For Siragusa, Pitt was just like home

TAMPA, Fla. - Sometime in the mid-1980s, in a tiny restaurant somewhere near the Pitt campus, a fight broke out among patrons. Big, angry young men, some of them representing the Panthers football team, jumped from their chairs. Plates of food and silverware crashed to the floor. Punches were thrown. Bodies were shoved aside.

Tony Siragusa, a wide-eyed high school senior on a recruiting trip from Kenilworth, N.J., watched the scene - took part in it, even - and immediately knew: Pitt was for him.

'A little brawl broke out and all the football players jumped in,' said Siragusa, a former New Jersey state wrestling champion who now limits his fights to the football field as a 342-pound defensive tackle for the Baltimore Ravens. 'I liked the camaraderie. If you fight one of us, you're going to fight us all. Sort of like back home.'

To be fair, the togetherness displayed in that brawl was only part of the reason Siragusa decided to attend Pitt. Siragusa liked the honesty showed to him by Pitt officials.

'I went to a lot of schools (on visits),' he said. 'But they didn't try to blow smoke up my butt or tell me I was going to be a star. (Pitt) said I had to work for everything. I liked the people who were there. I liked the city of Pittsburgh.'

At Pitt, Siragusa terrorized opponents and kept a boa constrictor as a pet.

From Pitt, Siragusa has gone on to an 11-year NFL career, including seven seasons with the Indianapolis Colts before joining the Ravens in 1997. He steps up to the Super Bowl stage for the first time - not counting his 1996 musical appearance with Meat Loaf during Super Bowl week in Phoenix - when the Ravens meet the New York Giants on Sunday in Raymond James Stadium.

'I had a hard time going to sleep (Tuesday night) just thinking about the game,' he said. 'I spent my whole life since I was a pee-wee, just thinking about one goal. This is a goal I never thought I could reach, but I still had it.'

To be sure, Siragusa and the Ravens aren't just along for the ride. The Ravens set an NFL record in 2000 for the fewest points allowed in a season (165) and some people (mostly those whose memories don't stretch into the 1970s) are calling the Baltimore defense the best of all time. Siragusa believes they're right.

'It all depends,' he said. 'If you're going by looks, no. If you're going by the way we play and the way we have given up the fewest points ever in the NFL, yes.'

Pressed by a reporter to explain that assessment, Siragusa started conducting the interview.

'Are you a good reporter?' he said.

When the reporter answered in the affirmative, Siragusa said, 'Are you the best reporter there ever was?'

Told there might be a few who are better, Siragusa made his point: 'Too bad,' he said. 'You're never going to get to the top. Sorry.'

The Ravens defense might not be the best of all time until it - like the Steelers - adds Super Bowl trophies to its case. But it is nastier than Pitt football players brawling in a restaurant, if you can believe that.

Siragusa added to that reputation when he drove Oakland Raiders quarterback Rich Gannon into the ground in the AFC championship game last week. Siragusa said he landed on Gannon with his shoulder to avoid putting stress on his broken finger, but there was malicious intent. The NFL fined him $10,000.

'It's not like we're trying to hurt him,' Siragusa said. 'But we're trying to get him out of the game, plain and simple. That's part of the game.

'I don't care about fines. I'll appeal it and I think it's baloney, but if they want to fine me, fine me.

'You can ask every player on the field. If you go to (Giants defensive linemen) Michael Strahan or Keith Hamilton (and ask) what are they going to do if they have a shot my quarterback, they're putting everything they got into it.

'Why should they be fined if they hit my quarterback and knock him out of the game• If you got the shot, our offensive line messed up, congratulations, man. You did what you're supposed to do.

'They should put the fine on the offensive lineman that let me come free.'

Giants offensive tackle Lomas Brown saw the hit on Gannon and doesn't believe a fine was necessary.

'I've seen worse,' he said.

But Giants quarterback Kerry Collins said, 'I hope he doesn't do it to me. That's a lot of man to fall on top of you.'

Collins knows that Siragusa means business.

'We're here for one reason and that's to play a game,' Siragusa said. 'Yeah, there's a lot of hype ... and, yeah, I want to go out and party. Are you kidding me• I'm a party animal. But after the Super Bowl, that's when I'll party.

'I don't want to be sitting in the locker room after the Super Bowl like I was after the AFC championship game in '95 (with the Colts) when the Steelers were going to the Super Bowl and I wasn't, and I was thinking for five years, 'What could I have possibly done more to get us to the Super Bowl?'

'I don't want to be sitting like that and say, 'I had it in my hand and let it go.' '