From Harvard to Harbowl

5,979 days.

That’s the amount of time between the day Matt Birk ’98 first stepped on a collegiate field as a starter and the day he will do so in the game that marks the pinnacle of his sport.

The first of those events, which occurred on September 21, 1996, did not go as Birk would have hoped. Led by senior defensive end Marcellus Wiley, who had a key fourth-quarter field goal block, Columbia earned a 20-13 overtime win over Harvard at Robert K. Kraft Field, where the Crimson had previously been unbeaten for 26 years.

Wiley would go on to a ten-year career in the NFL and was an All-Pro in 2001. But despite the end’s triumph on that warm fall day, the man tasked with blocking him would go on to have an even more successful career over the subsequent 17 years.

Six Pro Bowls, two All-Pro selections, and two significant leadership awards since, Matt Birk has finally made it to football’s biggest stage.

His journey to that point was as unlikely as it is unprecedented.

THE COLLEGE YEARS

Birk attended Cretin-Derham High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he starred in track and field, football, and basketball, achieving All-State honors in the latter two. His 3.8 GPA also earned him Academic All-State recognition, and his score of 34 on the ACT helped him gain admission to Harvard.

“He was one of my first recruits in our first recruiting class in 1994,” Harvard head coach Tim Murphy recalled. “Because I had been hired late in the recruiting season, we were just scrambling to find out about Matt. I knew he had interest in top academic schools.”

The lineman arrived in college in September of that year but remained raw during his freshman season.

“He wasn’t one of those guys that came to Harvard with NFL ability,” Murphy said.

Slowly but surely, that began to change. After earning sparse playing time as a sophomore backup, Murphy named Birk his starting left tackle before the 1996 campaign. In his first year in the lineup, the undersized economics major had his struggles. But when he came back for his senior season, Birk was a completely different player, physically and talent-wise.

“He started his junior year, had a rocky year, and was probably 6’5”, 275 [pounds],” teammate and blockmate Colby Skelton ’98 told the Crimson last year. “He came back his senior year at 300 pounds and dominated—simply dominated.”

With the senior anchoring the left side of the offensive line, Harvard went undefeated in conference play and finished 9-1 overall.

“He probably improved more from his freshman year to his senior year than any guy I’ve ever been around,” Murphy said. “In his senior year, he became a quiet leader of the offense. He was such a consistent player, such a dominant force on the team and on the football field that everybody on the offense worked a little harder, played a little harder, and certainly believed a little bit more.”

“I don’t think it’s any coincidence that [1997] ended up being the first perfect Ivy season in Harvard’s history,” Murphy added. “Matt was certainly one of the big reasons for that.”

Birk attributed his rapid improvement to hard work and the help of his coaching staff.

“Once I was able to focus just on football, I was able to improve, to train more, to train smarter, [and] to put more effort into it,” Birk told the Crimson last year. “I was like a hungry dog, and they just kept feeding me.”

THE HOMETOWN KID

After earning All-Ivy honors for his performance, Birk became the first Crimson lineman to be drafted in 14 years when his home state Minnesota Vikings selected him in the sixth round as the 173rd overall pick of the 1998 draft.

Upon arriving in the NFL, the Harvard alum faced a learning curve similar to the one he had experienced when he began his collegiate career.

“When I got [to Minnesota], they weren’t relying on me to play right away,” Birk said. “There were some great offensive linemen who I could learn from—learn the game from, and learn how to be a professional football player.”

That Birk did, and quickly. He appeared in seven games as a rookie, 15 in his second season, and earned the starting center job in 2000. In his first year as a starter, Birk was named to the Pro Bowl and All-Pro team. He started every game for the Vikings over the next three seasons, earning Pro Bowl honors in 2001, 2003, and 2004 (despite missing the final four games of the season with a sports hernia) and was named All-Pro once again in 2003.

“They pulled the center a lot,” Birk said. “For my size, I was fairly athletic. That scheme fit my skillset pretty well.”

After missing the entire 2005 season with a hip injury, Birk picked up right where he left off upon returning, earning Pro Bowl honors again in 2006 and 2007. In 2006, he also won the Ed Block Courage Award, which honors “one player from each of the National Football League teams who, in the eyes of his teammates, best exemplifies and displays courage.”

But during Birk’s tenure in Minnesota, the Vikings fell just short of the Super Bowl twice. In 1998, after going 15-1 during the regular season, they lost to the Falcons by three in overtime in the NFC Championship Game. Two years later, in the same round, Birk’s team suffered an embarrassing 41-0 loss to the Giants.

After an NFC North title was followed by playoff elimination once again in 2008, Birk decided it was time to look for a change of scenery and a better chance to win.

GOOD MORNING BALTIMORE

On March 4, 2009, the center signed a three-year, $12 million deal with the Ravens. He has started all 64 games for the team over the last four years.

After his contract expired following last season, Birk strongly considered retirement. But following another campaign in which his team suffered a heartbreaking loss in a conference championship game—this time it was to the Patriots in the AFC—Birk decided to continue trying to help get his squad over the hump.

