BLOOMINGTON, Minn. -- Though it's hardly official, it appears the third time won't be a charm for former Steelers guard Alan Faneca when it comes to enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Despite what you might think, Faneca is OK with that. He's just happy to be included on a list with so many great players.
"It's awesome just to be in the conversation," Faneca said Tuesday from his home in the Washington, D.C. area. "It's hard not to enjoy it when people are speaking nicely of you."
Faneca, now 41, always gave people plenty of nice things to say about him. A first-round draft pick of the Steelers in 1998, he was a cornerstone of Bill Cowher's rebuild of the Blitzburgh teams of the early and mid-'90s to the ones with which the Steelers would become a Super Bowl champion again in 2005.
From 2001 through 2009, Faneca went to nine consecutive Pro Bowls as a guard and was a six-time first-team selection on the All-Pro team. He also set the biggest block in the Steelers' Super Bowl win over Seattle in Super Bowl XL, springing Willie Parker free for a 75-yard run that remains the longest in Super Bowl history.
"I just remember seeing him clearing out that last guy," Parker told me earlier this month. "And then it was just open space. He did that a lot."
Faneca and the rest of the Hall of Fame finalists will arrive here on Thursday and be a part of the pomp and circumstance that has become the Super Bowl. The other 14 finalists in addition to Faneca are Ray Lewis, Brian Urlacher, Edgerrin James, Randy Moss, Isaac Bruce, John Lynch, Brian Dawkins, Everson Walls, Ty Law, Tony Boselli, Kevin Mawae, Joe Jacoby and Steve Hutchinson. Law is a native of Aliquippa.
Senior nominees are Robert Brazile and Jerry Kramer, while Bobby Beathard is a finalist in the contributor category.
Despite this being his third time, Faneca looks forward to the event.
"Year 1, you just kind of enjoy the process," Faneca told me. "You take everything in. Going forward, you just meet everyone and you realize there are guys who wait five, seven years, or seniors who wait their whole life for this. It's exciting every year. You just kind of go along with it."
The previous two years have ended in disappointment. If it doesn't happen again this time around, he's OK with it. Again, just being talked about with some of the greats to play the game is a big deal.
"The first year, I kind of didn't expect to make it," Faneca admitted. "But last year, I had a lot of people telling me, and not just family, but people who are in the know, that I had a good chance. Then, it didn't happen. You can't lower your expectations, but it's a little like the Wizard of Oz. You get there and you get to peek behind the curtain and see the process. And then, you don't get in."
Speaking of peeking behind the curtain, I asked Faneca about the differences he sees in the way Mike Tomlin and Cowher run the Steelers. Faneca played for Cowher from 1998 through 2006, then was with the Steelers in 2007 for Tomlin's first season, one that wound up being Faneca's last in Pittsburgh.
He has come back to help the Steelers in training camp the past couple of seasons, working with their offensive linemen and showing time heals all wounds.
"The difference I see is that, having been with the team the past couple of training camps, is that Mike has changed in terms of that first year, everything was new, so he was establishing his rules and process," Faneca said. "You can see he keeps things loose and he feeds off that looseness and uses that energy to create on the field.
"Bill was, not so much a disciplinarian, because that's not true, but he was more of a traditional, old-school coach."
Unfortunately, things didn't end well in Pittsburgh for Faneca. He knew his tenure was coming to an end because of his impending free agent status and he wasn't afraid to talk about it being his final season in Pittsburgh. He would go on to play his final three seasons with the Jets and Cardinals.
"I never wanted to leave but I saw the writing on the wall," Faneca said. "It just was what it was. It was the wrong time for my contract to come up. We had a new regime coming in and there were going to be changes."
But he holds no grudges with Tomlin, general manager Kevin Colbert or anyone else in the organization.
"I have some regrets about how I handled it," Faneca said of his final season with the Steelers in 2007. "But it was so personal and that's what brought out some of the emotion. That last game we played in the playoffs, when we lost to Jacksonville, it just hurt knowing that it was over. I sat in my locker and I bawled. I didn't want to talk to anybody.
"That's why going back and seeing other guys coming back is so great for me. It's different in Pittsburgh. It really is."
If Faneca does make the final Hall of Fame cut, he'll be the 24th person with ties to the team to be inducted. It's an exclusive list of players, coaches and front office personnel. And he would only be too happy to be a part of it.
And perhaps his children will know a little more about how great of a football player dad was. Faneca and his wife, Julie, are in the middle of a move to Virginia Beach, Va. And their children, ages 12, 6 and 3, are starting to get an idea that dad was kind of a big deal.
"My oldest, she remembers some of the fun things she got to do," Faneca said of his playing career. "That's how she remembers it. My son, who is six, he knows that people know who dad is, but that's about it. It's such a funny thing but it's not impressive for him, he just sees all of the things I have (from my career) and that's just dad's stuff."
A bronze bust in Canton, Ohio, and a gold jacket that goes along with it would be a nice addition to those things.
