Towanda grad faced football players before they were Giants

by brian fees (Sports Editor)
Published: February 8, 2012

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Before he was knocking down Tom Brady's passes in the Super Bowl, Jason Pierre-Paul was a raw defensive end playing in the Big East for South Florida.

When Towanda graduate Adam Harris first saw Pierre-Paul, he was being mentioned as a secondary player to watch out for on the South Florida lineup.

It might have been just over two years ago, but no one could picture then that he'd become a player announcer Chris Collinsworth would say 'he's not a normal human being,' to describe him during the Super Bowl.

"They actually had another defensive end (two-time All-American George Selvie) and JPP just burst on the scene," Harris said. "The coaches were saying that guy (Selive) will get all the attention, but you have to watch him (JPP).

"That's the beauty of sports. You just keep working and working and working and you can get better. I think he was just a big raw talent at the time. Now, he is a force to reckon with, but he was a little bit of an unknown at that time."

Pierre-Paul wasn't the only player that Harris got to watch up close in personal, and among those he got a good view of was Southern Columbia graduate Henry Hynoski, who played at Pitt.

"He's just a bowling ball coming through," Harris said. "I have never seen him get knocked back. Worst case scenario with him, it's a stalemate."

While Harris got to lineup on the other side of the field two for one season, it gave him a little extra confidence going into his career at Syracuse when he watched the film of what Hynoski was doing in the Big East.

"It was one of those deals where I watched him block the year I redshirted," Harris said. "I saw a lot of him on film. He was another guy from District 4 and he was having a lot of success. He was a guy I wanted to have a similar success to. He gave me confidence, more than anything."

While Harris got to see Hynoski and Pierre-Paul up close, another member of the Giants team, rookie linebacker Jaquan Williams, was someone he had to try and block against.

"I saw him making a couple of plays this year and I thought 'that name seems familiar,' Harris said. "I was watching some of the film the last couple of days from when we played them. I saw that I was blocking him on nearly every single play when we played South Florida. They were using him a lot as a standup defensive end. They would bring him down to stand up end and then he still would drop back into coverage. He was pretty versatile."

There are a couple of other connections that Harris had with the Giants this year, starting with head coach Tom Coughlin, who is a Syracuse graduate.

"It's awesome," Harris said of Coughlin's success. When I transferred here Joe Haggerty was pretty influential for me. He played here in 1979 and Coughlin was actually his coach that year.

"The other guy that is on the offensive line there is Kevin Booth who went to Cornell so I got to meet him a couple of times," Harris said.

It's not just players on the Giants that Harris went up against during his college career.

"The one guy (Devin) McCourtney the corner for the Patriots," Harris said. "He was from Rutgers."

While players like JPP might have been playing on football's biggest stage on Sunday night, there was a time, not too long ago, they were just other college players that Harris and the Orange were facing.

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