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Thursday, August 15, 2002

By Ed Bouchette, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

Don't count Jerome Bettis among those veterans who want to cut back on the four exhibition games each NFL team plays.

	Kicker Todd Peterson tries to wrestle the ball away from Troy Edwards during practice at Offut Field in Greensburg. (Matt Freed, Post-Gazette)

Bettis has been healthy in each of the past two training camps, but there were other summers in which he barely got on the practice field or in a preseason game because of one injury or another.

There has been a debate about whether to reduce the number of exhibition games because of potential injury to high-priced players and because starters don't play long in at least two of them anyway.

Bettis is against it.

"People don't understand the reason for preseason games," Bettis said. "The reason for preseason games is to get the young kids an opportunity to play.

"If you have a rookie, he goes through his first year, training camp is when he gets a chance to work, to learn the offense. After that, he's on the shelf for 16 weeks, OK? Now, training camp comes again, he's working with the offense we're running. Other than that, he's working with scout team stuff and he's not involved.

"Now, he gets the opportunity to get coached, get worked with. This is critical for a younger guy in the development stage. Not only the free-agent guys, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about your No. 1 pick, or your No. 2 pick if he's an offensive lineman or a defensive lineman. When do they get work? This is an opportunity for them to get actual game experience. So you have to do it."

Bettis knows why some veterans want fewer exhibition games.

"People look at it from a veteran's perspective and say, man, we don't need all this stuff. So, we bitch but we don't play. I [was in] two series in [the first] game, so did I really play this game? I warmed up and took a shower. Realistically, in the fourth game, I didn't suit up last year. So, the first and fourth game you don't play much at all. Realistically, you're only playing two games anyway, and half of those.

"We don't get that much work. Guys kind of bitch about it because there's four games and we're in training camp that long, that's probably it."

These veterans, then, should consider themselves lucky. Before the regular-season schedule expanded from 14 to 16 games in 1978, each team played six exhibition games. And in the summers of 1975 and '76 the Steelers played seven. Besides six games against NFL teams, they opened against the college All-Stars in Chicago, a tradition for the defending NFL/Super Bowl champions that ended after the '76 game.

A kid again

Steve Kline looked like another Steelers fan while watching them practice along the sideline with the news media yesterday morning at St. Vincent College.

And he is just that. But few fans come bearing gifts of St. Louis Cardinals baseball caps and shorts for Steelers players and coaches the way Kline did. He traveled to Latrobe yesterday morning, lugging two bags of the merchandise, before he returned to his night job -- as a middle-reliever for the first-place Cardinals.

"I feel like a 5-year-old kid," said Kline, 30, who grew up a Steelers fan in the middle of the state, where he played linebacker for Lewisburg High School.

"I wanted to play linebacker in the NFL. Now, I look at their linebackers and say, thank God. They're so big."

Dan Potash and the crew from Fox Sports Net gave Kline a lift so he could have his Make-A-Wish-like visit to his boyhood mecca, the Steelers training camp, 20 years after he made his only other visit with his family.

An early start

Aaron Smith is in his fourth camp with the Steelers, who drafted him in 1999, but they aren't the first NFL team to have him in their training camp.

Smith worked as a security guard in the 1998 training camp of the Denver Broncos at the University of Northern Colorado, where Smith played football.

"Someone mentioned the job, we applied and they gave it to us," Smith said.

He wore a shirt with a badge sewn into it and his job was simple.

"Just keep the crowd back and make sure people didn't come in certain areas they weren't supposed to be in. I never had any challenges. People can be rude sometimes, but you just deal with it."

Smith did learn some football that summer from the Broncos.

"I just remember I was awestruck how intense practices were and how much technique everybody used. Coming from a Division II school, you just didn't see that stuff. That's where I realized it was more a game of technique than just athletes running around."

Big night for offense

The offense scored twice on two tries in a live goal-line drill that concluded last night's practice in Greensburg. Amos Zereoue scored on a 3-yard run when the first-team offense went against the first-team defense. On the next series, with the second teams on the field, Tommy Maddox threw a 5-yard touchdown pass to tight end Cory Geason.