'This is Your Life, Kurt Warner'

CEDAR RAPIDS - Editing is a given in television, but the producers of ESPN's "Homecoming with Rick Reilly" will have no choice at the start of their show with Kurt Warner.

For several minutes after Warner entered the packed Regis Middle School gymnasium Sunday afternoon, he hugged family members, longtime friends, and former coaches.

"I have a different life now," Warner said late in the taping. "But you start to see faces you grew up with, and you realize who you are and what you've been able to accomplish is so much because of the influence of other people.

"I am who I am and where I am because of people like this. You lose touch, lose contact with a lot of them. But this is a chance to say thank you for the impact they had on my life."

Regis is where the two-time NFL Most Valuable Player graduated from high school 20 years ago. It's where he showed enough as a prep quarterback to get to Division I-AA Northern Iowa, which led to Arena Football, which led to NFL Europe, which led to . . .

Well, if you're from Cedar Rapids - or are a football fan from anywhere else - you know the rest.

"The guy's probably the greatest story ever told in the NFL," said Reilly, a much-awarded chronicler of many great stories with Sports Illustrated and now ESPN.

The gym was converted into a television sound stage over the previous four days, but the format was simple. Warner and Reilly sat on a riser amid the audience of several hundred attentive people.

Stories of Warner's life and career were told from his days playing flag football at Jane Boyd Community Center to his Super Bowl appearance with the Arizona Cardinals this year.

Besides questioning Warner over the next two hours and 15 minutes - yes, there will indeed be editing - Reilly also drew on the memories and observations of Warner's parents, Sue Warner of Cedar Rapids and Gene Warner of Solon.

Sue recalled a time when her two sons were young and she found all her towels missing from her outdoors clothesline. Kurt had given them to neighbor kids "to play superheroes," she said.

"Even then he was giving," Reilly quipped.

Several often-told episodes of Warner's life were detailed, including the period of time he stocked shelves at a Cedar Falls Hy-Vee.

"There are so many Hy-Vees in this town that you have Hy-Vees inside of Hy-Vees," said Reilly.

But though much of the material on Warner was familiar, when it was woven together over the two-plus hours it brought home how profoundly unlikely and remarkable his career has been.

Former Northern Iowa Coach Terry Allen was more than a good sport here Sunday. He took a ribbing from Reilly for not starting Warner until the player's senior year.

Allen, now the head football coach at Missouri State, noted the Panthers did win 31 games in the three seasons Jay Johnson played ahead of Warner. But he added "If I had to do it again I might do it differently."

Other former Warner coaches spoke on the show, including Warner's ninth-grade and varsity coaches at Regis, Jim Padlock and Gaylord Hauschildt.

Also here was Dick Vermeil, who coached the 1999 St. Louis team Warner quarterbacked to a world title.

Why did Vermeil come to Cedar Rapids for this?

"I love the guy," he said. "He's the reason I have this (Super Bowl) ring. It's because of him, not me."