“He feels really good,” Birk’s agent, Joe Linta said at the time. “He had a great year, and him and [quarterback] Joe [Flacco] both know how close they are to getting to the Super Bowl.”

So Birk signed another three-year deal, this time for $8.5 million, and Linta was proven right when Baltimore got revenge on New England in this year’s title game, sending Birk to Super Bowl XLVII.

“I feel very fortunate to be playing this game and to be doing it with this group,” Birk said at media day this week. “It’s a special group of guys all the way around...everything really came together for us.”

In Sunday's championship, he will anchor the middle in front of millions of fans worldwide, protecting Flacco from a 49ers defense that ranked third in the NFL in total defense this year.

“These are two very physical teams, alike in a lot of ways and the physical aspect of football,” Birk said. “Whoever wins the battle in the trenches will go a long way in determining who wins this game.”

Though offensive linemen often fail to earn recognition, Ravens coach John Harbaugh said at media day that the center was vital to his team’s success, just as he had been for Murphy in 1997.

“Matt Birk has been a huge part of this program for the last four years,” Harbaugh said. “To my eye, he is playing the best football that he’s played since he’s been here—right now, at this point.”

IN THE COMMUNITY

While Birk has shined on the field during his long career, it is his off-the-field presence that has come to define him.

When the lineman first arrived in the league as a rookie, he was sent to volunteer at a local school by Vikings coach Dennis Green as part of the coach’s “Community Tuesdays” program.

“It was just amazing, the response [the kids] gave you because you were a football player,” Birk recalled.

The experience helped inspire him to get more involved in working to educate at-risk minors, and in 2002, he established the HIKE Foundation.

“It focuses [on] providing educational opportunities for underprivileged youth,” Birk said. “I try to tell kids the thing I’m most proud of that I’ve accomplished is my education. It’s not that I played football.”

In 2010, the foundation launched the “Ready, Set, Read!” program in select Baltimore Public Schools, where it works to encourage over 150,000 Baltimore elementary students to read at home. Birk serves as the “Reading Spokesman” for the city’s schools and offers incentives ranging from autographed photos to Ravens tickets for students who do well.

“As NFL players, because of the spotlight that we’re in, it doesn’t take a whole lot of effort for us to go out and do something to put a smile on people’s faces or make a difference,” Birk said. “So I think if you’re in a position to help somebody, why wouldn’t you?”

For his charity work, Birk was named the Vikings’ Man of the Year six consecutive times from 2002 to 2007 and earned the prestigious NFL Walter Payton Man of the Year award in February 2012.

“He’s a world-class football player—clearly that’s what all-pro means,” Murphy said. “[But] as a person he’s even better. He’s just a remarkable human being—extraordinarily loyal, extraordinarily humble, a person who really gets it in the sense that he understands how fortunate he is compared to a lot of people in the world, and he wants to make sure he gives back as much as possible.”

In 2009, Birk also became one of the first three NFL players to agree to posthumously donate his brain and spinal cord tissue to the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at the Boston University School of Medicine, where it will be used to study football-related head trauma.

“It's my obligation as a professional football player to try to do my part to make the game as safe as possible for future generations,” Birk explained.

A WIDESPREAD LEGACY

Birk’s work on and off the field has often meant more to others than it has to him.

Murphy explained that he routinely points to the center when recruiting as an example that players can have success in the NFL coming out of his program.

Miami Dolphins head coach Joe Philbin, who served as Harvard’s offensive coordinator during Birk’s senior year, said he keeps in touch with the lineman regularly.

“I was able to get a job at the University of Iowa from Harvard because of Matt,” Philbin explained. “During that spring he got drafted, I would have calls from scouts and O-line coaches.... Having coached him certainly helped, no question.”

But when Birk looks back over the course of his career, he notes that he never expected to get where he is today, getting ready to start in football’s biggest game.

“I was just trying to hold on every year,” Birk said. “That's how I've always looked at it....  Everybody has their share of failures in football and in life. Football teaches you that you just keep working, work as hard as you can and get as good as you can. That gives you the best chance of success.”

For Birk’s former coaches, seeing the lineman achieve that success has been extremely rewarding.

“I was there for the recruitment of Matt, and just the kind of guy he is now, the kind of leader he is, the kind of football player he is, the husband, the father he is, the great guy that he is now to be around, working with him again when he’s in his mid-30s, that’s just a great deal,” said Ravens senior offensive assistant Craig Ver Steeg, who worked for Harvard from 1994-95.

“It’s truly a testament to [Birk’s] desire to be his best at everything he does,” Murphy added. “He’s a very driven guy in a positive way.”

So as retirement rumors swirl around the center once more, Birk is just trying to savor each remaining moment of a career nobody expected him to have when he first arrived in college.

“This is a heck of a way to make a living and it's a heck of a lot of fun,” Birk said. “I just try to enjoy it every day and every year.”

—Staff writer Scott A. Sherman can be reached at ssherman13@college.harvard.edu.