowl on a game-winning touchdown. The man who caught the pass?
Yup. Bauman.
These junctures are nothing new, from his perspective, and he has tried to be a calming presence for a youthful group of Miami pass catchers looking up at the lights in Dallas, Phoenix and, now, Hard Rock. In a way, this all comes with his job.
“He’s getting targeted more and more. But the things that he does that don’t show up on the stats sheet is really what fires me up about him. And he’s a very selfless person, which I think at that position you kind of inherently have to be,” Dawson said. “You’re kind of a lineman at times, and you’re kind of a receiver. You have to live in a lot of different worlds at that deal. So you kind of gotta have a servant mentality.”
While starting in a national championship game wasn’t on the vision board at the Cotton Bowl — either time, really — these moments were why he decided to leave Tulane for the U. He wanted to play “big boy football.”
Now he gets his chance.
