Meet Georgia Tech's 'Irishman' Punter David Shanahan who's making the headlines ahead of matchup against FSU

Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets punter David Shanahan will have more at stake in Saturday's Week Zero clash pitting his team against the Florida State Seminoles to start off the 2024 college football season. The game will be held in his home country, Ireland, and will be historical for many reasons.

The punter hails from Castleisland, County Kerry, Ireland, and according to ESPN, he is the first student-athlete to ever get a full scholarship to play college football in America.

The Aer Lingus College Football Classic will be like a homecoming for Shanahan, and his Georgia Tech coach Brent Key expressed his delight for the Ireland native at the game being held in Dublin.

"I'm excited for the kid (Shanahan) to have an opportunity to go home," Brent Key said in a news conference. "It's exciting anytime any kid gets to go back to their home, especially when it's far away from here."

The Yellow Jackets already played in Ireland eight years ago, and David Shanahan revealed that he believed that he had missed his chance to ever play football in his home country until 2022 when Key questioned him about Ireland.

During a news conference ahead of the clash against FSU, which will have the honor of hosting the beloved ESPN pregame show, "College GameDay," Shanahan revealed how he found out that the game would be played in Dublin.

"Usually he's (Brent Key) over the O-line shouting at them somewhere. He's not really having a conversation mid-practice," Shanahan said. "I kind of caught on to it after a while because I knew the game was coming up and I knew they hadn't announced a fixture for 2024. But eventually, he told me, and I was like, 'Oh, that's pretty sick.'"

How David Shanahan joined American football

In an interview with ESPN, Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets punter David Shanahan said he played Gaelic football, which is huge in Ireland, but he soon felt compelled to do something different, starting a puzzling journey to American football.

"There wasn't a lot of adventure there (Gaelic football), I thought," he said. "Because I say, 'Alright, best-case scenario, I'll just grow up and play for Kerry and never really leave my hometown' or whatever. That's something that didn't really excite me that much."

Shanahan said the skills that he learned in Gaelic football helped him become a good punter when the time to move to American football came, but he had to make a stop before he embarked on the journey to the U.S.

He moved to Melbourne, Australia, for a year in 2019 to further refine his punting game at the Prokick Academy, which accounts for four NFL punters and has also produced six of the past seven Ray Guy Award winners.

All these years later, David Shanahan is the star of the show as American football makes its way to Ireland in Week Zero of college football action.