Yet over the past eight years, meeting in the Super Bowl seemingly became another of those exaggerated, imaginary events, not unlike the tale of Rob Morris wrestling an alligator when he joined John Tait for a college vacation tour of the Everglades.

Playoff failures, free agency and supposedly diminished skills all conspired to erode their Super Bowl fantasy, until now. Here they are, together again, in south Florida.

And if the Chicago Bears receive Sunday's opening kickoff, the old roommates will be on the field for the first scrimmage play of Super Bowl XLI at Dolphin Stadium - maybe even lining up right across from one another.

"It's a unique experience, to be going against your best friend," said Morris, an Indianapolis Colts linebacker.

The friendship happened "randomly," a word each used in interviews during Media Day this week. The two freshmen, born eight days apart in January 1975, were paired in a BYU dorm and stayed together throughout their college careers, a six-year period interrupted by LDS Church missions and shortened by Tait's early departure to the NFL, where he is now a Bears offensive tackle.

They were mismatched, in some ways. Tait was rather shy, Morris fun-loving and outspoken. "It's funny how those two were best friends," said former teammate Kalani Sitake.

Yet they stuck together, maybe because Morris was so entertaining and because Tait developed some of Morris' anti-establishment attitude, at least in a BYU context.

"It's a church school, and everybody's kind of mild-mannered there," Tait explained. "We didn't do anything too crazy, but we kind of stood out as being some troublemakers . . . but nothing too bad."

They were summoned to the school's Honor Code Office when they publicly questioned the treatment of teammates who were kicked out of school. Otherwise, it was mostly stuff like Morris' jumping off a three-story apartment roof into the pool.

"He didn't really have much regard for his future football career," Tait said.

Eventually, he did. They both did. After a position change for Morris and a personality shift for Tait, it all began to take shape.

Morris arrived at BYU in 1993 as a fullback from Nampa, Idaho. He was switched to linebacker to provide depth in the middle of his freshman season, while making an effect on special teams - with one memorable hit on punt coverage against Colorado State in particular.

"Rob Morris hit this kid and totally knocked him out, just knocked him cold, man," said Ken Schmidt, then BYU's defensive coordinator.

Schmidt remembered that play when Morris was about to return from his mission and there was talk of moving him back to offense. "He could be a pretty good fullback," Schmidt told coach LaVell Edwards, "but he could be a first-round draft choice as a middle linebacker."

Good call. Morris became a force for the Cougars, while becoming popular with teammates - "People flocked to Rob," Sitake said - as well as the media and the school's promotions staff.

BYU built its 1999 season-ticket campaign around Morris, assigning him the nickname "Freight Train," using train-wreck images in commercials and ordering wooden whistles for fans to blow whenever he made a tackle.

The promotion faded when an abdominal muscle sidelined him for about half of his senior season. "That kind of took the air out of everything," Morris said, and that was OK with him.

He was tiring of the hype, although he had played along with the Everglades story about chasing an alligator with a stick during their bicycle ride (in reality, he got just close enough to pose for a photo). From there, "ridiculous" versions took hold, according to Tait, including the gator-wrestling tale.

"That was part of the myth," said Morris, who now enjoys a family-oriented lifestyle, spending offseasons in Highland with his wife, Tracie, and son, Carter, 3. "I really enjoyed being the center of attention. Now, I'm more of a stand-in-the-back kind of guy. By the time I got to the NFL, I was just ready to be a football player."

Drafted by the Colts in 2000, Morris became a starter in his second season. But in '05, while the team began the season 13-0, he was left out, replaced as a starter by Gary Brackett. "He didn't take that easily," said defensive coordinator Ron Meeks, "but he's a team player; he wanted to be part of it."

So Morris settled for special-teams duty, waiting for another chance that came out of nowhere this season after he signed a one-year contract. He can thank the Jacksonville Jaguars for relaunching his career. In mid-December, the Jags rushed for 375 yards against Indianapolis, an unheard-of figure in the NFL.

Three days later, coaches told Morris he was moving to strong-side linebacker, which "absolutely surprised" him.

The results? The Colts have won three playoff games, with Morris making 16 tackles in the past two games for a much-improved defense. "Guys just got sick and tired . . . of not playing to that level," Morris said.

That's the kind of response Roger French once had to coax out of Tait. As BYU's offensive line coach, French recognized great talent but a lack of aggressiveness when Tait arrived from Tempe, Ariz.

"He didn't understand that football was a tough sport," said French, who addressed that subject by having scout-team players alternately rush against Tait, play after play.

"He did a lot of things to make me angry," Tait said. "He waged psychological warfare to see how much you could take."

It must have worked. As a redshirt freshman, Tait started every game for BYU's 14-1 team in 1996 (Morris redshirted that season) and stayed in the lineup for two more years before entering the NFL draft and going to Kansas City with the No. 14 pick.

After five seasons with the Chiefs - who lost to Morris' Colts in his last game, in the 2003 AFC divisional playoffs - he joined Chicago by signing a six-year, $34 million contract, numbers that caused something of a stir when they were published in a Sunday program in the LDS ward of his wife, Jenava, who is from Salt Lake City.

Tait was seemingly moving away from a Super Bowl shot, considering the Bears had gone 7-9 the previous season and had fired their coach. But Tait has joined in their resurgence under coach Lovie Smith, all the way to Sunday's date with his buddy in Miami.

Tait, especially, will be a key player. At left tackle, he will battle Dwight Freeney, the Colts' pass-rushing star. "He's a monster," Tait said of Freeney, who described their pairing as "a really good matchup."

It will be just as intriguing when the ex-Cougars collide. If not for Indy's defensive shake-up, Morris may never have confronted Tait. As it is, with Morris' move to the outside, they will be on the same side roughly half the time. It will seem "surreal" - another word they both used - in Miami, but pretty much the way they once pictured it in Provo.

kkragthorpe@sltrib.com