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Health & Fitness

This Super Bowl is a Local Bowl

For the second time in five years the local Jesuit university in Chestnut Hill will have the most graduates represented in the "Big Game" with 6.

 

Interest in the Super Bowl is running especially high this year with the hometown Patriots playing the beloved/hated New York Football Giants. Like most New Englanders growing up in the 50s, the Giants were my favorites as they were the team broadcast on local TV in those years. My heroes bore names like Sam Huff and “Chuckin’ Charlie” Connerly. All that changed on a steamy early September night in 1960. The Patriots played the Denver Broncos (remember those horrid vertical striped socks?) in the first game of the newly formed American Football League. It was at Boston University’s Nickerson Field, formerly known as Braves Field. I was an usher, an 18 year old college freshman and the youngest to be recruited by the Patriots from the Red Sox ushering corps.

I was stationed in what was known as the “Right Field Pavilion”, the cheap seats when the Braves played there but the premier seats when the park was aligned for football. I was assigned to the elite seats, those between the two forty yard lines, and suffered under the oppressive heat (temps were in the mid 70s with the humidity even higher) wearing the red wool “varsity” jacket and the black woolen tri-cornered hat that was the initial Patriots’ usher’s uniform.

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B.U. had done a major cosmetic makeover of the old park and the walls glistened under a new layer of paint. But in their haste to ready the park for the opener, they neglected to paint the numbers on the seats or the rows. The “quick fix” was to write them in chalk. This was an usher’s disaster waiting to happen and the veteran Red Sox ushers recognized it. To a man, all the other ushers in my section exited the park shortly after the game started leaving “the kid” to solve this public relations disaster, dealing with the hundreds of late arriving Pats fans. That night was my indoctrination into the “Great Confraternity of Ushers” and an unforgettable lesson in ‘Public Relations 101’.

Two years later I graduated to the field of play working as a ball boy. It was great to be on the field and in the locker room, getting to know the players, but the job carried its own special dangers. The Patriots finances were perilous at best and the team found every way to cut corners. That meant that the ball boys had to wade into the stands and retrieve the football after every field goal or point after. If this were the Army I would have received “combat pay”.

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While the Patriots in the Super Bowl has special meaning for me; there are other factors that will make Sunday extra special for the locals.  Do you know what university has the most alumni playing in the Super Bowl? Is it Michigan? LSU?  Notre Dame? The Crimson Tide? The “U”?

Nope. For the second time in five years the local Jesuit school in Chestnut Hill will have the most graduates represented in the “Big Game”. Boston College will have six former students on the field as well as a number more on the sidelines with ties to the university.

Representing the Patriots will be:C Dan Koppen‘03; DT Ron Brace’09; Defensive Assistant Brian Flores ‘04; Scout Dujuan Daniels ‘02; and Owner Robert Kraft -- member of the Board of Trustees. 

On the Giants side of the field will be: LB Mark Herzlich ‘11; LB Mathias Kiwanuka ‘06; G Chris Snee ‘04; and KR Will Blackmon ‘06. Also: Head Coach Tom Coughlin -- Former BC head coach; Strength and Conditioning Coach Jerry Palmieri -- held the same position at BC under Coughlin; Assistant Offensive Line Coach Jack Bicknell, Jr. ’85; Wide Receivers Coach Sean Ryan -- Graduate assistant at BC 2001-2002; Owner John Mara ‘76. 

 UMass will have two alums: safety James Ihedigbo ’06 on the Patriots and wide receiver Victor Cruz ’10 on the Giants. And let’s not forget North Andover’s Zak DeOssie, Brown ’07, a long snapper for the Giants. Zak is the son of former Patriots & Giants player Steve DeOssie, BC ‘84. The two hold the distinction of being the only father-son duo to win Super Bowl rings with the same franchise (Giants).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

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