Wasn't that long ago he was a movement science major at the University of Michigan, so in discussing the frenzied burst of gross motor skills on a winter's evening spent with delirious Hoosiers, Jerame Tuman's opinion is not exactly the rhetorical equivalent of your generic two cents.

In fact, the new silver Escalade he rolled up to the curb behind Rooney Hall at St. Vincent College yesterday in Latrobe had been purchased near the old campus, where Tuman had returned to complete that very degree.

"It's about how the body moves," he said. "It's in the Department of Kinesiology."

Much as I have a long standing rule against starting training camp with a kinesiological question, some itches just demand to be scratched.

Ben Roethlisberger got all the credit for The Tackle that game, and for weeks and months to come. It was soon buried in the historic implications of a Super Bowl victory, but when Colts thunderbolt Nick Harper went down in a stomach-churning heap as he crossed the 40-yard line in the RCA Dome Jan. 15, a white shirt with an 84 on it flashed through the frame and back into virtual anonymity.

But here's the little crawling question that won't go away. The Tackle by Roethlisberger, the one that saved that playoff game, the one Roethlisberger's agent declared "saved their season," the one that saved a Super Bowl run, saved the whales, the nation, the free world and the known planets, that tackle -- could Tuman have made it anyway?

Would he have made it anyway?

"I think he could have made the tackle," said fellow tight end Heath Miller, who also was on the field that game in the two-tight end goal-line offense. "I was in the end zone and I'd started to fall down, but you probably had a better look at it than I did. There were a lot of people running real fast that's for sure."

The little football riot that ended with Roethlisberger's phenomenally athletic play on Harper started with a Jerome Bettis fumble on a standard dive play from the Colts' 2, the play that would have sealed a playoff victory. But with the ball suddenly in the hands of Harper, the Steelers' improbable postseason immediately looked as if it were about to be unsealed, re-packed and delivered to Indianapolis on a XL-sized platter.

Harper was crossing the carpet toward the sideline when he cut back just as Roethlisberger crossed his path. The quarterback somehow got his hips around in front of him, fell backward and swung his arm into Harper's shins.

"Ben came off and asked me, 'Did I make the tackle?' " quarterbacks coach Mark Whipple was remembering as the players continued to arrive at St. Vincent. "I said, 'Hell yes.' "

Whipple wasn't buying the Tuman scenario.

"I don't think so," he said evenly. "Harper is a corner!"

Oh yes, he's a burner, and he was running as if someone were chasing him with a sharp implement, which he'd had some experience with only that weekend. But as Harper begins to stagger after his brush with Roethlisberger, Tuman literally flies over him. Had Harper righted himself, he would not have advanced to midfield. Roethlisberger might have prevented the miracle equivalent of the Immaculate Reception, but if he hadn't, the old Michigan tight end would have.

"I was on that side of the 50," punter Chris Gardocki said, "because that's where our kicking net was set up. I think Jerame would have made the tackle. He had a great angle, and he was coming hard."

All of which is why I was anxious to talk with the man himself, even those this very issue could have been put to bed no later than Jan. 16.

The fact is, Tuman not only thinks he could have made the tackle, not only thinks he would have made the tackle, Tuman thinks he did make the tackle. I mean The Tackle.

"I didn't find out until after the game that Ben had slowed him up," Tuman said with the semi-sheepish smile perfected by your standard humble tight ends. "I was tracking him, and there was a point where he made a step back to the inside. I felt like I had him at that point."

The broader question is, of course, where does the blocking tight end, fixated on a linebacker far to the wide side of the point of attack, find the presence of mind to start tracking Harper?

"I was blocking the linebacker and I think, I guess I must have gotten spun around," he said. "That's when I saw Harper."

And that's when, as Miller said, a lot of people started running real fast.

Too bad the kinesiology faculty at Michigan wasn't in attendance. Tuman would have been conferred the world's first instant doctorate.