PITTSBURGH (AP) — Kevin Colbert could look out his office window the past two seasons and watch Larry Fitzgerald make the acrobatic grabs only a headed-to-the-pros receiver can.
The Steelers’ director of football operations also saw Fitzgerald interact with his Pitt teammates, a sophomore by grade but an adult by nature. During games, Colbert noticed how Fitzgerald routinely flipped the ball to an official after scoring rather than carrying out a choreographed celebration.
Still, for all the marvelous things Colbert saw Fitzgerald do up close and personal, what impressed him most was how Fitzgerald ate lunch.
He liked how Fitzgerald didn’t rush through the food line, eager to eat quickly and be on his way but took time to be polite. And Fitzgerald wasn’t that way only with Steelers executives and Pitt officials but also with the staff at the practice complex the two teams share.
“You see a kid like Larry Fitzgerald in the cafeteria, and how he acts around people, and you are impressed,” Colbert said.
It was the same air of professionalism Fitzgerald invoked whenever he was in public, almost always in a neatly pressed suit and tie rather than the standard college athlete’s sweat suit.
It was the same demeanor Fitzgerald displayed while receiving the Pittsburgh Sportsman of the Year Award, when he asked Pitt chancellor Mark Nordenberg to consider him someday for the university’s board of trustees.
Displaying good manners and being an articulate speaker hardly are mandatory credentials for an NFL player, but they illustrate the total, polished package that is expected to make Fitzgerald one of the first three players chosen Saturday in the NFL draft.
Even though Fitzgerald only went to college for two years, the NFL declared him eligible for this draft because he spent nearly 11/2 academic years at a prep school. He would have graduated from high school in 2001 had he not transferred and therefore is three years past his senior year of high school.
If the Oakland Raiders don’t take him at No.2, Arizona seems all but certain to snatch him at No.3. Fitzgerald was a ball boy when Cardinals coach Dennis Green coached the Vikings, and Fitzgerald’s father, Larry Sr., was the host of Green’s weekly TV show.
“I think he’s the No.1 player coming out of college football,” Green said.
He’s a smooth receiver who regularly makes difficult catches in multiple coverage. A Heisman Trophy runner-up and Walter Camp player of the year who collected 34 touchdown catches in two seasons. Perhaps the best set of hands to come out of college football in years.
And there’s also an inner drive that Fitzgerald credits to his father, a former college lineman and longtime sportswriter, and his late mother, Carol, who died about a year ago. Fitzgerald took his mother’s death hard then and still does; tears well in his eyes whenever he speaks of her.
Fitzgerald turned down the NFL’s invitation to attend the draft in New York and instead will watch it on TV with his father.
“It’s been a tough last year, I’m not going to lie about that,” the younger Fitzgerald said. “My dad has been a rock in my corner.”
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