Wholly inspired: Larry Fitzgerald is the product of special forces—physical and emotional, collegial and professional, individual and familial—that have shaped him into an NFL-ready receiver and polished person at age 20

Sporting News, The, March 8, 2004 by Chuck Finder

He is a lesson in complexity. He is a dual argument for heredity and environment. He is gloves and genetics and Dennis Green and the guys from the Minnesota Vikings. He is Minneapolis and Valley Forge Military Academy and the University of Pittsburgh. He is a refined product of the laboratory that was the Vikings' practice field as a team ballboy. He is the rough edges of two deaths too close, last April and June, first his mother, then a teammate.

Larry Fitzgerald is the compressed, pressurized, stone-cold, high first-round lock who emerged from this petri dish of ... well, what do you call all this? There were physical, mental, visceral, emotional, collegial, professional and familial forces at work on a fellow who grew to a potent 6-3, 218 pounds. The end result is a wide receiver and a young man so equally polished that NFL teams seem willing to overlook his youthfulness, his mere two years of college experience, his purported lack of sprinter's speed and deem him well-enough prepared to become a top-five selection in next month's draft.

"You could see very early in his career that he had a chance to be special, just because of his catching abilities," says Steelers director of football operations Kevin Colbert, who regularly witnessed Fitzgerald at Heinz Field, the stadium the University of Pittsburgh and the Steelers share on fall weekends. "The more you saw over that two-year period, especially this past season, at times he appeared--I don't know if it's a word--'undefensible.' He just made spectacular plays. He did it so often, people realized it wasn't a fluke."

"And I think his maturity will help him. He doesn't come across as a young player."

Despite his meager age of 20, given all that has moved and shaken him, amid a draft rife with controversy over the Maurice Clarett case, Fitzgerald has become in every sense a prized catch.

Pittsburgh so hates to lose him, a ballroom of 1,500 people thrice gave him a standing ovation February 21, when he was honored as the city's 2003 Sportsman of the Year, the youngest winner in the award's 68-year history. In his acceptance speech, Fitzgerald announced to the university chancellor and the city as a whole that "a couple of years down the road, after I get my degree, I want to he on the board of trustees."

Not the average Saturday night aspirations of a college sophomore, huh?

Maybe that's why this complex young man is considered so NFL ready.

Larry Fitzgerald Sr. is the longtime sports editor of the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, a respected African American newspaper in the Twin Cities. He also is a longtime radio personality, who for years was the co-host of a weekly show with then-Vikings coach Dennis Green. One thing led to another, and his son went to work as a ballboy. His son Marcus, that is.

Larry's brother, younger by three years, took the first step. Marcus told him what a blast it was and Larry followed, working his first Vikings training camp as a security guard. "He always seemed older than he was," recalls Vikings equipment manager Dennis Ryan. "Shoot, he was 13 years old, but with his size and maturity, you were convinced he was 16, 17." The next year, the kid who almost was too polite to everybody stepped on the field. And stayed.

The lanky teen wore his trademark gloves throughout the workouts. He worked the JUGS machine in practice, then worked out alone with it afterward "and pretty much showed some of those guys how to do it," Ryan says. "There were some kids who were gone in the first wave of cuts who he could compete with--with his hands. Unbelievable, the way he could go after punts, then just so softly catch it and put it away. Honest to God, he did that better than any player here except maybe Randy Moss."

Fitzgerald ran routes and tossed footballs and sprinted with Cris Carter and Moss after practices. He watched work habits. He learned receiving secrets. He absorbed behaviors. Along the way, Carter grew as close as an uncle, inviting Little Larry--as some in the Twin Cities still call him--to his speed camps and into his Florida home in the summer.

"I think most talent is innate," Colbert says. "But being around those guys, how they practice, how they adjust their routes, their body positioning, and how they catch the ball, it could have done nothing but help him. In the 20 years I've done this, in my opinion, Cris Carter had the best hands I've ever seen. To be around somebody like that, you just couldn't help but learn."

"Habits get internalized, whether you're at a playground watching kids or at a Vikings practice watching Cris Carter," says former Pitt receivers coach J.D. Brookhart, now Akron's head coach. "You're picking up great habits at a high school level. You put that with talent, which he has, and it's the right kind of combination."

High school games at the Academy of the Holy Angels brought out a stream of Vikings to study a kid who caught 73 passes for 1,254 yards and 17 touchdowns as a senior. "Why wouldn't you go watch him?" Pitt coach Walt Harris says. "He's such a great kid."