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| 09-05-2003 | Previous edition: 09-04-2003 |
        
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Printer-friendly version Family showdown comes one year too lateBy Steve MillerAssistant Sports Editor Scott Mruczkowski has waited a good part of his life for this day to come. It came just one year too late. The Bowling Green center — and younger brother of former Purdue center Gene Mruczkowski, who graduated last year — has looked forward to clashing with his brother's team on the college gridiron ever since Gene signed a letter of intent to play for the Boilers. Instead, Saturday's Purdue-Bowling Green showdown will be a bittersweet one for Mruczkowski. Sure, he'll get his chance to enact his vengeance on the team who hardly recruited him in spite of his family ties. But he won't be able to look across the field and see his big brother watching proudly. Aside from their monstrous size and love for football, the Mruczkowskis have practically nothing in common. From the way they talk to the way they act, Gene needs few words to describe how different he is from his little brother. "Three words: Night and day," Gene said. "I'm quiet and reserved. He's boisterous and even obnoxious at times. I'm usually a humble guy, while he's not shy talking about himself every once in a while." Conflicting personalities were a large part of the reason for the non-stop "battle royale" that made peace and quiet unknown virtues in the Mruczkowski household. As they continued to get bigger, they quickly learned to throw their weight around — usually at each other — and continuously practiced the same skills that would make them terrors on the football field. "Brothers will always fight," Gene said. "But we're competitive, so that made it even worse. In everything from playing baseball in the back yard to playing video games, we somehow would end up wanting to kill each other." Their parents, Vince and Eve, came up with a solution to that problem: get them involved in sports. That way, they'd have better things to do than beat each other up — like muscling all the other kids. But that solution was only temporary. The Mruczkowskis played pee-wee football and little league baseball, but grew out of both sports before long. They would have to wait until high school before they could put on a helmet again. The football field turned out to be the only place where the darker sides of their night-and-day personalities came out. When it did, they began to look an awful lot alike. As Gene was beginning an impressive college career at Purdue, Scott was busy solidifying his reputation as a near-unstoppable player on both offense and defense for Benedictine High School in Garfield Heights, Ohio. In his spare time, he set school records in the hammer throw for the Benedictine track team. In spite of Mruczkowski's obvious athletic ability, the Purdue football team was slow to recruit him. Though he was a promising prospect, the Boilers' courtship with Mruczkowski consisted merely of an invitation for him to come visit campus. "We recruited him for a brief period of time," Tiller said. "I don't remember the exact circumstances when we recruited Scott, but I think we were only going to take three linemen instead of four." Whatever the reason was, Mruczkowski didn't care. It bothered him that, even though his brother had already made a sizeable impact at Purdue, Tiller's staff did little more than pay him a visit. "They recruited me, mostly because I was 'Gene's brother.' But they never really came after me. "That definitely angered me a little." It proved to be only a minor setback. Mruczkowski latched onto Bowling Green and immediately began making a name for himself at his own school. This year, he's been nominated as a candidate for the Rotary/Lombardi trophy, which is given to college football's best lineman. Just like his big brother, Mruczkowski has forged an iron-man reputation, starting every game he's played in leading up to his junior year. And, just like his brother, he'll only wear No. 79. "My brother wore the 79 in high school," Scott Mruczkowski said. "Ever since he's had it, it's been my favorite number." Those are just a few of the more obvious ways that Mruczkowski has followed in his brother's footsteps. But if you watch him closely in a pile-up or when the refs have their backs turned, you might catch another nuance of the skills he's inherited from Gene. "He taught me a lot about how to get away with stuff," Mruczkowski said of the less "professional" aspects of football he learned from Gene. "Most of all, he showed me ways to get back at defensive players that try to cheap shot you." But, honestly, cheap shot? Gene thinks his little brother makes it sound so undignified. "How about the way to get at back at a guy in a legal manner,'" Gene said. "It's the same tricks I learned from (former Purdue lineman) Matt Light and the other guys." If Scott had it his way, Gene would suit up in the Boiler old gold and black on Saturday. He'd watch from the sidelines while little brother put to use the skills he learned from big brother over the years. Scott is sure he'd make Gene proud. "That's the one thing I've been looking forward to since I came here," Mruczkowski said. "It's ironic that, the one year I finally get to play Purdue, Gene's not there anymore." Printer-friendly version |
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