Few men know the rarified air of such a mountaintop. For a football player who starts as an 8-year old, as Plainville’s Niko Koutouvides did, and grinds all the way to the Super Bowl, out with his teammates for the coin toss with over 90 million watching, yellow “Terrible Towels” flying everywhere among the 68,000 in Detroit’s Ford Field, it was the moment of a lifetime. And it was fleeting.
“My mindset was, ‘Finally, the game is here, let’s go play,'” said Koutouvides, the Seahawks’ special teams captain for Super Bowl XL. “You wish you could slow it down a little bit more, because I was talking a bunch of junk to my teammates, that I was going to win the coin toss. I wanted to make sure we won it, which we did.
“So everything was going as planned.”
Twice Koutoutvides, a linebacker who played at Plainville High and Purdue, experienced the two-week lead up to the Super Bowl, the endless interviews, the circus that is Media Day, the chaos on the field and, finally, the game. By coincidence, he played for the franchises that are meeting Sunday in Super Bowl LX, with Seattle in the loss to the Steelers in XL, and then with the Patriots, losing to the Giants in XLVI. The current Seahawks are the “more complete team,” he said, but notes the Pats have thrived as underdogs.
“I’m taking the diplomatic stance,” he said. “I’ll be happy whichever team wins.”
Koutouvides, now 44, will watch this one at home in Fairfield with his three sons, all of whom play football, and be able to share just what the players are feeling, experiencing.
For few men, too, know the sting of defeat in sports’ biggest spectacle.
“When you’re there, it seems like the game is so far away, and when the game eventually comes, it goes by so fast, it’s like, ‘What the hell just happened?'” Koutouvides said. “The game’s already over, and unfortunately I was on the wrong side of it — twice — which will haunt me and be with me until the day I die.”
Make no mistake, that wasn’t just a manner of speaking. Koutouvides transitioned to life after football, found success in real estate development throughout Connecticut, but the pain of losing the Super Bowl twinges and acts up like an old joint injury.
“The players that are there today, it’s an experience, they’re going to take it all in,” he said. “But at the end of the day you’re there to complete the mission, from the first day of training camp, to be world champions, and if you come up short you’re going to second guess or think about all the things that may have caused your team to lose that game.
“All I did from when I was 8 years old to when I was 32 years old, 24 straight years of my life, was play the game of football. And the whole goal was to be a world champion. It’s like someone trying to try to climb a mountain and the first couple of times you got there, something happened, a storm, you twisted an ankle or what-not, and you never get to that summit. If you’re a competitive athlete, it will haunt you forever. It will for me.”
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Koutouvides, 6 feet 2 and 238 pounds, was drafted in the fourth round by the Seahawks in 2004 and played for coach Mike Holmgren, getting in on 62 tackles as a rookie. He became a top special teams tackler, and had two against Pittsburgh in the Super Bowl on Feb. 5, 2006, in which a series of controversial calls by the officials played a part in the Steelers’ 21-10 victory. “There were a number of unfortunate circumstances that occurred during that game that really changed the outcome,” he said.
He later played for Denver and Tampa Bay, and joined the Patriots in 2011, winning the first 10 games in which he participated, including a start against the Colts. Bill Belichick, as is his wont with linebackers, found ways to utilize Koutouvides’ skills.
“He liked lunch-pail guys,” Koutouvides said. “Grab your lunch pail, grab your hardhat and com e to work. That’s what he liked, selfless guys, who would give whatever they need to in order to make the team successful. He had a way of finding talent, hard-nosed, smart football players and he brought the best out of them. Bill is extremely selfless, a team oriented guy, and he’s a genius when it came to game-planning and situational football.”
In his second chance, Koutouvides and the Patriots came up short, 21-17, against Eli Manning and the Giants at Indianapolis. “We made a couple of unfortunate errors in that game that just made the difference,” Koutouvides said. “And the Giants made those plays that needed to get made.”
A year later, Koutouvides’ career ended, and he and his brother, Aristides, started Skala Partners, a real estate investment, development and management company, building multifamily housing, including buildings in West Hartford and Fairfield. They’ve just completed a 204-unit apartment building in Farmington, next to Batterson Park.
