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Ex-OSU player faces off against New England in Super Bowl

Five New York Giants from Ohio who will suit up for Super Bowl XLVI – (from left) Chase Blackburn, a linebacker from Marysville; Jim Cordle, a center from Lancaster; Greg Jones, a linebacker from Cincinnati; Mario Manningham, a wide receiver from Warren; and Jake Ballard, a tight end from Springboro.

Contributed photo Five New York Giants from Ohio who will suit up for Super Bowl XLVI – (from left) Chase Blackburn, a linebacker from Marysville; Jim Cordle, a center from Lancaster; Greg Jones, a linebacker from Cincinnati; Mario Manningham, a wide receiver from Warren; and Jake Ballard, a tight end from Springboro.

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By Tom Archdeacon, Staff Writer Updated 12:44 AM Saturday, February 4, 2012

INDIANAPOLIS — Every morning at Saint Mary School in Lancaster they start with a prayer and Principal Carlton Rider announces the saint of the day.

“So who was it today?” teacher Carol Bouffioux was asked after classes ended Friday afternoon.

The question — coming after a day of dealing with a room full of second-graders — caught her a bit off guard: “Hmmm ... Let’s see, was it St. Blaise? Or was that yesterday? I’m not sure who was today.”

Actually, it was Blaise, but to be safe she could have said St. Jimmy.

That’s in reference to Jim Cordle, who might not quite have heavenly status, but he’s sure close to it for those who treat football like religion.

He’s in the Super Bowl.

The former Saint Mary student — he was in Mrs. Bouffioux’s class when she taught first grade — and later a three-year starter on the Ohio State offensive line is a backup center and special teams performer for the New York Giants, who meet New England in Super Bowl XLVI on Sunday.

The small Catholic school and, in fact, the whole town are celebrating Cordle’s fortune. Although there have been several football players of note from Lancaster (Ohio State’s Rex Kern and Bobby Carpenter are two), Cordle is the first to play in the Super Bowl, Rider said.

What makes it even more special is how he got there.

Jim Cordle is the patron saint of hard work and not selling yourself short.

“One of the life lessons we always tried to instill in our kids — both Jim and his younger sister (Elizabeth) — was to never settle for mediocrity on the athletic field or in the classroom.” said Denise Cordle, who like her husband Jim Sr., is a teacher in the Lancaster school system. “Jim really took that to heart.”

A two-time all state player at Lancaster High School, he was Ohio State’s starting center as a sophomore and instantly NFL draft expert Mel Kiper rated him the No. 2 center in the nation in his class.

But when other Buckeye linemen got injured during the next two years, he agreed to fill in at their positions. At his coaches’ requests, he switched to right guard, then to right tackle and finally to left tackle.

The hopscotching — as well as some injuries that sidelined him — eroded his draft status and he ended up being bypassed in the 2010 NFL draft. At Jim Tressel’s urging, though, he made a tape of his best line plays and sent them to every NFL team. That helped get his name out there enough that the Giants became interested.

They put him on their practice squad all of last season — as they did much of the year with another former Buckeye, tight end Jake Ballard from Springboro — and then they opened the 2011 campaign with him there again.

Although Tampa Bay showed interest in Cordle, he decided to stay with New York and take his chances at making the squad of one of the NFL’s upper-echelon teams.

But when a persistent neck injury knocked center David Baas out of the fourth game of the season, Cordle was signed off the practice squad and played the following week against Seattle.

He’s been on the team since, and now he’s in the Super Bowl.

Before he and his teammates left the dressing room on Media Day, Cordle coaxed the other Ohioans on the roster — Chase Blackburn (Marysville), Mario Manningham (Warren), Greg Jones (Cincinnati) and Ballard — to pose with him for a picture on his cell phone. Then he and Ballard — now housemates living in New Jersey — stood side by side for another shot.

Once the Media Day session began, Cordle posed for another photo with former Buckeye great Eddie George, was a trooper when a Telemundo crew grabbed him for a salsa lesson and then obliged reporters from Thailand and Germany who wanted him to send a message to NFL fans in their nations.

The real connection to followers, though, would come later in the week when his parents made the trip from Lancaster toting well-wishes from the students and staff at Saint Mary.

“Two years ago Jimmy came here and spoke to the students during Catholic School Week,” said Rider. “We’re just ending School Week again now and this time we decided to take a picture of our entire student body and send it to him by way of his parents. We put all of our 280 kids on the bleachers and one of our teachers has a camera with a wide angle lens, so we got the shot.”

Bouffioux said the kindergarten-through-third grade kids made one card, which they all signed. The fourth- and fifth-graders did the same, as did grades six through eight.

“We put shamrocks on the top and bottom of our card and in the middle it says ‘Good Luck Jimmy,’ ” she said.

Cordle is beloved in his hometown for several reasons. He has started his own foundation, Cordle Cares, to benefit kids, especially those involved with the Special Olympics.

When his high school offensive line coach Brian Sampson was battling Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan a year ago, Cordle went to his bedside the day before he died.

In their classrooms, both of Cordle’s parents use his football status to benefit kids. When he visited his mom’s special education students, he said: “I give them my autograph and they give me theirs.”

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