Growing up in Animal’s house prepared Laurinaitis for NFL

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Joe Laurinaitis knew his middle child was bound for greatness about the time he saw the 12-year-old doing piledrivers and slamming his younger sister on the family’s backyard trampoline.

“He’d say, ‘Hey, Daddy, look what I did! I did the Undertaker’s move!’ ” the proud father said.

Now James Laurinaitis is ready to follow in his dad’s footsteps as a professional athlete, only in the NFL instead of the WWE.

Joe is the face-painted, mohawked menace known as Animal, part of the legendary Road Warriors and Legion of Doom. While other kids’ dads worked more predictable jobs for a living, James’ old man stepped into the squared circle, hit people with chairs and put them in sleeper holds.

At home, though, he was just dad – with a twist.

“There’s the face paint, and he still has a mohawk for his haircut and it’s been 25 years he’s had that,” James said with a chuckle. “But he never brought Animal home. Even my friends in school, they always knew him as Coach Joe or James’ dad. Not Animal. My friends didn’t know him that way. He always did a great job of just keeping it separate.”

After starting at linebacker the past three years at Ohio State, James is preparing for the NFL draft on April 25. A two-time Associated Press All-American, he is expected to go in the first round.

His father’s voice rises to a thundering growl – it’s even a little scary over the phone – when he considers that any team might consider another college linebacker ahead of his son.

“The only thing I wish for James is that he actually gets the respect he deserves and gets drafted where he deserves to go,” Joe snorts.

He concedes that James’ humility, even temperament and love of books came from his mother. But there are still signs that “Little Animal” is a chip off the ol’ block.

“Now he says, ‘Anybody who gets drafted above me, I’m putting a picture on my wall and when I get ready to do my second contract, I’m going to see how many of those guys are still around the league,’ ” Joe said.

Despite being best known as Animal, Joe was in most ways a typical father, coaching his kids’ teams, encouraging them from the stands, trying to teach them the rules of the game on one of the 100 or so days a year he wasn’t being a Road Warrior.

“He was a really good coach,” James said. “Some of the parents that didn’t know him, he would frighten them a little bit. They just saw this huge bark but there was never any bite. … And it was not like he wore the biggest T-shirts either.

“He always had a shirt on that didn’t fit him that well and he was 310 pounds of muscle. Other coaches didn’t really want to mess with him.”

The Laurinaitis home, although conventional in many respects, was slightly off center in others. James, his younger sister Jessica (a college student) and older brother Joe (a police officer and expectant father in the Dayton area) lived a life different from their friends.

How many households have pay-per-view parties and invite the neighborhood over to watch Daddy bash some guy’s head? How many kids have dads who know how to apply body paint?

“When they were younger and they would do things for school spirit or go to a high school football game, I would paint them up,” Joe said. “Like, James’ whole football team.”

Julie Laurinaitis wasn’t your typical mom, either. How many sons refer to their mother as “a beast” in a loving way?

“When she was about 20 years old she could dead lift 315 pounds,” James said. “She was a beast. But she was still tiny. She was a swimmer in high school and ran track. She definitely was long and lean. She would play quarterback in the backyard. When we were in kindergarten, waiting for the bus, she would be the one throwing me the football. She took a beating raising the three of us.”

Growing up, James played baseball (a catcher, like his dad), wrestled and was a defenseman in hockey. A friend and teammate in middle school was Blake Wheeler, one of the top rookies in the NHL this season with the Boston Bruins.

But football appealed to James’ sense of order. He played quarterback on offense, then switched to linebacker when the other team had the ball. His father would say to him, “If you were quarterbacking, what play would you call now?” It helped James to think ahead, to anticipate what an offense would do. It’s a trait that he carried over to his college days, when his intuition paid big dividends.

The most decorated linebacker ever at Ohio State, he was a two-time Big Ten defensive player of the year, won the Nagurski Award as a sophomore, the Butkus Award the next year and the Lott Award as a senior.

One wonders if he would have been such an accomplished athlete if his father had been or claims adjuster or a senator.

“That’s a good question,” he said. “I don’t think so, not with the way my dad used to train and the genetics he gave me. If he didn’t love sports, maybe I’m not an athlete at all. There’s a lot of what ifs there.

“If he had chosen another profession, no matter what he’d have been my coach and he’d want me to do sports. Sometimes parents’ interests have to get a kid going.”