“Life after football has been extremely fortunate for me, thank goodness, because that transition is very challenging for all athletes,” Niko said. “And I have zero complaints … other than, ‘I wish I won a Super Bowl.'”
.More for your Sunday Read:
Sunday short takes
*SCSU’s Jeff Stoutland, who became one of the NFL’s most respected offensive line coaches, announced his week he was leaving his position with the Eagles after 13 seasons. “When I arrived here in 2013, I did not know what I was signing up for,” Stoutland posted on his X account. “I quickly learned what this city demands. But more importantly, what it gives back. The past 13 years have been the great privilege of my coaching career. I didn’t just work here, I became one of you.” Reports suggest the Eagles wanted to change his role (ridiculous, or course), so he wanted to take a step back from coaching. He may stay in Philly in different capacity.
*The Sacred Heart women’s flag football club has been invited to play in the JetsECAC, which is backed by the Jets with a $1 million grant from the Betty Wold Johnson Foundation. The SHU team formed in the fall of 2025, and has 30 players, and the school asked to join the league, which got the Jets’ backing in December. The Jets’ investment is expected to make the ECAC, now at 16 teams, with Sacred Heart the only Connecticut entry, the largest conference for women’s flag football in the nation. Regular-season games will be played February through April, with a championship game at MetLife Stadium in May.
*Jordan Skolnick, a soccer standout at E.O. Smith High in Storrs, was named permanent AD at Delaware. Skolnick, 41, who has had a long career as an athletic administrator, played a key role in Delaware’s move to FBS football.
*Will 7-foot-3 Hasheem Thabeet, who joins the Huskies of Honor on Feb. 14, be the first to be able to reach his plaque from the floor and unveil it himself?
*Mike Joy, 76, a Conard-West Hartford and UHart grad, will call his 47th Daytona 500 race this week for various networks, this will be his 23rd for Fox. Joy, who began his career as a public address announcer at Riverside, Stafford and Thompson in the early 1970s.
Dom Amore: CCSU, true to itself, opts out of NCAA revenue sharing. Most other CT schools are in
*LIU-Brooklyn, the only school in the NEC that opted into revenue sharing, has an 8-1 record in NEC play, three games in the loss column ahead of the schools that opted out, including CCSU and New Haven.
*Olympic snowboarder Maddy Schaffrick has roots in Bristol, where her father, Dan Schaffrick, was born and raised and graduated from Bristol Central before moving to Colorado. Her grandfather opened Lewis Street Auto Body, which is still in the family.
*UConn’s win over Tennessee last Sunday drew better than 1.2 million viewers, the most-watched women’s basketball game of the college season, fifth most-watched ever on Fox, according to the network.
*East Hartford’s Patrick Agyemang, who hopes to be on the U.S. roster for the World Cup, is prospering across the pond in the English Football League. He has nine goals and three assists in 23 starts for Derby County, including three in the last four games in January.
*Matthew Wood, a first-round NHL draft pick after his freshman season at UConn, has reached the NHL with the Nashville Predators, who drafted him 14th overall in 2023. Wood has nine goals, eight assists in 45 games.
*Jim Calhoun and I will be signing copies of our book, “More Than A Game,” at the Barnes & Noble store, 555 Fifth Ave. in Manhattan on March 11, the first day of the Big East Tournament, from noon to 2 p.m. Go to www.bn.com events page for more information.
*Since the breakup of the original Big East in 2013, the UConn women’s basketball team has won five national championships, missed the Final Four only once – and lost a grand total of three conference games in 13 seasons (all three with injury-plagued lineups). This is to illustrate that the lack of a challenge from their conference may make for some boring stretches in January and February, and it won’t help, but has not, and will not hold the Huskies back from winning in the NCAA Tournament if they are good enough. These are separate matters, and Geno Auriemma’s nonconference schedules take care of the metrics business.
Last word
*And now, the prediction you’ve been waiting for: Seahawks 27, Patriots 23.
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