When my favorite football teams are eliminated from the playoff hunt, I like to see if the remaining teams have connections back to our world. As an Oakland Raider fan, I can get an early start since they have been mathematically eliminated from the playoffs by Week 6 the past couple seasons.
In any event, you may know that Steelers ILB Clint Kriewaldt is a graduate of UW-Stevens Point. Or that D3football.com All-American Jerheme Urban (Trinity, Texas) has played for the Seahawks the past three seasons.
But did you know Ben Roethlisberger has a Division III connection?
According to the San Jose Mercury News “Big Ben†didn’t play quarterback until his senior year at Findlay (Ohio) High. That’s because he was behind Ryan Hite, son of the high school coach. Hite didn’t reach the same lofty, um, heights as Roethlisberger in football but still had a solid career at Denison where he played wide receiver and, evidently, some quarterback.
You can break that tidbit out while watching the big game this weekend. It would impress even the biggest NFL aficionados. Like former Seattle Seahawks Coach — and Juniata College Alum — Chuck Knox.
Clint Kriewaldt with the tackle on the opening kickoff!
Not that I’ll be blogging the entire game but what the hey, good start.
Hmm. I wonder if Urban is on the sidelines. I just saw an unusual roster number behind Holmgren and tracked it down as a practice squad player.
Urban is on the sidelines…caught him with 2:20 left in the 3rd quarter…behind Holmgren.
And again…about 6:00 to play in the 4th…
Congrats to Kriewaldt for joining the very small fraternity of D3 players with Super Bowl rings!
Geez, I wish we could have had Urb’s hands on Steven’s body yesterday! Maybe the outcome would have been different! How about the officiating? Clock management,,, ugh!
I was thinking the same thing. How many key dropped passes can one guy have in the Super Bowl? He was even bobbling the TD grab he had when no one was anywhere around him. More importantly, I must say, without being a fan of either team, that in my opinion Seattle got jobbed by the officials more than any professional team in the championship game I have ever seen in my life, and that includes all four of the major sports in the US. If you’re a fan of that squad, you have to be sick to your stomache. It’s time for the NFL to start answering some of the questions surrounding the poor officiating in the postseason. That was some brutal stuff.
That low block call on Hasselbeck has to be some kind of rule. I saw that exact same thing happen (INT… guy makes the tackle on way back and gets called for that penalty) earlier this season and thought it was a bogus call then too.
The hold that erased one of Steven’s few catches to the 1-yard line.. not sure that was a good call… that in itself could have changed the outcome of the game. The rest of the calls… Seattle can complain all they want but Jackson did push off (although he didn’t need to) and it appeared that Roethlisberger got a sliver of the ball on the white goal line for the TD. I respect Holmgren as a coach, but I wasn’t impressed with his halftime interview where it appeared that the biggest thing on his mind at that moment was about getting jobbed by the refs.