By DERON SNYDER
The (Fort Myers, Fla.) News-Press

SAN DIEGO - Deny it all you want, but we all pre-judge. Not to the point where we make hard, fast judgments. But certainly to the point of establishing probabilities and likelihood based on factors such as appearance, educational background, upbringing, profession and, yes, race.

For instance: John Lynch graduated from Stanford, so you suppose he's smart. His parents live in a plush neighborhood in Southern California, where the average house costs $445,000. So you suppose he comes from money.

Besides that, he's white, playing a sport dominated numbers-wise by blacks (especially his position). So you suppose he's slow. And soft, considering what you suppose was his upbringing.

But Tampa Bay's five-time All Pro safety enjoys breaking stereotypes as much as breaking up passes, and smashing myths as much as smashing wide receivers.

"A story the other day made it seem like I was born into the Rockefeller family," Lynch said. "My dad grew up in Chicago with not much, but a good family. He tried to play football and that lasted a couple of years and then he started grinding. He was a grinder. We really didn't start living well until I was in high school."

Lynch's dad, John Sr., played briefly with the Pittsburgh Steelers before returning to his home area of Chicago. Eventually he entered radio and built Noble Broadcast Group, which owned 24 stations at its peak.

Growing up with a full belly, in a nice house, with means for everything you need, supposedly isn't the best fuel for the hunger, desire and dedication necessary to reach the NFL. On the other hand, maybe it's more impressive to become a potential Hall-of -Famer when other options - say, a senior partnership - are easily attainable.

When guys subject their bodies to the NFL's pain and abuse every given Sunday, eschewing a quite handsome lifestyle based solely on their minds, maybe we should marvel at those guys instead of hardscrabble cases from the dark corners and mean streets.

"We're the ones who really overcame," Lynch said, half-jokingly. "To make the NFL with a silver spoon in your mouth, you've really overcome something.

"But that's what I love about football. Regardless of the background, it comes down to the similar values that you were taught by somebody. To me, it was my parents and other individuals in my life who taught me how to work and how to dream big and how to chase that dream. That's the same regardless of where you grew up."

But jocks are jocks, looking for any edge or perceived weakness. And Lynch didn't fit the mode coming out of Stanford. His career as a pro athlete began in baseball as the 66th overall pick in the 1992 draft. Lynch even threw the first pitch in the history of the Florida Marlins' organization, landing his cap in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

However, his first love never departed his heart, so he abandoned the promising baseball career to join the Bucs, who had selected him in the third round in 1993. This (supposedly) rich, brainy, surfer-dude was now in the violent NFL, where the ruffians would (supposedly) turn him into a Slurpee and send him to corporate America.

"Everybody in this league has to prove themselves," Lynch said. "Maybe I did a little more than others. But NFL players are pretty good at judging whether guys belong. They figure you out.

"If you're real, you're real; if you're not, they don't want you there. Fortunately, I was able to show the guys right away that I love playing football and I'm about the same things they're about."

But, surely, some of them pre-judged him. Could he tell?

"If they did, once you start whacking people they realize real quick that you're not a punk," he said. "That's how you handle that."

He's been handling it for 10 seasons now, crafting a well-earned reputation as one of the game's best safeties: hard-hitting, tough and ... intelligent.

"People automatically think you're smart when you're from Stanford, which isn't always the case," Lynch said. "They probably give you too much credit for that."

The smarts exist in his case, but the words remind us that quick assessments and snap judgments are often wrong.

Look at him.

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