Bear Pascoe’s given name is McKenna Sean Pascoe. But that name never got much use.

McKenna, who weighed a hefty 10 pounds at birth, looked like a “big ol’ bear cub,” said his father, Sean.

“We started calling him Bear, and it stuck,” Sean said. “Very few people know his real name.”

New York Giants fans know the 6-foot-5 Pascoe as a workhorse tight end who mostly blocks and occasionally snags a pass from Eli Manning. In fact, Pascoe caught four balls for 33 yards in the Giants’ Super Bowl win over the Patriots last season after catching a touchdown pass — his first in almost three dozen games with Big Blue — in the NFC title game against the San Francisco 49ers, the team that drafted him in the sixth round in 2009 and waived him that same year.

Courtesy of WranglerBear Pascoe inherited his passions for football and rodeo from his father, Sean, and has already excelled in the two-man team roping event.

What most fans don’t know — heck, most of his teammates don’t know — is that Pascoe has a passion for rodeo. If all goes according to plan, that’s where you can expect to find him when his football career is over: in the ring, roping up a storm.

Pascoe, 26, grew up in central California, where his family runs a working cattle ranch and where hard work is something you do before the sun rises. Once upon a time, young Bear was one of the best up-and-coming team ropers in the sport. He won jackpots — weekend events in rodeo — and even a V8 truck that he still keeps at the family ranch. (During the NFL season, Pascoe drives a one-ton Dodge mega cab; he feels uncomfortable in anything smaller, such as the Cadillac his fiancée, Katie, drives.)

For the uninitiated, team roping works like this: Two teammates, each riding a horse, must lasso a calf — with one teammate responsible for the head and the other for the feet — while racing against the clock.

Roping and football go hand in hand for the Pascoe clan. Dad played linebacker at Colorado State in the 1970s and still competes on the rodeo circuit. Bear, who idolized his father, played quarterback in high school and was recruited to Fresno State at that position.

“If you were a man born into the Pascoe family, you were doomed to rope and play football,” Sean said. “All of my brothers played ball and roped. It was just something that we did.”

Bear moved to tight end entering his sophomore season at Fresno State. The Bulldogs had lost their starter to graduation, and the coaches weren’t about to have a player of Pascoe’s size and skill standing on the sideline holding a clipboard, especially a guy who was happy to make the position switch. Although Pascoe isn’t particularly fast — the 49ers cited his lack of foot speed when they waived him — he is steady, strong and sure-handed.

Because of the demands that football places on Pascoe’s body, he is woefully out of practice when it comes to team roping. During the offseason, he is careful about what he does on the ranch, mostly riding horses, relaxing and handling less strenuous chores. Just when he starts to get comfortable in the saddle again, it’s time to head off to training camp.

But Bear and his dad see plenty of overlap between the two sports, emphasizing the strength and agility required for roping and football. “People don’t realize how many muscles you use when you ride a horse,” Sean said. Bear notes the exceptional hand-eye coordination necessary to lasso on the move. “And team roping is the main sport that helped me develop my competitive edge,” Bear said.

(A year ago at Giants camp, Pascoe grabbed a rope from the backseat of his truck and demonstrated a few tricks for some of the guys. “But that’s as far as it’s gone,” he said with a laugh, making sure to stress that his bosses need not worry about their tight end wrestling steers on his days off.)

When most people hear “rodeo,” they think of bull riding, a dangerous sport whose participants have a short shelf life, not unlike football players. But team roping is a discipline that cowboys can compete in for years.

“He’ll be competitive at rodeo when he’s done with football,” said Sean, who joined the pro circuit after college. “There are a lot of guys doing it in their 40s.”

For now, Bear is happy to wait.

“That lifestyle, the ranch lifestyle, will always be there for me,” he said. “It’s what I know. But to come out here and experience this type of lifestyle and to play in the NFL — it doesn’t last very long. And I’m trying to take advantage of it.”

When he’s not in his Giants uniform, Pascoe is almost always in a pair of Wranglers — the cowboy uniform. He and Katie, who also comes from a rodeo family, have grown fond of the Big Apple. They enjoy seeing Broadway shows and discovering great restaurants. They love the adventure of living in a big urban environment that offers a completely different flavor than their usual rural pursuits.

But Pascoe knows exactly where he’s going when his playing days are over.

Back to the ranch.

In 2010, Giants tight end Bear Pascoe would sit in a makeshift classroom at the University of Albany with his fellow tight ends as their position coach, Mike Popedrew up plays that the offense was going to run the next day in training camp.

When it came time, however, to run those plays, only one guy from that classroom–Pascoe– was healthy enough to go out there and bring Pope’s lessons to life on the field.

Hard work? As the 6-5, 283-lb. Pascoe tends to say when he agrees with something, “You bet!” However, given his rather unique upbringing, Pascoe wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

Team Work 101
Like most parents, Sean and Julie Pascoe adore their three children, twins Sara and Ryan, and, of course, their youngest son, McKenna Sean, whose bestial moniker came about because he was always one of the biggest kids while growing up.

However, unlike some parents, who tend to spoil their children, the Pascoes introduced their brood to the concept of teamwork from a very early age.

A well-respected clan of cattle ranchers from Porterville, Calif., a small town located just north of Bakersfield, it was on the family’s ranch, where Pascoe, then a boy of about six or seven years old according to his father, received the first of several lessons about teamwork, hard work, and being accountable to others that would help shape him into the man he is today.

