Fresno Bee: Giordano made it to NFL his way

By Matt James / The Fresno Bee02/01/07 05:10:21

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That much confidence and understatement shouldn't fit into one body. Matt Giordano is Don King on the inside and Mr. Ah Shucks on the outside. With such conflicting forces, the guy should have tornadoes circling him.  This week in Miami, reporters asked Giordano how he and Indianapolis Colts are going to stop Bears returner Devin Hester, and here is a good time to pause and contemplate the fact that akid from Fresno is The Guy, Mr. Special Teams, the one suddenly deemed the head honcho in charge of stopping the most unstoppable return man in the NFL.  This Sunday. In the Super Bowl.  "It's been unreal," he says.

He can only blame himself. Giordano is the one who ran down New England kick returner Ellis Hobbs from across the field in the AFC Championship and saved a touchdown. The Patriots scored five plays later, but Giordano can't do everything.  "God gave me the speed and the strength to chase him down," he shrugs.  Sure, but there was also the fact that in sixth grade, Giordano had a disappointing track and field season — who knew a 12-year-old's sports season could be disappointing? — and so he took the plastic base off a swimming pool basketball hoop, filled it with sand and rocks, tied a rope to it and his waist, and proceeded to drag it around his parents' 21/2 -acre lot. Every day.

"I thought he was crazy," says his mother, Janet Giordano.  After two years, he had worn it out, and so he and his dad, Vic, built another sled out of pipe and weights. Maybe God makes fast, but Giordano made himself faster. "That's when it clicked, that hard work really does pay off," Giordano says.  Truth is, for all his downplaying, Giordano is Muhammad Ali at his core, thinks he can run down pretty much anyone in the NFL, though he did not tell anyone in the never-ending line of reporters that he would like to catch Hester. The Bears rookie did set the NFL record for most return touchdowns in a season and had one called back in the playoffs against Seattle.  "No. No I did not," Giordano says. "But I would like to do that."  Colts coach Tony Dungy, on the other hand, would probably not like Giordano chasing Hester from behind. At least not in the Super Bowl. Maybe next preseason, but not now. Ready for another great Giordano line? "I sometimes watch my diet," he says.

What he means is, he hasn't eaten anything within field-goal distance of unhealthy since last summer at an In-N-Out Burger in Fresno. In high school, his dad used to make these giant Italian dinners with pasta and sauces, but his son would say no thanks and boil a piece of poultry until the house stunk and it had the fat-content and general consistency of a rubber chicken.  He ate so many plain cans of tuna, the preacher who performed Giordano's wedding last March, "Pastor Fred," pulled out a Chicken of the Sea can in the middle of the ceremony and used it as an analogy. At the Mountain View Community Church in Fresno, where Giordano originally met Laura Enns of Clovis, Pastor Fred Leonard said the new couple should be as committed to their vows as Giordano had been to his diet all these years. Giordano's mom actually did research to see if eating that much tuna was bad for a person. His parents, like they always have, just sit back and watch in amazement. After Giordano didn't play much on the freshman team at Buchanan High, he went to the coaches and asked what he needed to do to be a starter. The kid would have been 110 pounds carrying a set of encyclopedias. They'd have laughed him out of the office if he hadn't been gritting his teeth.

After high school, he didn't get a single scholarship offer and the Giordanos figured that was it for football. But Giordano went to Fresno City College, where he was a lunch-pail kind of player. Literally. He brought a lunch every day, forced down protein to gain weight. In a game at Ratcliffe Stadium, Giordano ran down a returner from the other side of the field who had a 30-yard head start. He dragged him down at the goal line and even though it was a touchdown, Fresno City coach Tony Caviglia swears the tape of that play made Cal coach Jeff Tedford offer Giordano a scholarship when no one else did. "I don't remember that specific play," says Tedford, "but there's no question that when we watched him on tape we thought he would help us.

"He's a mentally, physically tough guy." So tough, in fact, that in a game at Southern Mississippi, Giordano's helmet was pulled around and his chin-strap nearly ripped his lip off his face. The doctor sewed him up with 40 stitches, doing the procedure in a dark gym, and Giordano could feel the whole thing. The deadening injection kept bleeding right out of his dangling bottom lip. They found one of his bottom teeth on the field and put it back in. It would be the one now turning brown. At an NFL tryout, Giordano tore his pec doing the bench press, then ran the 40-yard dash anyway, with one arm hanging to the side. "Yeah," says Fresno State coach Pat Hill, "we probably should have made him an offer." Of course his parents thought football was over after college, too, but it wasn't. He said he was going to the NFL and even his own agent warned them he might not get drafted. The Colts took him in the fourth round, so early his mom wasn't even watching TV when it came across. Her husband had to call from the other side of the house. "WHO took him in the fourth round?!" she yelled. You would think for an undersized, overlooked guy, just making the NFL would be enough, making the Super Bowl would be enough, but it never is. "He is bound and determined to be on this Colts defense," his mother says. "I don't know how he's going to get on this defense. But I will never say he can't. Not ever again."