Here is another good article on Zbikowski. At least if he gets shafted by the NFL, he can always go to boxing or the UFC.
http://www.daytondailynews.com/sports/content/sports/osu/dai ly/1231arch.html?UrAuth=aNcNUO%60NUUbTTUWUXUTUZTZUbUWU_U%60U ZUbUZUcTYWVVZV
'Zibby' packs Irish punch
By Tom Archdeacon
Dayton Daily News
TEMPE, Ariz. | When Charlie Weis took over as the new Notre Dame coach following last season's lackluster 6-6 effort, the first thing he did was begin to toughen up the players and get them to finally live up to their name.
They weren't supposed to be The Break-Even Irish.
And certainly not The Get Beat 41-16 by Purdue, 41-10 by USC Irish.
They were The Fighting Irish.
And that's why the blunt, bulldog coach  regardless of prodding and chastising he had to do with others  couldn't help but fall in love with the bent-nosed, burr-cut safety, Tom Zbikowski.
Weis didn't have to toughen up this kid. Zbikowski already was tough. Tough as nails.
In fact, back home in Arlington Heights, Ill., that's his name  Nails Zbikowski. It's also his game, as in "I'll nail you every chance I get."
Talk about putting some fight in The Fighting Irish, Zbikowski is a heavyweight boxer of note. He's one of Chicago's best Golden Glovers. He trained with Ultimate Fighting champ Royce Gracie, fought for Oscar De La Hoya's team in California and was deemed worthy enough as a kid that the legendary Jake LaMotta once sat down with him for lunch and some fight talk.
Zbikowski prides himself in the fact he's never been knocked out, knocked down or even taken a standing eight count. He's won 65 of 78 amateur bouts and knocked out three of the last four guys he's faced.
Monday afternoon he's looking to land another KO blow, this one on the chin of the Ohio State Buckeyes in a Fiesta Bowl bout more anticipated than any postseason game but the national title game between unbeatens Texas and USC. But against OSU, Zbikowski will have his hands full with one of the best corps of receivers  Santonio Holmes, Ted Ginn Jr., Anthony Gonzalez and Roy Hall  in college football.
"They've got four threats that could be the No. 1 receivers at almost any other school," Zbikowski said. "One to four, there's no drop off. And their quarterback, Troy Smith, is playing better and better as each game goes by.
"We figure we have to be as physical as we can with them. Guys like Ginn and Holmes have too much speed for pretty much anyone. You can't play off them a little bit or you'll get burned. But teams that get physical with them, teams that try to mess up their timing right at the line of scrimmage have been more successful. And if you get a lot of guys flying around, get two and three guys hitting them, they've been known to put the ball on the ground.
"To beat Ohio State, you've got to be as physical as possible with them."
For Notre Dame, no one does a better job of that than the 5-foot-11, 202-pound junior. Midway through this 9-2 season, Rick Minter  the former Cincinnati Bearcats head coach who now serves as Notre Dame's defensive coordinator  put it best when he told reporters that on every play Zbikowski "looks like a kamikaze pilot on a death mission."
He has intercepted a team-high five passes and returned two  against Tennessee and Brigham Young  for touchdowns. He returned punts by USC and Tennessee for two more scores and ended the season as an Associated Press third-team All-American.
So many Notre Dame players have blossomed under Weis' no-nonsense watch this season, but none more so than Zbikowski.
Although he was an All-American quarterback in high school and received 56 Division I scholarship offers  Nebraska and Iowa wanted him as a quarterback, Maryland and Clemson as a receiver, several other schools as a defensive back  Zbikowski came to Notre Dame, the school he'd loved since a kid, only to end up an after-thought who soon wanted to transfer.
In the 2003 season, he dressed for only one game and never played. Although he started last season, he had just one interception and the Irish secondary  which gave up 281.2 yards a game  was considered a weak link.
But with Zbikowski, it was just that he was still learning his new position, not that he lacked toughness.
If anything, he was too tough. Certainly tougher than Weis knew.
Although he had curtailed his fisticuffs for football  turning down an offer to appear on The Contender and spurning offers from fight promoters who wanted to turn him pro  Zbikowski did have a fight last winter that Weis knew nothing about.
It was on a late-night card in Chicago and Zbikowski slipped out of South Bend accompanied by several of his teammates including his roommate, receiver Jeff Samardzija, quarterback Brady Quinn and defensive end Victor Abiamiri.
"That night was so cool," Abiamiri said. "Zibby's one of the toughest guys on our team, but I had no idea. There he was in the ring, staring down the guy face to face and then he's throwing haymakers, left and right. He stopped the guy in the third round . We were going nuts out in the crowd."
And yet the next morning at 6  after just 90 minutes of sleep  there was Zbikowski back at Notre Dame, leading his team through winter conditioning drills.
"It's a good feeling knowing you have a guy like Zibby with you on the field, fighting for us every play," Abiamiri said.
Zbikowski said there are some lessons that transfer from the fight game to the football field:
"It helps you with discipline and mental toughness. When it becomes crunch time in boxing  when it's the final round and you can't breath, can't call time out, can't go anywhere  you've just got to suck it up and try to survive.
"And you can draw on that in football when you're out there on a long drive in the fourth quarter and the game's on the line. That's when you remember some of those things from boxing."
Yet, the best fight lesson, he said, came from his mom.
"She wasn't big on my boxing," he said with a shrug, then a smile. "She told me if I ever got knocked out, ever got knocked down, that was it. There'd be no more. I'd be done. So the one way to survive with her was to be tougher than the next guy."
It's worked in the ring and with Notre Dame football, where his tough-guy approach helped get the team into Monday night's big game and, just as importantly, helped it regain its name.
Thanks to Tom Zbikowski, there's once again plenty of fight in The Fighting Irish.
