Giant(s) Love Fest: “My Boy” Kevin Boothe

My week-long Giant(s) love fest continues following yesterday’s Coughlin celebration. Today, we offer big ups to our main man Kevin Boothe. That’s right. Kevin. Mutha&*^!ing. Boothe. Beeotches. Respect him.

OK, so Kevin Boothe isn’t really our boy, but he’s a fellow Cornell graduate. And THAT, my friends, makes him post-worthy. You see not a lot of my Big Red brethren have gone on to excel on the professional gridiron (/counts fingers…stops quickly). Boothe bucked the trend after failing to even find the field in Ithaca as a freshman. The Queens native was too pudgy and out of shape. He came back his sophomore year and went on to be a three-time All-Ivy selection. In 2006, he was selected in the sixth round of the NFL draft by the Oakland Raiders. This season he started nine games for the NFC Champion New York Giants. And he didn’t actually suck.

All joking aside, Mr. Boothe is a worthy story and testament to hard work. Due to the rarity of his existence as a Cornell NFLer, I followed him starting his rookie year in Oakland. Despite being the #178 player selected that spring, he made his way into the Raiders starting lineup and manned the guard position, alongside the second overall pick in the draft, left tackle Robert Gallery, for 14 games. They both sucked. Gallery was a much bigger disappointment given the lofty expectations, but Boothe was really downright awful. Luckily, so were the 2-14 Oakland Raiders, therefore nobody really noticed.

Boothe was waived by the Raiders and picked up by the G-Men prior to the 2007 season. He picked up a championship ring that first year in New York, but rarely hit the field. In 2009 and 2010, Boothe found himself filling in and accumulated seven starts over those two seasons. You still knew when he was on the field, but the ship didn’t completely sink under his weight.

This year, Boothe is just one of the many noteworthy stories on this Giants team, although his may lack the sex appeal of say Victor Cruz. Regardless, Kevin Boothe, the slow-footed sixth-round draft pick out of Cornell University, started nine games at both guard and center for the Giants. He was a serviceable fill-in and will find himself in the starting lineup for Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis in two weeks. Not too bad for a sixth-round Ivy Leaguer…congratulations Kevin Boothe. Should the cards fall right, you may soon be a two-time NFL Champion. How do you like dem apples, Robert Gallery?