PITTSBURGH Fitzgerald's personality equal to talent

For the Steelers' director of football operations, the receiver's demeanor counts.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Kevin Colbert could look out his office window the past two seasons and watch Larry Fitzgerald make the acrobatic grabs only a headed-to-the-pros receiver can.
The Steelers' director of football operations also saw Fitzgerald interact with his Pitt teammates, a sophomore by grade but an adult by nature. During games, Colbert noticed how Fitzgerald routinely flipped the ball to an official after scoring, rather than carrying out a choreographed celebration.
Still, for all the marvelous things Colbert saw Fitzgerald do up close and personal, what impressed him most was how Fitzgerald ate lunch.
He liked how Fitzgerald didn't rush through the food line, eager to eat quickly and be on his way, but took time to be polite. And Fitzgerald wasn't that way only with Steelers executives and Pitt officials, but also with the staff at the practice complex the two teams share.
Impressed
"You see a kid like Larry Fitzgerald in the cafeteria, and how he acts around people, and you are impressed," Colbert said.
It was the same demeanor Fitzgerald displayed while receiving the Pittsburgh sportsman of the year award, when he asked Pitt chancellor Mark Nordenberg to consider him someday for the university's board of trustees.
Even though Fitzgerald only went to college for two years, the NFL declared him eligible for this draft because he spent nearly 11/2 academic years at a prep school. He would have graduated from high school in 2001 had he not transferred and therefore is three years past his senior year of high school.
If the Oakland Raiders don't take him at No. 2, Arizona seems all but certain to snatch him at No. 3. Fitzgerald was a ball boy when new Cardinals coach Dennis Green coached the Vikings, and Fitzgerald's father, Larry Sr., hosted Green's weekly TV show.
"I think he's the No. 1 player coming out of college football," Green said.
Not all NFL personnel directors agree -- some have the faster Roy Williams of Texas rated as the top wide receiver -- but they all seem to expect Fitzgerald to be a star.
There's just too much there: He's a smooth receiver who regularly makes difficult catches in multiple coverage. A Heisman Trophy runner-up and Walter Camp player of the year who collected 34 touchdown catches in just two seasons. Perhaps the best set of hands to come out of college football in years.
And there's also an inner drive that Fitzgerald credits to his father, a former college lineman and a longtime sportswriter, and his late mother, Carol, who died about a year ago. Fitzgerald took his mother's death hard then and still does; tears well in his eyes whenever he speaks of her.
Watching with dad
To illustrate how tightly knit the Fitzgeralds are -- younger brother Marcus plays at Marshall University -- Larry turned down the NFL's invitation to attend the draft in New York and instead will watch it on TV with his father.
"It's hard to put into words what he means to me," the younger Fitzgerald said. "It's been a tough last year, I'm not going to lie about that. My dad has been a rock in my corner."
Fitzgerald would love to be reunited with Green but said he won't be disappointed wherever he goes.
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