Hero from Big Sandy

First, there's a pep rally, featuring the Big Sandy High School band and cheerleaders. Next comes the food.

And finally, there's the main event, Super Bowl XLI, which will be shown on a huge screen at the Church of God, whose building is just off Hwy 70.

A Super Bowl that doesn't include the Cowboys has never meant so much to this small Texas town, which is 100 miles east of Dallas and 80 miles from Shreveport.

This isn't about Big Sandy's favorite team. It's about Big Sandy's favorite son, Chicago Bears head coach Lovie Smith.

In Big Sandy, he's not just a big-time coach. He's the kid who grew up in "The Flats,' the poorest part of Big Sandy, and worked his way into a million-dollar job. He's the tight end and linebacker who helped Big Sandy win three consecutive Class B state championships in football. He's the man for whom Church Street has been renamed Lovie Smith Lane.

And he's Mae Smith's son.

Mae, who now lives in Tyler, Texas, will leave Thursday for Miami, where the Bears will play the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday at Dolphin Stadium. Her traveling party will include four children and 11 grandchildren. That's a lot of eyes to help paint a picture for a game Mae can't see.

"I've been blind and sick for a long time," Mae said in a telephone interview. "I'm used to it. I'm doing OK."

Mae has suffered for years with diabetes. But neither the disease nor her loss of sight has prevented her from occasionally attending Bears games in Chicago. And they won't keep her from being in the stadium for the biggest game of his career.

She remembers when the games were big in Big Sandy, too. She and her husband, Thurman, who died 10 years ago, saw all of Lovie's high school games and continued to follow him at the University of Tulsa. On a typical fall weekend when their son was in college, they would attend Big Sandy's game on Friday, then drive through the night to Tulsa for a Saturday afternoon game.

When Lovie didn't make it in pro football, he turned to coaching. He also returned home.

His first team was at Big Sandy Junior High, where Mark McDonald was a small, seventh-grade linebacker. Although McDonald didn't play high school football, his opinion of Smith is similar to that of Bears middle linebacker Brian Urlacher.

Said Urlacher: "I don't think I've ever heard him yell on the field, and I know I've never heard him curse. He gets his point across without yelling or griping.

"I can't imagine playing for anyone else after playing for him for three years. He's a great man, a great coach."

Said McDonald in a phone interview: "The thing that stuck out in my mind about him as a coach was he was so calm. He was so respectful and he cared about all of the kids.

"He treated the white kids and black kids all the same. He never got excited."

McDonald, who builds custom homes in Big Sandy, will attend the Super Bowl with his wife, Allison, and his uncle, Joe Fitzgerald. They also were in Chicago when the Bears won the NFC championship. In fact, you might have seen them.

They were the fans Fox Network showed holding up the sign that read, "Big Sandy, Tx., loves Lovie."

"When the game was wrapped up, 61,000-plus fans started chanting Lovie's name," McDonald said. "You don't hear that for a coach. That just blew our minds."

Big Sandy shares Chicago's affinity for the coach. The coach feels the same way about Big Sandy.

"I'm just proud to be from there," said Smith, who was an assistant coach at the University of Tennessee in 1993 and 1994. "If you know much about Big Sandy, you know it's about hard work and small town -- a football town, I should add."

Sunday will be all about church and football. Sonny Parsons, a pastor and town mayor, expects between 500 and 1,000 fans to attend the Big Sandy's Super Bowl party. That would be quite a turnout for a town with a population of 1,288.

Maybe Big Sandy would feel differently about Smith if he had left and never come back. But no matter how far his career has taken him, he has maintained a connection with his hometown.

"I remember one summer he came through here on a recruiting trip (for UT)," McDonald said. "He brought me a Tennessee program with (coach) Phillip Fulmer's signature. That was huge."

During the 2005 season, Smith got McDonald and Fitzgerald tickets to the Panthers-Bears game. A couple of hours after the game, Smith visited with his friends from Big Sandy.

"I asked him if he ever imagined he would get this far in the game," McDonald said. "He got this good ol' boy's smile and said, 'Isn't this something?' "

Smith then hinted that a good situation could get even better.

"I'm three players short of the Super Bowl," he told his friend.

"He knew right then what he was lacking," McDonald said. "And he got it."