He could, for example, be sweating through preseason practice in Tuscaloosa, Ala., with an ESPN camera crew watching everyone's every move.

He could have a national championship ring.

He could be battling for the top kicking or punting spots - or both - on the nation's top-ranked team as it prepares to defend its Bowl Championship Series national title.

Different, however, is not necessarily better ... and Smith is defending himself in kickoff and punting competitions at West Virginia.

And that's perfectly fine with him.

"This is where I wanted to go," said Smith, a Bunker Hill native who starred at Musselman High. "Ever since I was a kid and once I got serious about kicking in high school, this really is where I wanted to go."

It's not how it went initially, though, and Smith committed to

Alabama in the spring of his junior year.

"I loved it," he said. "I went down there and fell in love with the people and probably made an emotional decision."

Hard to fault the kid for that. Ever been to the University of Alabama? Ever seen Bryant-Denny Stadium rocking?

Ever thought of what it would be like to go from the Eastern Panhandle to one of the most storied, most successful programs in the history of the game you love to play?

It would be easy to have the Crimson Tide wash over you.

It happened to Smith and he ended up picking Alabama and Monongah native Nick Saban over Virginia and WVU. He even got to play as a true freshman. 

WVU's media guide calls it "limited action," and that's accurate, but also limited. He played in three games and in one - a 20-6 win against Tulane - Smith missed a field goal and an extra point and knocked a kickoff out of bounds.

Alabama being Alabama, the team kept recruiting kickers and, to put it bluntly, the future became clear. In April 2009, Smith was granted a release from 'Bama.

He's tried to leave the experience there, too.

"It feels like it's so far in the past that I've forgotten about it," he said. "I've been here for a year now. Honestly, it's in my mind, but I just don't put any weight into it any more."

Try to find out anything more about Smith's career at Alabama and you can understand why. He's most commonly associated with a failed fake field goal attempt against Florida in the 2008 Southeastern Conference title game.

The comforts of home were gone and Smith, to be totally open and perfectly honest, felt the void. The game deals you disappointments and Smith endured a couple without the support that was once so familiar, but was made to feel so far away.

"I guess you could say I have more of a social life here," he said.

"Most of my friends from high school are still here. In that regard, it's nice to get home if I need to on a weekend. Say I need to go home for an evening, it's only two hours away. That's a big improvement and that's the part that's real nice."

Smith ended up agreeing to come to WVU not long after his release. He enrolled last summer and was a walk-on redshirt during the fall semester before getting a scholarship in the spring.

"For me, it was good to be able to use that time in a sense of having a year to get used to everything," Smith said, "and - I don't want to say not have any pressure - but settle in and get back into things."

Smith ended up handling most of the field goals and extra points in spring practice as the incumbent, Tyler Bitancurt, sat out after ankle surgery. Smith also got to know the competitor for the punting job, senior Greg Pugnetti.

Bitancurt is healthy now for his sophomore year and again in charge of place-kicking, but Smith is an option for long field goals and is again battling with Pugnetti while also working against John Howard, a walk-on redshirt freshman, for the kickoff job.

"It's tough," Smith said. "I don't know if there's a good analogy for it, but it's all different leg swings. The punt leg swing is different from the kickoff leg swing, which is different from the field goal leg swing. Put the roll punt on top of that and it's four different leg swings."

And then there's the fatigue. Smith knows when he's in a groove, when the mechanics are automatic and he's swinging through and hitting the ball in the right spot again and again. He called it "the zone," but said the window closes quicker now.

"I don't feel like I'm in that peak sort of time frame for as long," he said.

In a way, it's forcing him to become even more efficient with his time and consistent with his routines. The kicks must be consistent, but also separate, so that he may go from one to the other - and perhaps even another beyond that - without consequences.

It's asking a lot, but it's what he asked for when he picked WVU the second time around.

"I thought I was going to do all three," he said. "It's what we talked about and it's what I wanted to do. They said if I'm the best guy at all of them, then I'll play all of them. That was my mindset coming in, but I'm just trying to get on the field wherever I can."

Contact sportswriter Mike Casazza at mi...@dailymail.com or 304-319-1142. His blog is at blogs.dailymail.com/wvu.