Central Catholic players are used to seeing Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino and St. Louis Rams quarterback Marc Bulger.

Marino, a Central Catholic graduate, is all over the Vikings' locker room. His Dolphins jersey hangs in a frame on the back wall alongside Bulger's.

Photos of Marino are plastered all over the weight room's entry way. A few are of him in a Pitt uniform, a couple others as a Dolphin. There's also one of him posing with his bust at the Pro Football Hall of Fame induction and another of him speaking to a more recent Central Catholic team.

Marino and Bulger are just two of the 13 players who have used Central Catholic as a stepping stone to the NFL. They inspire everyone who walks through Central Catholic's tradition-rich locker room.

"Dan Marino and Marc Bulger were the two biggest things that I was hearing whenever I was coming up here," said senior quarterback Tino Sunseri, who transferred from Weddington High School in North Carolina last season.

"Definitely, coming in here with the championship atmosphere, with all these people around, it lets you know what kind of program you're coming into and what kind of position you're in. It's kind of a special place just to see that all these guys have gone through what you are going through now."

Sunseri was introduced to Central Catholic football before he passed for approximately 1,800 yards and 16 touchdowns last year. His father, Sal Sunseri, was a Central Catholic graduate, an All-American linebacker at Pitt and currently is an assistant coach for the Carolina Panthers. He gave Tino an idea about the notoriety of Western Pennsylvania football.

"Whenever a football conversation would come up, he'd talk about how much bigger it is up north," Tino said. "Basically, it's life on Friday nights; everybody goes to the football game. It has definitely lived up to the hype."

Players such as senior tight end/defensive end Quentin Williams, who was a freshman on the 2004 PIAA championship team, got a taste of Central Catholic's success during his rookie season and feels the obligation to uphold the tradition.

"It's real cool because I was around for the '04 team," Williams said. "I walked the halls with them because I was a freshman. You see pictures everywhere and think you kind of got to live up to them.

"That's one of the things we want to focus on this year. Recently, the past couple years, we haven't really done quite as well as we wanted to."