This past Sunday we finally had the 2011 Super Bowl teams set as the Green Bay Packers defeated the Chicago Bears in the NFC title game while the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the New York Jets in the AFC title game.
This match-up probably isn’t too surprising to many considering Green Bay and Pittsburgh were both being named as Super Bowl contenders going into the 2011 season. Sure Pittsburgh had Rothlisberger out for the first few games of the season and Green Bay had to deal with injuries but both teams did what good teams do and that is overcome adversity and overcome injuries.
What’s surprising about this year’s Super Bowl is the collegiate contingent that is represented by the players playing in the Super Bowl. Sure you might expect to see a bunch of players in the big game who went to college football powerhouses like USC, Texas, Alabama or Florida.
And for the most part, big name schools are well represented in the 2011 Super Bowl.
According to College Football Talk and a press release that was sent out immediately after Pittsburgh put the final touches on their AFC Championship, there are four Division-I schools that have four players in the Super Bowl. Those schools are LSU, Ohio State, Tennessee and Central Michigan University. Yes that is thee Central Michigan University of the Mid American Conference.
Those four Chippewas are Cullen Jenkins, Frank Zombo and Josh Gordy who play for the Packers and Antonio Brown who is in his rookie season with the Steelers. All four of these players aren’t just listed on their team’s roster they are on the active roster.
Now again according to the report by College Football Talk some are arguing that the University of Michigan actually has four players in as well since Ryan Mundy graduated from Michigan but finished his college football career with Virginia Tech. Tennessee is also arguing that there are actually five ex-Volunteers playing in this years Super Bowl.
The fact of the matter and the whole point of this article is a mid-major school has four players in this years Super Bowl which that in itself is pretty amazing.
Source: College Football Talk
