Never a snap

DETROIT – His high school played flag football.

“Embarrassing,” Robbie Tobeck admitted.

He was given a scholarship to Washington State University, bottom line, because he was a good guy, not because he was considered a good player.

“At least I got the scholarship,” he said.

A defensive lineman, he was traded to the offense before his senior year because, well, his position coach just didn’t have much use for him.

“Ask Robbie about old Del Wight,” laughed WSU coach Bill Doba, “and watch the hair on his neck stand back up.”

His current team, the Seattle Seahawks, decided to pick a center – Tobeck’s position – in the first round of the last draft, which happens in the National Football League about once every six years.

The no-respect card everyone’s been playing here at Super Bowl XL? Robbie Tobeck has a hold-‘em hand.

Yet it couldn’t matter less. Oh, perhaps it’s a tool Tobeck uses when he needs to dig deep for motivation when there’s another barbell to be hoisted or hill to be run, and maybe the Seahawks’ choice of Chris Spencer in the draft spurred Tobeck toward his first Pro Bowl appearance in this, his 12th, NFL season.

But mostly it’s grist for another good story – and Robbie Tobeck loves a good story. Almost as much as he enjoys the barbs, the putdowns, the not-so-gentle give-and-take of the locker room and practice field.

“You know, I’m to the point where I’m measuring my career in weeks instead of years,” he said this week, “and when it’s over, that’s the part I’m going to miss.”

Just in case that turns out to be sooner rather than later, Tobeck unsheathed his terrible swift sword without much prompting this week, often as not training it on quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, not the most elusive of targets.

“Usually in the huddle, he’s in a full panic,” Tobeck reported, “and we’ve got to get him settled down. Traditionally, the quarterback calls the play, but a lot of times he’s choking and can’t talk. So we take turns. Bobby Engram does a great job of calling plays for us in the huddle. Matt manages to get composure enough at the line of scrimmage that he can call the cadence.”

What else?

“Matt getting here has been a neat thing for bald guys everywhere,” he said. “Every bald guy I’ve talked to since we got in the Super Bowl is rooting for Seattle.”

And maybe every overachiever.

Remember the mythic status former Seattle quarterback Dave Krieg gained simply because his alma mater, Milton College, went out of business? Well, Tobeck’s high school is defunct – New Port Richie in Tarpon Springs, Fla. Not that it had any more of a football tradition than Milton College.

“We had a heck of a basketball team, but we played flag football until my senior year and then we finally had a tackle team – we played four games,” Tobeck recalled. “At times it was kind of silly and embarrassing to say you played flag football.”

Tobeck’s going-nowhere football ambitions (“from the fourth grade, it’s all I ever wanted to do”) got some direction thanks to a chance encounter with former WSU and Tampa Bay quarterback Jack Thompson, who was playing in a benefit basketball game at Tobeck’s school. Short on players, Thompson invited Tobeck to play on his team – and was impressive enough for Thompson to strike up a conversation afterward.

“He just started making phone calls – he gave me his phone number and told me if I wanted his help, to call him at noon Monday and we’d start working out,” said Tobeck. “He said, ‘If you don’t call, that’s it – I’m not going to babysit you.’ So straight up noon Monday, I called.

“He’s been a part of everything I’ve done since. I consider him my brother. My kids call him Uncle Jack and I have a son named after him.”

Thompson’s help didn’t stop with a recruiting video or a workout partner. He helped Tobeck get to Kilgore Junior College in Texas after a false start at Liberty University, and when Tobeck ripped up a knee and saw his recruiting feelers dwindle, Thompson talked his friend Mike Price into a visit to WSU.

“I didn’t find this out until afterward,” Tobeck said, “but Coach Price eventually told Jack, ‘Look, this guy is never going to play here. But I’m going to give him a scholarship because he’s a good guy and we need a few of those. But I don’t know where I’m going to play him.’ ”

Doba remembered a staff meeting in 1991 when the Cougars’ offensive staff was fishing for an extra body and Wight, then the defensive line coach, offered up Tobeck, saying, “He can’t play – you can take him.”

“And I’m thinking, ‘Dang, Del, you just gave away the best guy we had.’ “

Tobeck became the guy who snapped the ball to Drew Bledsoe during WSU’s 9-3 Copper Bowl season, and one season after signing a free-agent contract with Atlanta he’d moved into the starting lineup. Now he’s part of what’s considered perhaps the best offensive line in football – though perhaps he’s actually more of an emcee.

“Sometimes we have to remind Robbie that he isn’t the mayor,” said line coach Bill Laveroni, “but the dog catcher.”

Tobeck isn’t sure he’d trade one role for another – especially this week.

“I guess if I had to, maybe I’d rather be a first-round pick and made a lot more money,” he laughed. “But maybe when you work so hard for it, it means a little more.”