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ARLINGTON, Texas - Clay Matthews was raised on football and Troy Polamalu hair battle
There was a man dressed as a matador who asks will be appointed as a player, a man wearing such some sort of "Hot Tub Time Machine" and a man with a superhero costume from Nickelodeon. But it's really complicated things as costumes worn during the Super Bowl xlv. It's still a circus - the kid is required from My Weekly Reader was on hand to ask questions - but compared with past media days , this is relatively respectable that Edward R. Murrow might also have been in charge on Tuesday.
Super Bowl media day isn't exactly a course they teach at the Columbia School of Journalism, though perhaps they should offer it at the graduate level. When you wake up hundreds and hundreds of sports writers so early they haven't even gotten their hangovers yet, dispatch them into arctic cold across icy highways, park them in a lot across the street from the stadium, shuttle them around the neighborhood for half an hour to cross that very street, force them through security patdowns so invasive they should include a post-screening cigarette, pen them up for upwards of an hour and then give them exactly 60 minutes -- the time is kept on the scoreboard and you can't spike the ball to stop the clock -- to question a couple dozen football players about an upcoming game they've already been pestered about nonstop for eight days, you shouldn't expect the Frost-Nixon interviews.
With all the trained, experienced reporters digging and all the players required to be there, you're just hoping that someone, somewhere will ask and get the answer to the tough, important question everyone wants to know:
Who puts more effort into his hair care -- Troy Polamalu or Clay Matthews?
"Clay. Every time you see him, he's got a water bottle and he's spraying water on it to keep his hair moist," Green Bay linebacker Erik Walden said. "It seems like every time he makes a big play and comes back to the sidelines, I see him with a water bottle and he's squirting it on his hair, I guess to keep it shiny for the ladies. I swear it's just for the look."
"Troy, because it's curly," said Pittsburgh practice squad receiver Tyler Grisham. "You have to condition it daily. You have to brush it out and keep it from getting tangled. I mean, it has to be Troy. We don't like to watch his hair care. That's something that's private. He can't share his secrets with the world because then everybody would be on TV and making a lot of money off it. He has his own box and no one really knows what he uses. He brushes his hair. We know he washes it and conditions it but we really don't know with what."
Well, maybe he doesn't tell the scout team players, Tyler. But Steelers lineman Chris Scott has a pretty good idea what Polamalu uses (possibly because he watches TV). "He most definitely has his Head and Shoulders. And he has his Head and Shoulders. And he has a lot more Head and Shoulders."
Clay Matthews was raised on football and Troy Polamalu hair battle
I would have asked Polamalu himself but there was such a thick wall of sports writers surrounding him that the only possible way I could have sneaked through is if I had yelled, "Free doughnuts and beer over here!" So I stuck with their teammates, whose support, not surprisingly, broke down along party lines.
"I like Clay's," Green Bay linebacker Frank Zombo said. "I sit next to him on the bench, and I'm always getting hit with his hair flings and his water flings. He's got some nice hair, huh?"
Jim Caple is a senior writer for ESPN.com. You can follow him on Twitter at jimcaple.
Horn: Clay Matthews was raised on football
By BARRY HORN / The Dallas Morning News
Published 04 February 2011 10:38 PM
Before there was Clay Matthews III, linebacker for the Super Bowl finalist Green Bay Packers, there was Clay Matthews Jr., linebacker for the Cleveland Browns, who followed in the NFL footsteps of his father, Clay Matthews, an offensive and defensive lineman for the San Francisco 49ers.
"There are a lot of Clay Matthewses who have played the game," the original, who is 82 and a regular at the neighborhood gym, was saying this week via telephone from his suburban Houston home.
He chuckled and without warning broadened the theme.
"But you do know about the others, too?" he asked, not waiting for an answer before he rattled off the names of his other NFL playing progeny. "You know, there are other Matthews."
That would be a younger son, Bruce Matthews, an offensive lineman who built a Pro Football Hall of Fame career with the Houston Oilers and Tennessee Titans, as well as Bruce's son, Kevin Matthews, an offensive lineman with the Titans, who just completed his rookie season.
For good measure, the family patriarch reminded there are more family members on the road to the NFL. His grandson, Clay Jr.'s son, Casey Matthews, a linebacker from Oregon, will join the NFL in the upcoming draft. And back on the offensive lineman branch of the family tree, his grandson Jake Matthews, son of Bruce, just completed his freshman season as a starting tackle at Texas A&M.
"Jake is a giant," his grandfather crowed. "He's 6-5, 300 pounds. I was barely 220 pounds when I played. I don't know how I would have lined up against him, but I would have given it my all. In this family, we love to compete."
