Giants' Pierre-Paul a late football bloomer

His introduction to football is the stuff of legend. Like most legends, there can be embellishments, exaggerations and flourishes - even conflicting accounts. But somewhere between the stories of Roy Hobbs from "The Natural" and Bobby Boucher from "The Waterboy" lies the tale of Jason Pierre-Paul.

Everyone knows where the story arrives: with the Giants selecting Pierre-Paul, a defensive end out of the University of South Florida, in the first round of the 2010 NFL draft. But the beginnings at Deerfield Beach (Fla.) High School are a bit cloudier.

Pierre-Paul recently told his version of Genesis on a television interview. A basketball player at Deerfield, he said he tried avoiding the football coach.

"He asked me [to play football] at least 10 times," Pierre-Paul said. "One day, I was heading to my car and he stopped me by my car and said 'Come here' and he took me to his office and told me to put these [pads] on. The teammates helped me put them on. And then we went out to practice."

This was his junior year, and, as he tells it, the team needed a defensive end for an upcoming playoff push.

"They just told me to rush the quarterback and I didn't even know what a quarterback was,'' Pierre-Paul said of his first practice. "I started rushing the quarterback and he was like, 'Just tackle the guy with the ball!' and from there, I started tackling and it became a natural ability to play football."

Art Taylor, the football coach at Deerfield at the time, remembers it a bit differently.

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"The story I heard is that he tried out at his previous school and they said, 'You'll never play football,' " Taylor told Newsday in a phone interview. "He played basketball and we got him to come out for football . . . It was just pure, raw talent. We had to teach him a lot of the technique, the reads, stuff that comes normal to a kid that's been growing up in the sport . . . But he was a quick learner and he had that will to compete."

In a conference call this week, Pierre-Paul said basketball was his first love and he didn't enjoy football right away. "I didn't like it at first," he said. "I didn't really too much understand everything. When I started to understand everything, it grew on me."

One thing that is indisputable is his athleticism. He's been called "a freak of nature" and "uncommon" by Giants scouts and officials.

"The kid was just so blessed athletically, it was incredible," Taylor said. "You saw the pictures. He could do a standing backflip with all of his pads on . . . He even bugged me enough that I put him on kickoff teams. I said, 'If you're going to do that, you have to run down there.' He went down and busted the wall, clotheslined the kid, and caused a fumble the very first time. The kid was just really special."

He had a dominant senior season at Deerfield and received interest from several colleges and was offered a scholarship to Central Florida. Academics forced him to go to two junior colleges before arriving at South Florida, and even there he missed a chunk of his only season at the school while finishing required coursework. USF coaches didn't expect him to contribute until very late in the schedule, but he was the starter by the third game. He finished the season with 6.5 sacks.

"I asked coach [Jim] Leavitt what he thought and he said he'd be selfish to tell me I need to stay," Pierre-Paul said. "I felt like I had a good year at South Florida. The defensive coordinator said, 'You had a great year, you should enter the draft,' and I listened to him."