UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Think back to what you were doing as a kid. Whatever it was, it surely came to be your normal, so you just went with it and figured, hey, this is just the way life is.
Now think about Joey Porter Jr.'s life as a kid -- having a dad who played in the NFL and getting to go watch him win a Super Bowl with the Steelers.
Man, that must have been pretty cool.
"Yeah, it was cool," he said.
But really, since that was the only life he knew, what young Joey went through was, in fact, just normal to him.
"I really didn't think too much of it as a kid," he said. "I really didn't know too much was going on until I really started to grow up. But going to the games, seeing the players in the locker room and everything like that, that was a big experience for me.
"Can't forget those moments now."
Especially the first one.
How's this for an earliest childhood memory?
"I'll say the earliest I remember to this day was when I went to the Super Bowl and they won over Seattle," said Joey, who was 5 years old at the time when the Steelers beat the Seahawks, 21-10, in Super Bowl XL on Feb. 5, 2006. "So that was a big thing.
"I remember going on the field with the confetti and all that. ... I just kind of remember being there. I remember the halftime show. I know that we had all the lights and stuff. I remember being on the field and going in the locker room afterwards. Not too much of the game, but just the celebration and stuff."
Porter's dad, of course, was Joey Porter Sr., who played in the NFL from 1999 to 2011 and spent the first eight seasons of his career with the Steelers. An excellent linebacker, Joey Sr. was first-team All-Pro two times and second-team three times, plus a four-time Pro Bowler and member of the Hall of Fame's 2000s All-Decade team.
Father and son have a close relationship to this day, and younger Joey now can look back on just what it meant having an NFL player as a father and what that taught him.
It also helped prepare Joey for the stage that he's on now as a big-time college defensive back in his own right and a potential first-round NFL draft pick next year.
How did dad help mold his son in football?
"He's been there, he's done that before, so he knows the things that I have to go through in life," Joey Jr. said. "So he gave me the blueprint, and I've been just trying to follow that so far, and I feel like it's been working."
What's the best advice his dad gave him?
"He was like, 'Do what you love, and then when you stop loving the game, that's when you walk away,'" Joey Jr. said. "'Because when you stop loving it out here, that's when you could get hurt.' So, that's always what I kept to myself just every time I stepped on the field. Just have fun with it."
When asked who was his favorite Steelers player growing up, Joey Jr. flashed a big smile and obviously said, "Besides my dad?"
"There was a lot of good ones," he continued. "If we're talking about when (my dad) played, Troy (Polamalu), Larry Foote, that whole defense had some guys on there. Even now, recently, like when AB (Antonio Brown) was playing, Le'Veon Bell. Juju Smith-Schuster, there was a lot of guys that walked in the building that I was really a fan of watching."
Joey Jr. played his high school ball at North Allegheny and racked up all kinds of individual awards and success. A cornerback, he was a 4-star prospect coming out of high school and chose Penn State over the likes of Pitt, LSU, Maryland, Rutgers, West Virginia and UCLA.
He has had some ups and downs in his Penn State career, but there's absolutely no denying that he has all the tools necessary to become a star, both in college and in the NFL. He's 6-foot-2, 198 pounds, long and fast, which are all things NFL scouts love.
Entering this season, Joey Jr. is widely considered to be the best draft prospect on the current Penn State team. He very well could be picked in the first round, and if so, he would become the first Nittany Lion defensive back ever taken in the first round, which is hard to imagine.
There are certainly parts of his game that need improvement. He committed a number of pass interference and holding penalties the second half of last year, so he'll have to get his technique and timing cleaned up.
But make no mistake, the young man will play in the NFL and could be a standout for many years if he develops the way everyone projects.
His dad already had a great NFL career, and now the younger Porter has that possibility in front of him.
"That's what we wanted from the jump, and that's what we set out to do," Joey Jr. said. "I fell in love with the sport at a young age, and he was like, 'If you're gonna do it, we're gonna have to do it. It's gonna be some long nights.' And I signed up for it, so now we're here."
