Jennifer Gish: Jordan Canzeri a small player with a big heart

If ever there was a kid to root for, it's Jordan Canzeri, the football player everyone considered an undersized running back when he was coming out of Troy High.

Did you catch him on national television last week scoring two touchdowns against Nebraska, reaching more than 2,000 career rushing yards and putting the University of Iowa into Saturday's Big Ten championship game against Michigan State?

Virtually overlooked by college recruiters until Iowa swept in with the big offer, Canzeri's playing — and playing well enough to have an NFL career ahead — on a huge national stage.

"When you have a guy that's 5-9 in high school, he's 175 pounds, could he physically hold up in that level? A lot of times when you're looking at the size, you're not looking at the size of the heart in him, and that's the thing no one can really gauge," says former Troy High football coach Jack Burger.

Since he was a freshman, Canzeri's been visiting the local children's hospital there, a habit that's become weekly this year.

Sidelined with injuries a couple times in his career — tearing his ACL during spring practice in 2012 forced him to redshirt that year — he draws upon the kids he's met at the children's hospital and his mom's longtime struggle with Lupus to remind him that others have had to overcome worse.

Canzeri says it was "part of God's plans" for him to go to Iowa instead of Villanova where he'd been offered a scholarship before choosing the Hawkeyes instead.