William Mote played his college football at Georgia, but his ties to the state of Alabama remain strong.

Mote was an outstanding offensive lineman at Spain Park High School before walking on as a long-snapper with the Bulldogs, where his special teams coordinator the last four seasons was former Alabama strength coach Scott Cochran. He was also high school rivals with future Alabama kicker Will Reichard of Hoover, now his teammate on the American team for Saturday’s Reese’s Senior Bowl in Mobile.

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Mote is also a second-generation snapper, as his father, Pat Mote, excelled at the position at Auburn in the mid-1980s. Legend has it Pat Mote went three entire seasons at Auburn without making a bad snap on a field goal, extra point or punt.

“He reminds me all the time,” William Mote said Wednesday. “He played for Pat Dye and was there at Auburn during a pretty legendary time, was teammates with Bo Jackson and Frank Thomas before Frank Thomas decided to play baseball. He got to enjoy a lot of SEC championships and bowl games and won a lot of ball games, just like I’ve gotten to do at Georgia.

“The first time I met Pat Dye, he said to me, ‘you know, your dad never had one bad snap ever in a game at all for three years.’ That’s something I’ll always remember and it’s something that I try to hold myself to the standard of how my dad did it.”

After redshirting in 2019, Mote took over as Georgia’s snapper on punts in 2020. Following the graduation of Payne Walker, he became the Bulldogs’ snapper on placement kicks in 2022.

One thing William Mote will always have over his father, however, is bragging rights. The Bulldogs went 5-0 vs. Auburn during his Georgia career, including a 27-20 victory at Jordan-Hare Stadium in 2023.

“My dad loves Georgia football and he loves football in general and I’m not saying he doesn’t love Auburn football,” Mote said. “I remember watching (Auburn) football as a kid and my dad would scream at the TV. He loves Auburn football, but there is a bit of a rivalry where if Auburn is playing Georgia and Georgia is beating the crap out of Auburn, I look at him and I’m like, ‘You know, those Dawgs, they got the dawg in them. It’s not like those Auburn Tigers.’ So we have fun with it.”

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Mote’s “rivalry” with Reichard hasn’t gone as well, particularly in high school. Spain Park is just 3-20 all-time vs. Hoover, and the Jaguars haven’t beaten the Bucs since 2015, when Mote and Reichard were in ninth grade.

Alabama went 3-1 vs. Georgia during Mote and Reichard’s college careers, though that “one” for the Bulldogs was the 2021-22 College Football Playoff national championship game. Mote said he’s enjoyed the opportunity to finally be teammates with Reichard during Senior Bowl week after so many years of being on opposite sidelines.

“We knew of each other in high school, but we never really got to know each other,” Mote said. “He went to Hoover; I went to Spain Park. They were the big brother; we were the little brother. … We always wanted to beat them.

“We have gotten to know each other through camps and stuff as our college career have gone on, and obviously we’d see each other before games and talk a little bit. He’s my roommate for this (Senior Bowl) game, so our relationship has grown a lot and I would say he’s a good friend of mine. Now I can I trust him, and I hope he trusts me as a snapper to hold to the standard, the operation being perfect.”

That word “standard” is one Mote utters regularly when talking about the craft of long-snapping, which got him into the Senior Bowl this year along with Wisconsin’s Peter Bowden. Long snappers aren’t always drafted by NFL teams, though the very best ones can spend a decade or more with the same organization.

And “standard” was drilled into his head quite often by the ultra-intense Cochran, who left Alabama after more than a decade running Nick Saban’s weight room to join close friend Kirby Smart at Georgia and begin transitioning to an on-field coaching role. Though Cochran’s bellowing voice, humorous buzzwords and thousand-miles-an-hour energy are what most people notice from the former strength coach, Mote said he took away something more substantial.

“There are plenty of great Scott Cochran stories, but the best thing I learned from Scott Cochran is the standard he held me to each and every day,” Mote said. “We had these things called ‘accountabilities,’ where if I had a low snap or a high snap, then I would be accountable to make up these physical actions, whether it was push-ups or maybe running or frog hops.

“… The accountabilities were tough. I would mess up some days, and I would have to do thousands of yards of frog. But those accountabilities held me to the standard of trying to make that perfect snap every time. It was awesome to play for him. He gets on you a lot, but he held you to the same standard and got you better.”

The 2024 Reese’s Senior Bowl takes place at noon Saturday at Mobile’s Hancock Whitney Stadium. NFL Network will broadcast the game live.