HAYDEN - Oh, it comes up from time to time.

Such as when Ryan Phillips talks with coworkers and people he meets through the medical company Biogen Idec, or when he and his wife, Angie, attend a friend's Super Bowl party, as they plan to do Sunday.

Not that Phillips wants the attention. It's just people seem to want to talk about it.

"People usually know," Phillips said of his former career as a linebacker in the National Football League. "They're always interested in what it was like."

Hard, violent hits is what it was like.

A workplace intensity very few can comprehend.

An average career length, because of competition or attrition, of six years.

"There's no real way to prepare for it," said Phillips, whose five-year career left him with 3.5 pro sacks, 44 tackles, four interceptions, a torn MCL and a bulging disc in his neck. "You just have to be thrown into the fire."

When Phillips sits down for the game Sunday, he'll watch his old team, the New York Giants, square off against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI.

He doesn't watch a lot of football since his playing days ended in 2002, but he always pulls for the G-Men - the team that drafted him in the third round of the 1997 NFL draft out of the University of Idaho, and the one Phillips helped take to Super Bowl XXXV in 2001.

People tend to want to talk about that too; Phillips played in the big one.

An experience, like the league, that was all intense, all the time, he said. Even during the regular season, every practice, every drill was videotaped and scrutinized by coaches.

"There's media day and that's about as light as it gets," he said of the Super Bowl's weeklong limelight of cameras, microphones, practice drills and walkthroughs.

"You go back to the hotel room to try and get away from it and watch TV but there's nothing but Super Bowl coverage on every channel.

"By the end, you just want to play the game," the 6-foot 4-inch, 250-pounder said.

The Giants lost to the Baltimore Ravens 34-7, which still stings Phillips, and at the end of the game an opposing player came down on the linebacker's leg and he tore his MCL.

That was the picture that made rounds after the game: The dejected, injured player crumpled in defeat.

"I was the shot that year," he said of the captured moment.

But that was then.

Now, Phillips, who went to high school in Auburn, Wash., works in marketing and sales for Biogen Idec, which develops biological products for neurological disorders, such as multiple sclerosis. Angie is an interior decorator and they have twin 8-year-old daughters, Kate and Lauren.

Ryan and Angie met in college, and Phillips used to bounce at the Ironhorse bar during his college summers when he fell in love with Coeur d'Alene.

But does he miss the old playing days?

Back then, he would walk down the street in Manhattan and fans would recognize him, ask him how he was doing.

"It was a great experience, and it was something I'll always have," he said. "People always ask me if I miss it. I do. But that doesn't mean I want to be there right now."

He appreciated every day. He knew it would be fleeting, seeing teammates, roommates even, get cut or injured.

And soon, the couple will finish constructing a bar in the basement of their Hayden home and hang Ryan's jerseys on the wall. His old, battered helmets will decorate the shelves. The player has plenty of stories too, ones that would make perfect telling there, like when the Dallas Cowboys sent the punishing, Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith right at Phillips on the first play of his first start - on Monday Night Football.

"With little experience at the position and the nerves rattling a bit, Phillips was not given an opportunity to get acclimated," The New York Times wrote about the play in 1998. "But Phillips stopped Smith for no gain, settling himself and beginning a solid performance."

An added wrinkle: the Patriots cut Phillips before the 2002 season, ending his career.

But Phillips will watch the game Sunday at a party with friends and family, just like everyone else.

He loved it then, things change, and he loves it now.

"I just knew it was not something that would last forever," he said. "I'm enjoying this. I wouldn't want to raise 8-year-olds for the rest of my life either, but it's great right now."