St. Pierre knows the ups and downs of Super Bowls

What’s it like to play in the Super Bowl and win? What is it like to lose?Ask St. John’s Prep football coach Brian St. Pierre because he was on both sides in the big game, only at two different levels.As a senior at St. John’s Prep in 1997, St. Pierre guided his team to the MIAA high school Super Bowl game against New Bedford at Boston University. The Eagles won the Super Bowl game and were ranked No. 1 in Massachusetts and No. 1 in New England.”It’s always something I’ll remember,” St. Pierre said. “It was a great experience playing in that game. It was a big deal back then to play at BU’s Nickerson Field on the turf.”Fast forward to Feb. 1, 2009, at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla. Brian St. Pierre is standing on the sidelines in his red Arizona Cardinals uniform, watching as Kurt Warner put Arizona on the threshold of a championship.Then it was all taken away.Ben Roethlisberger hit Santonio Holmes in the back of the end zone for a six-yard touchdown pass with 35 seconds to play to win the game, 27-23, for the Pittsburgh Steelers.”It’s the worst when you lose,” St. Pierre recalled. “All the confetti is coming down, everyone on the other team is hooting and hollering.”That’s the thing about football, it ends so abruptly. It can be tough to deal with, especially a game of that magnitude. They scored with 35 seconds to go; talk about a colossal change in your stomach. We were on the cusp of winning the Super Bowl, a lifelong dream in the biggest game in the world.”It was a different magnitude, but the same excitement. It was the pinnacle in high school and the same, just magnified, at a higher level. I still had that feeling. It was us against the best on the big stage. Instead of being in front of 10,000 people at BU, it just happened to be in front of 100 million.”When players have success early in their careers, they take for granted that it will always be that way.It was like that for the 14-year-old freshman quarterback, playing on Thanksgiving morning against Xaverian Brothers of Westwood with the winner advancing to the Super Bowl.”Being a 14-year-old freshman and losing a tight game, I thought we’d always be back,” St. Pierre recalled. “It became a pressing, urgent goal in my life to be in the Super Bowl because I hadn’t been in one. My freshman year, we were one quarter away. I certainly didn’t take it for granted, but I relished the opportunity. As a senior, it was a great ending for my high school career. There are no guarantees. Ask Dan Marino.”In his second season with the Miami Dolphins, Marino led the team to the 1984 AFC Championship. In the next eight times Marino reached the playoffs, he never reached that level again and never made it to the Super Bowl despite being one of the premier quarterbacks in the league.With the knowledge of what happened in high school, St. Pierre learned not to take anything for granted.After a stellar career at Boston College, he was taken by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the fifth round of the 2003 draft.In 2004, he was the backup to Steelers rookie and No. 1 draft pick, Roethlisberger. Tommy Maddox missed 14 games with a torn tendon in his elbow, so St. Pierre was the No. 2 quarterback for the AFC Championship game against the Patriots.A backup quarterback got the chance to shine in that game, but it was Drew Bledsoe, who replaced an injured Tom Brady and led the Pats to the AFC title and into the Super Bowl.With stops in Baltimore, back to Pittsburgh and then Arizona, St. Pierre knew nothing was guaranteed.”We had an up-and-down regular season (in 2008) and finished 9-7,” St. Pierre said. “From early November to early December, we went 1-4 in a five-week span. We were really leaking oil there, but we started to get healthy and we got hot at the right time.”The Falcons came in for the wild-card game. We were home because we won the NFC West. Atlanta had a rookie quarterback (Matt Ryan) and we handled him pretty well. We had to go to Carolina, and we had lost to them earlier in