By Ron Borges

GLENDALE, AZ. – On Sunday Steve and Zak DeOssie will join an exclusive club within an exclusive club. They will be among the small percentage of NFL players ever to have reached the Super bowl but they will be something far rarer than that.

They will be one of nine father-and-son teams to have reached the NFL’s annual “ultimate’’ game. This fact has left the 46-year-old elder DeOssie in a tight spot. He is an unabashed fan of both the New England Patriots and their head coach, Bill Belichick yet he finds himself rooting against them. Not that anyone with any sense could blame him for blood, even if shed on the football field, remains thicker than water.

“I’ve gotten some very friendly ribbing from Belichik, Robert Kraft and some callers (on WEEI, where he is a regular co-host on afternoon drive radio) but I was actually surprised,’’ DeOssie said of his public confession that he will be rooting not only for his son but also for their team, the New York Giants, in Super Bowl XLII. “I thought I might get some flak but everyone understands a father roots for his son.’’

Coincidentally, the elder DeOssie has ties with both the Giants and the Patriots, having finished his 12-year NFL career as a linebacker and long snapper in New England but having had his greatest moments in New York with the Bill Parcells-coached team that won Super Bowl XXV.

Unlike his son, who is a 23-year-old rookie with no real understanding yet of how rare a thing this experience is, DeOssie had already played seven seasons in the NFL before he reached Suepr Bowl XXV in Tampa. That year there was no two-week break between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl so DeOssie and his teammates flew through the night from San Francisco after beating the 49ers to Tampa, landing at around 5 am. When the plane touched down, DeOssie knew where he was headed.

“I had called ahead for a car so when we landed Everson Walls and I drove right over to the stadium and just sat in the parking lot at 5 a.m. and looked at it,’’ DeOssie recalled. “We’d been teammates for a long time in Dallas (five years). We just sat there and talked about being in that game. It seemed surreal until the game started.’’

That was the game the Giants won by grinding the clock down for 40 minutes and then holding on by about a coat of paint on the goal post as Scott Norwood missed a 47-yard kick that insured the Giants would upset the Buffalo Bills and their powerful offense, 20-19. That afternoon DeOssie, a linebacker and special teams standout, didn’t sweat a thing. He will not be so lucky this Sunday as he sits – or doesn’t sit – at University of Phoenix Stadium.

“I can’t remember once being nervous on a football field until I started watching my son play,’’ DeOssie recalled. “Not in Pop Warner. Not in the NFL. Not in the Super Bowl game. Now I’m a wreck every game. I end up pacing around the concourse or the press box.

“I know how brutal it can be in the NFL. It’s not that I’m afraid Zak will get hurt. He can take care of himself. When he was in college (at Brown University) he was dominating so I didn’t really feel it but the NFL is different. So many things are going on out there. I thought I’d be OK but I’m a nervous wreck. I won’t be fun to sit around on Sunday.’’

What has been fun is sharing this week with his son, Zak’s mother Dianna and their daughters but what may seem remarkable is that Steve DeOssie looks at his son’s Super Bowl far differently than he recalls his own.

“The one Zak is in is far more important to me than the one I played in,’’ the father said. “Watching Zak play is the best thing I’ve ever done in football. Not just here at the Super Bowl but in high school and college and now the NFL, too.

“Maybe I took the game for granted when I was playing. I don’t know but I do know this is infinitely more fun and more important to me than what I did.

“As a parent, your entire life is wrapped up in being sure your kids are successful and happy and healthy. That’s your true goal in life. Playing in the Super Bowl is great but it’s not a goal in life. Seeing your kids accomplish their dreams is.’’
Sunday afternoon Zak DeOssie will have reached his third dream in less than a year. He will  have graduated with an Ivy League education, been drafted by an NFL team and reached the Super Bowl.

Sitting quietly on the sidelines taking it all in will be a proud father. At least he’ll be there until he starts pacing under the stands, fretting about a boy who has become a man to be proud of, a player to root for and a son to worry about.

“Zak seems to be the same Zak to me,’’ his father said. “The only advice I gave him was to take a little time to step back from the moment and take it all in. Don’t let it go by without realizing how big this is and how unusual it is to be a part of it.

“But he’s also got his perspective straight. This is a game. It’s not the be all and end all to anything. He’ll do all he can to win but the next day, whatever happened, his Mom, Dad and sisters will still love him and he will have had a rare experience.’’

So will his father, who is one of the few to have been part of a Super Bowl team and one of the rare Fraternity of Nine fathers to ever have shared that experienced with their son.