AUBURN, Mass. — Chris Rubio was dissecting the art of long snapping for the benefit of 23 teenagers and their parents on an unseasonably cool morning last month. He used words like “balance” and “extension” as he dabbled in the minutiae of a craft that he considers a science.

“What’s he going to do after this?” Rubio asked his audience as one of his campers demonstrated the proper technique for hiking a football between his legs at an alarmingly high rate of speed. “He’s going to sit down on the toilet. There it is. Oh, this is gorgeous.”

Rubio, 38, who has a goatee and the stocky build of a steamer trunk, is one of the country’s foremost instructors of an unusual skill. He spends a good chunk of the year traveling the country to stage clinics like this one at Auburn High School, just outside of Worcester, Mass., where he preached the gospel of long snapping to young players whose abilities are being valued by college coaches now more than ever. “Try sleeping the night before a game without one,” said Paul Chryst, the coach at Pittsburgh.

Long snappers have exactly one job: snap the ball on extra points, field goals and punts. And while a long snapper will never win the Heisman Trophy, the role is a trapeze act. The only time anyone notices a snap is when it rockets past the punter or the holder. Anything short of a 100 percent success rate is catastrophic. The very best long snappers, though, can send the ball spiraling in a sharp arc at 52 miles per hour.