This is Part 1 of a five-part series on Steelers legend Troy Polamalu, in advance of his scheduled Aug. 8 induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
Today: THE HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
There aren’t many athletes in history who are more beloved than Troy Aumua Polamalu. There also aren’t many who are more mysterious.
Polamalu never sought out the spotlight. He never wanted to be a star. Anytime he was singled out with individual honors, he always credited his teammates for being the reason he was able to do what he did.
For Polamalu, he’s always understood that it has taken a large support group to make it possible for him to be the man he is today.
Where he’s at today is on the verge of entering the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Polamalu will headline this year’s group of inductees in August.
How he got to this point, well, that’s an interesting story. And to understand how Polamalu reached this point, you have to understand where he came from.
Polamalu was born in Garden Grove, Calif., and spent the first portion of his childhood there, the youngest of Siuila Polamalu’s five children.
The Polamalus had moved to California from American Samoa in the mid-1970s before Troy was born and his parents divorced soon after his birth. The only other male in his household, his older brother, Sakaio, was in and out of trouble, and Troy was a self-described “street rat.”
One thing the two brothers would do when Sakio was home would be to play some football. Against each other. In the front yard or street.
“One of the things my brother and I used to do when I was young, my older brother had a much different life than me. He grew up on the streets, in and out of jail. Thank God, he has turned his life around and is doing amazing. One thing he always made sure he did, because his favorite player was Walter Payton, every time he would come home, he made time for me and we played one-on-one football,” Polamalu told me recently in a phone interview. “In fact, this is what we did every day throughout my childhood. That evolved into us taking our game on the road and playing other people two-on-two in the neighborhood.”
Those two-on-two games were where Polamalu honed his ability to run with the ball in his hands, escaping much bigger opponents. The youngster, six or seven at the time, was playing against opponents in their teens. To get caught meant serious pain, even perhaps injury.
Polamalu made sure he didn’t get caught.
“It really didn’t matter how old they were,” Polamalu said. “When (Sakaio) and I played, it was Soldier Field. I was Walter Payton and I would run towards him and jump over him. He would launch me up even higher and I would do flips and land. This was Southern California, so we would turn on the sprinklers in our yard so it would be like Soldier Field. It would get super muddy. This is what we would do every day.
“So, when we started challenging people, two-on-two, we were playing full-contact, tackle football. It was always against much older people. They would look at me like, ‘Man, this kid is only six, seven years old.’ My brother was a teenager at the time. I was playing against 20-year-olds and teenagers. We always won. That was my first real interest in football.”
But Polamalu grew up in a family steeped in football tradition. His uncle, Kennedy Polamalu (known then by the shortened version, Pola) played at USC as a fullback, helping the Trojans win the Rose Bowl in 1985 before getting into a career in coaching. His cousin, Nick Sualua, was a fullback at Ohio State who blocked for Eddie George, helping him win the Heisman Trophy in 1995.
Kennedy Polamalu, now a running backs coach for the Vikings, played a big part in the future of his nephew. But so did those pickup games with his brother.
"My time in Southern California was really unique and really instilled a passion for the sport," Polamalu said. "I didn’t care about that aspect of the game, the pro aspect of the game. But what’s also unique about my time in Southern California was that I was a street-rat kid.
"The truth is, one thing I learned from being in Southern California and being raised the way I kind of lived, you get to know a lot about people," Polamalu said. "You get to know quickly what people’s intentions are. If they’re good people, if they’re bad people. I kind of developed that quickly. To me, Oregon was no different. It didn’t matter what color they were. I just saw good and bad people. The way bad people reacted to me was much different than the way bad people in Southern California reacted to me. That, and it was different culturally."
"I was also able to experience a different kind of love in a way. I had families that I was a part of in Oregon that I never had a chance to be a part of in Southern California," Polamalu said. "They were families in that there was a mother and father, there were children. They both had jobs. They both went to college. So, I got to experience these sort of things, not only being raised by my aunt and uncle, but I got to spend a lot of time in my childhood in Oregon spending months and months at a time with other families and being able to be integrated with them.
"I had rooms at other people’s houses simultaneously, where at my own house, I still slept on the floor. It definitely was a culture shock, but culture shock has sometimes a negative connotation with it, [whereas this] was both ways. It was culture shock negatively, but more on the other side of it, I was able to experience the beautiful aspect of it."
