The first thing you notice when talking with Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu(notes) is that his off-field demeanor couldn't be any more different than the makeup of the scud missile you see on game day. Face-to-face, Polamalu is so soft-spoken, one has to push the microphone closer when interviewing him, and he's far more comfortable talking about others than himself. This week, his first focus wasn't on the knee that is recovering well after costing him 11 games in 2009 (the most in a single season in his seven-year career), nor was it the egal travails of one Ben Roethlisberger(notes). Polamalu was fully about helping to coach and advise the Zoom Blade team from Orlando, Florida in the national 7-on-7 tournament. Polamalu went to high school at Douglas High in Winston, Oregon, about 170 miles south of the games played this week. Polamalu played safety and running back, made All-State in baseball, and All-League in basketball, and had warm memories about his time there.
"It was a small town," Polamalu told me. "I loved how everyone went to school together from kindergarten to the 12th grade; everybody knew each other. I loved that everybody played every sport, and I think those experiences are lost nowadays."
From Douglas High, the heavily recruited Polamalu went to USC, where he learned a great deal from head coach Pete Carroll. But Polamalu didn't see the "rah-rah" side to Carroll that everyone else talks about. To him, "it was more that you loved him as an individual, and you wanted to make him happy, and that's where the motivation was. He was great to play under in college - an awesome coach and a great person. It's going to be weird seeing him on something other than cardinal and gold
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