Fighting for position: Fitzgerald was linebacker before wideout

Larry Fitzgerald Jr. poses with his mother Carol and father Larry Sr. during his days at Academy of Holy Angels near Minneapolis. Courtesy of Minneapolis Star-Tribune Super Bowl XLIII   Latest Coverage KING: Monday Morning Quarterback BANKS: Pittsburgh wins the Steeler way MARKAZI: Emotional swing decks Cards BANKS: Best Super Bowl ever? You bet PERLOFF: Best Super Bowl ever? No way TROTTER: Holmes' TD saves Steelers TUCKER: Steelers Report Card for XLIII BROOKS: Cardinals Report Card for XLIII GRIFFITH: Grading NBC's XLIII broadcast PHOTOS: Best action shots from game Top 20 Super Bowl XLIII commercials MARKAZI: Ranking Super Bowl parties Get SI's Steelers XLIII Package FREE! SI Photos Harrison's Epic TD Super Bowl Fans More SI Super Bowl Photos

TAMPA -- It's easy to see now in today's high-def, super-slow-mo world, but 10 years ago, in the late fall of 1998, Larry Fitzgerald's ridiculous talent for taking over a game at the receiver position wasn't fully on display. Mainly because it's tough to do when you're lining up at outside linebacker.

"I was a linebacker, and I liked linebacker,'' Fitzgerald said this week, as he and the rest of his Arizona Cardinals teammates worked their way through another media session in advance of Sunday's Super Bowl XLIII showdown with Pittsburgh. "I considered myself a pretty big hitter.''

Fitzgerald, that year, was a sophomore in high school, a first-year player at the Academy of Holy Angels in suburban Minneapolis. He never lobbied coach Mike Pendino to play the position he was clearly born to play, but late in a season-ending playoff loss, with some injuries mounting for Holy Angels, Fitzgerald finally got a chance to show his stuff. On the first pass he was thrown, he made a spectacular one-handed touchdown catch along the sideline in the end zone, and the rest, as they say, is history.

"After that, Pendino was chucking it Larry's way every chance he could get,'' said Larry Fitzgerald Sr., laughing at the memory.

Nice call, Coach Pendino. And I imagine the Arizona Cardinals second that emotion. While the NFL is filled with star players who started off playing different positions than the ones that made them famous, I can't think of a bigger loss right now than to have missed out on the chance to see Fitzgerald and those fly-paper hands of his do their stuff in this month's playoffs.

What a show the Cardinals fifth-year receiver has put on in Arizona's three-game march to the Super Bowl: 23 catches for an NFL playoff-record 419 yards, with five touchdown receptions, including three in the NFC title game upset of Philadelphia. At times, it has looked like Fitzgerald was once again a man playing among boys, just like back in the day at Holy Angels.

"The thing is, he was one heck of a linebacker,'' said Nick McAlister, a former teammate of Fitzgerald's at Holy Angels, who was a senior guard on that 1998 team. "He was our leading tackler. He was just dominant out there. I thought he'd be a linebacker at a big Division I school in college. He was so good. He was always around the ball, he could really jump well, and he had these really good hands. You could just see the talent.''

Nothing much has changed there, huh? Fitzgerald is just doing those same things on a higher plane than anyone else right now, maybe higher than any other receiver in NFL playoff history. And on Sunday in Tampa's Raymond James Stadium, on the NFL's grandest stage, we get to find out if there's yet another level to his game.

"I definitely hoped and dreamed, and every day I was working I was aspiring to get to this point,'' Fitzgerald said this week. "I just know the ball's been coming my way and I'm trying to make every possible play I can. I want to be a dominant player in this game. I have an opportunity of a lifetime coming up this week, and I'm going to have to have my best game of the year to help us beat the Steelers.''

I probably got an earlier sneak peak of Fitzgerald's receiving talents than perhaps any other reporter covering the NFL, outside of his father, Larry Sr., a longtime Minneapolis-area journalist. By now it's well known that thanks to his father's connections, Fitzgerald was a ball boy for those successful Vikings teams of the late 1990s.

I covered those Dennis Green-coached teams as a beat writer for newspapers in both Minneapolis and St. Paul, and I saw the younger Fitzgerald through his teenage years, working on his skills alongside the likes of receivers Cris Carter, Jake Reed and eventually Randy Moss.

I'd like to tell you that I knew I was watching a potential NFL superstar in the nascent stages of his football career from 1996 to 1999, but that would be twisting the facts beyond recognition. What I remember about Fitzgerald is his unfailing politeness and manners -- his reply always included a "Mr. Banks'' whenever we spoke -- and that he seemed like he absorbed football lessons like a sponge from the NFL pros all around him.

And what a rabid Vikings fan that Fitzgerald was. When we spoke this week, I reminded him how hard Minnesota's 1998 NFC title-game loss in overtime to Atlanta had hit him, and wondered if he felt this week was an opportunity of sorts to make amends in any way for that record-setting 15-1 team that fell short of the Super Bowl?

"I did get a couple texts this week from a couple guys on that team, with them saying 'Do it for the '98 team,' and that means a lot,'' Fitzgerald said. "I remember being on that sideline and in that locker room after that game and I remember the emotions on guys' faces and how let down they were. I just don't want to have that same feeling on Sunday.

"When you have such a great opportunity, you can't let it slip away. I've never lost sight of my goals. This was always a dream of mine to play in the Super Bowl. We're not just happy to be here, we want to go ahead and win it.''

The Cardinals, of course, wouldn't even be here without Fitzgerald's monster month. Arizona quarterback Kurt Warner's late-career renaissance may be the story of the week here in Tampa, but there is no quarterback in the NFL who has equal to the luxury of throwing to Fitzgerald. As Warner himself said it best Wednesday, there's your typical state of open when it comes to most NFL receivers, and then there's Fitzgerald's version. And if there's even the slightest bit of daylight between Fitzgerald and his defenders, Warner has learned to load it up and let it fly, because most times his guy is coming down with the catch.

Even his father, who I covered the Vikings alongside for those four seasons I was on the beat, can't quite fathom the stature his son now commands in the NFL, or the level of dominance he has attained.

"It's been very rewarding to see him transition from little Larry to big-time major college star, to NFL first-round pick, and then get to this,'' said Fitzgerald Sr., a single parent since he lost his wife, and Larry's Jr.'s mother, Carol, to complications from cancer in 2003. "He's been very humble in his approach. He seems to have an inner happiness going about doing what he does. I've never once seen him get bogged down by it.

"He dreamed about this. About wanting to play and play big in big games, and make it at this level. And he's never shied away from it. I couldn't be any happier. Certainly he's made his mother and his dad proud. I'm still pinching myself this week just watching it all.''

On Sunday, with the world watching, we get to find out if Fitzgerald's Super Bowl dreams come true. Thanks to Coach Pendino's no-brainer call 10 years ago, we're all lucky enough to see Fitzgerald doing what he does best.