From Lacrosse to Lombardi? Bengals Captain Sam Hubbard's Path to the Super Bowl
LOS ANGELES -- The bell rang for gym class at Archbishop Moeller High School in Cincinnati, Ohio. Junior Sam Hubbard was the star of a dodgeball game, which was a typical role for the multi-sport athlete, who played both lacrosse and football for the Crusaders.
At the time, Hubbard was committed to play college lacrosse for the University of Notre Dame. But that one day in gym class where Hubbard did his best Peter La Fleur imitation on the dodgeball court also happened to be on the same day that then Ohio State football Head Coach Urban Meyer was taking a visit at Moeller.
"When he [Coach Meyer] saw us out there playing, I guess I was moving pretty well," Hubbard said. "They just saw this tall, skinny guy, and they started talking about me."
It was after winning the football state championship in his junior year that Hubbard started to gain some traction from college football coaches. The Cincinnati native had played lacrosse since the third grade, but when the Buckeyes came calling, Hubbard had to at least listen.
"Coach Meyer convinced me to come win a National Championship and that my future was in football, he said. "He didn’t really even have a position for me, he kind of just said, 'Come here, we’ll find a place for you,' and that’s what I did."
Coach Meyer did not return a request for comment regarding this story.
Hubbard won a football state title in both his junior and senior years, and was an All-American in lacrosse in his junior year. He decided not to play lacrosse his senior season in order to spend time in the weight room trying to gain weight.
In three years at Ohio State, Hubbard tallied 116 total tackles, 17 sacks, and forced three fumbles. He landed on the All-Big Ten Second Team in 2017, and declared for the 2018 NFL Draft.
The team that selected him? His hometown team. The Cincinnati Bengals. That brings us to the present, where Hubbard is the captain for the AFC Champions and is just a few days away from competing against the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LVI (Feb. 13, 6:30 PM ET, NBC). Hubbard also noted in an interview with the Pardon My Take podcast that his team is playing the Super Bowl in honor of Harambe the Gorilla, who passed away in 2016.
When Hubbard traded in his lacrosse stick for football gloves, it made those in Columbus happy. But on the flip side, the Fighting Irish fans lost out on one heck of a lacrosse player. Enter Gerry Byrne, a former Notre Dame assistant who is currently the Head Coach at Harvard. Was the man who got Hubbard to originally play lacrosse at the next level surprised by how things turned out? He'd be lying if he said no.
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"He was a string bean, and he would tell you that himself. I had no idea that this would happen," Coach Byrne said. "I didn’t know he was going to be a million dollar thing, that would be an easy story. But he was a great lacrosse player, and he was going to be a great lacrosse player."
Recruits flipping teams after a commitment happens frequently. Recruits flipping sports? Not so much. But crazy enough, this wouldn't be the first time that Coach Byrne lost a player due to a football switch.
Jack Coan committed to the Notre Dame lacrosse program when he was a freshman in high school. Coach Byrne thought he had landed another unique talent for his sport, but the tide started to turn when a familiar name arrived at Coan's high school.
"Jack Coan called me one day and said, 'Yeah, Jim Harbaugh’s helicopter just landed on our field, he’s gonna watch me throw at study hall,' Coach Byrne said. "I was like, 'Motherfucker!'"
Coach Byrne said that Notre Dame never ended up recruiting Hubbard for football, which explains why he couldn't stay on the same campus he originally committed to and simply switched sports.
Being elite at two sports is rare, but it's no problem for Hubbard, who sacked Kansas City Chiefs Quarterback Patrick Mahomes in last week's AFC Championship Game to help force overtime. And although lacrosse may be in the rearview mirror for No. 94, he credits the learning lessons from it as a big reason why he has the opportunity to suit up in this weekend's Super Bowl.
"I was a better lacrosse player than I was football for most of my life, and I think I had more fun playing lacrosse," said Hubbard, who signed a four-year, $40 million contract extension with the Bengals last summer. "I credit a lot of my athletic development on the football field, hand-eye coordination, all that type of stuff, to playing lacrosse."
We will find out on Sunday if Sam Hubbard will be a Super Bowl Champion. If the Bengals do end up winning the game and Cincinnati's own hoists the Lombardi Trophy at the end of the night, his lacrosse journey will be a big reason why.