Ramblings: We cheered for them on Saturday, will we see them on Sunday?

By Jeff Orvis

Ever since they pulled on the pads for their first youth league competition, they've been the big men on campus. They were the best on their junior high teams and that's how they made the high school varsity. They were the best on their high school teams and among the best in town, if the town was Chicago or New York. College coaches spent time in their living rooms, trying to impress them, as well as the parents.

They may have gotten some indication of the level of competition for attention when they were in the midst of the college recruiting process. But even then, there were well over 200 football programs that may have courted them.

The greatest dose of humility that many of these young men face comes when they play their last college football game. If they are really, really good, they may get a call from one of 32 NFL teams, either during the draft or immediately after when the free agent signing period begins.

If the call comes and they receive the invitation to preseason camp, reality slaps them in the face when they become just one of up to 100 young men with the same experiences, the same dreams.

The state of Iowa has never been considered the hotbed of prep football talent. But it does have several great college programs, including three state universities, with wonderful coaches. If the coaches are as good at salesmanship as they are in teaching gridiron fundamentals, they convince a fair number of those best in their high school kids to come out to Ames or Iowa City or Cedar Falls.

This story is about the select few of those young men who take that next step toward earning a living chasing that dream. For several years, as a newspaper and then online columnist and now as a blogger, I have marked this time of year with a look at the preseason rosters of the 32 NFL teams. From those rosters, I've discovered 54 players who played their college ball in the state of Iowa. As is usually the case, 34 of those players played for the Iowa Hawkeyes. There were 15 who played at Iowa State, three at Northern Iowa and one each at Drake and Coe. Twenty-two of the 32 teams have one or more players with Iowa ties. Buffalo, the New York Jets, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Green Bay, Carolina and Tampa Bay have four each.

There are 11 rookies in this group. The player with the greatest longevity is Atlanta's Jonathan Babineaux, a 10-year veteran from Iowa. Players with nine years experience include Drake place kicker Billy Cundiff of Cleveland, Chad Greenway of Iowa and Minnesota and Iowa State's Tim Dobbins of Atlanta.

With nearly a month until the start of the regular season, some of these players will stay on regular roster, some will sign with the practice squad, some will be cut and look elsewhere and a few will have to start on their next careers. The following is a list of those players, with their uniform numbers, names, positions, ages, height and weight, years of pro experience and their colleges.

Iowa NFL connections

Buffalo Bills