According to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Matthews family is only the second to produce three generations of NFL players. With all due respect to the Pyne family of Massachusetts (George Jr., George III and Jim) who total 97 games in nine seasons, thanks largely to Jim's 81 games in seven seasons, there is no comparison. The Matthews men total 653 games over 45 seasons. With the imminent arrival of Casey, Kevin sprouting in Tennessee and Clay III just completing his second Pro Bowl season, 700 games for the Family Matthews could come next season.
The two-generation Mannings — Archie, Peyton and Eli — get their share of hype as the first family of the NFL, but the Matthews clan has to be in the discussion.
The Matthews' football family has been a constant talking point all week long at Clay III's daily meetings with the media.
"Obviously, I was very privileged to have a father who played in the league and have such a family history," he said at Tuesday's Media Day. "I've had to work to kind of get out of the shadow of my family, and I've been doing a good job of that. But, it's a good shadow to be in because they excelled in this league for many, many years. If I can have half the career they had, I'll be in good company."
Clay III appears well on the way.
His father, Clay Jr. played 278 games in 19 seasons, which ranks 16th in NFL history. He was a four-time Pro Bowler. Uncle Bruce ranks ninth, having played in 296 games in his 19 seasons. Remove from the career games played list those who kicked or punted for a living, and Clay Jr. vaults to eighth, Bruce to third.
"The only thing I ever told my boys about football when they asked me if they could play is [that] you don't quit," said Clay Matthews, the family patriarch. "No one does that in my family."
Or as Clay Matthews II recently told The New York Times: "My dad was very clear. He said, ‘You guys can do whatever you want, and I'll be proud of you. But whatever you're going to do, apply yourself, be responsible, show up and do it like you mean it.' "
Family pride
Clay Matthews I was born William Clay Matthews in Charleston, S.C., in 1928. His father Howard Lynn "Matty" Matthews was about to embark on a three-decade career as the boxing coach at The Citadel, the military college of South Carolina.
Because their oldest son was also named Howard Lynn, the Matthews family made it a practice to call all their boys by their middle names.
It was Matty who introduced his three sons to sports, drilling them with one single rule: never give up. He had all the boys boxing before they entered elementary school.
Clay eventually went off to play football at Georgia Tech, where he also studied industrial engineering. The Los Angeles Rams drafted him in the 25th and final round of the 1949 NFL draft and promptly shipped him to the San Francisco 49ers.
Who knows what might have become of his NFL career had it not been interrupted by the Korean War. Matthews was assigned to jump out of airplanes as a member of the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division. When he returned to the 49ers in 1953, 1st Lt. William Clay Matthews had 21 jumps on his resume.
Matthews, an offensive lineman before the war, was shifted to the defensive line. The one-time last-round draft choice was rewarded for his military service and improved play by being named one of the 49ers' captains. He played three more seasons with the 49ers before retiring to try to earn enough money to raise a family. Among the jobs his engineering degree helped him earn was the presidency of Bell & Howell, the one-time giant manufacturer of movie cameras and motion picture equipment.
"The business world was just like football for me," he said. "It was 10 percent ability and 90 percent desire. If I gave anything to my boys and grandchildren, it was the desire to succeed, on the football field and in life."
Bruce Matthews, who lives in the same Sugar Land, Texas, neighborhood as his father, said he and brother Clay Jr. learned well from their father about competitiveness, "out of our fear of failure, our fear of losing."
That has been passed down to Clay III.
"He's very driven," Bruce said. "He's very sharp and always focused. ... He plays at an energy level that few players do."
In a way, Clay III, who Sunday hopes to be the first member of the Matthews family to play on a Super Bowl champion, had to show the most desire. He wasn't highly recruited coming out of high school in California, where he didn't start until his senior year. His father, his defensive coordinator, didn't think his 6-1, 165-pound son was good enough.
There were no major college scholarship offers. The son chose instead to walk on at the University of Southern California, where Clay Jr. and Uncle Bruce starred and graduated into first-round draft choices.
At USC, Clay III relied on lessons preached by his grandfather, Clay I.
"If I'm not the swiftest, strongest or fastest, it's really what comes from within," the 24-year-old Packers linebacker said. "That's what determines how successful you're going to be. You don't have to be the biggest, strongest or fastest. It's your ‘want to.' "
Clay III earned playing time on special teams. Then came a scholarship. He grew a couple of inches and put on 50 pounds. Finally came the opportunity to play linebacker. The Packers took Clay Matthews III with the 26th overall pick of the 2009 draft.
"I would like to say I created him in my image, but I didn't," his grandfather said. "But I played like he does. I never kept my motor running so constantly. Neither did his father.
"People like to say everything was better in the good old days, but not in this case. That boy took the lessons passed on to him and made himself what he is. We are all very proud."
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