“Bear, as a young kid growing up, had certain chores that he had to do every day,” saidSean Pascoe by phone from the family’s home. “He learned at an early age what it was like to put a day’s work in.”

A day’s work for the younger Pascoe meant getting up at four in the morning so he could be ready to go to the field with his father. Pascoe’s chores included preparing bottles for the calves, feeding and caring for horses, and, as he got older, more advanced chores such as branding cattle, building fences, and steering calves – all duties that often times didn’t end until well past sunset and all things he had to carry out while still putting in a full day at school where he was expected to keep up with his studies.

Country Tough
While working on a ranch is a hard and,  often times, thankless job, Sean Pascoe recalled how Bear enthusiastically embraced the lifestyle regardless of the circumstances.

“When the kids were younger, we tried to be careful with what we asked them to do,” said the elder Pascoe. “We didn’t want to put too much on them, but there were times when kids, as they tend to do, tripped and fell down, and skinned their knees.

“Most kids who do that might say, ‘Well I need to go to the house,’ if they get hurt. Well, we didn’t have that opportunity because we’re out there on the mountain, so we were just like, ‘Hey you have to suck it up, shake it off, get on with it, and get it done.’”

“You don’t get any sick days out of the ranch,” said Pascoe, who said he has a high pain threshold. “It doesn’t matter little ailments you have – hamstrings, sprains, whatever. You go out there and do your job because people are depending on you.”

Following His Roots
In addition to following in his father’s footsteps as a cattle rancher, Pascoe also tried his hand in the “other” family business: football.

“There’s kind of a standing joke in our family that says if you were a male child born into the Pascoe family, you were doomed to rope and to play football,” said Sean Pascoe, who was an outside linebacker at Colorado State in the mid-1970s.

“That’s just how it’s been,” he added. “All my brothers are cowboys and they played football, and all my nephews are the same way — they grew up ranching and playing football in high school and college.”

So it was only a matter of time before his youngest son took the same path. Unable to take part in youth football (“We were so far from town that we couldn’t afford to run him in and out of practice all the time,” said Sean), Pascoe tried his hand at football when he attended Granite Hills High School, where he was a quarterback.

By the end of his high school career, Pascoe, who also played a bit at linebacker, had earned the East Yosemite League “Offensive Player of the Year” honors in 2003, and was named to the All-Area team after leading his team to a 16-4 record in his last two seasons, including the 2002 East Yosemite League title.

Following his impressive high school showing, Pascoe was recruited by Fresno State as a quarterback, where then-head coach Pat Hill knew he had something special in the rather tall kid from the country who at age 15 became a rodeo roping champion.

“Pat Hill once told me that he was amazed at how, at six in the morning, Bear would come into the weight room with a smile on his face, ready to go, while there were other kids who grew up in the city that were still half asleep  and complaining about having to get up so early,” said Sean.

Pascoe, who made the switch to tight end, began contributing not just on offense, but on special teams as well, where his accomplishments include six blocked kicks, a school record.
As a tight end, Pascoe made such an impression in the Bulldogs program where he not only caught passes, he also evolved into an old-style blocking tight end that took delight in doling out punishment to opponents. He was so impressive in that role that in his NFL Draft prospect profile, Hill was quoted as calling Pascoe “the most devastating blocker we’ve ever had at his position, ever!”

Feeling a Draft
Pascoe’s dream of being drafted by an NFL team came true in 2009, when the 49ers chose him with the 184th overall pick in the sixth round of the draft.

Thrilled at the prospect of being able to play professional football so close to home, the Pascoe family’s joy was short-lived as the 49ers waived Bear on Sept. 5, 2009.

Fortunately, Pascoe wasn’t out of work for too long, as the Giants signed him to their practice squad ten days later.

The following year, after impressing the coaching staff with his durability and play during training camp, Pascoe barely missed making the final 53-man roster, a decision that was reversed after week one of that season when the team promoted him to the roster after then-starter Kevin Boss suffered a concussion during the season-opener.

Since joining the Giants’ active roster, Pascoe’s role has been a bit like a ping-pong ball. Barely five weeks into the 2010 season, he was thrown into the fullback position after starter Madison Hedgecock suffered what became a season-ending hamstring injury.

While it was a struggle at first, Pascoe quickly adapted. His lead blocking helped the duo ofBrandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw rush for a combined 2,058 yards and 17 touchdowns,with the Giants finishing sixth in the NFL in rushing (137.5 yards per game) that season.

The following year, the Giants released Hedgecock and lost  Boss to free agency. Pascoe was again asked to split his time between tight end and fullback, something he did until newcomer Henry Hynoski was brought up to speed at the fullback spot.

“Henry did a great job, and it took a lot of pressure off of Bear because there’s a lot of physical and mental stress with all the stuff you have to learn and pay attention to,” said Sean.

Not that his son minded the challenge. Always the optimist, Pascoe said that he could take certain things from his time spent at fullback that he thought could make him more effective at tight end.

“You learn to work leverage at fullback, where you’re blocking smaller guys who are quicker,” Pascoe said. “So when you go to tight end and you face guys like Trent Cole (Philadelphia) and DeMarcus Ware (Dallas) who are shifty and can move, you kind of learn to play a little more with your eyes because where your eyes go, your feet will follow.”

“It definitely helps him because he has a better understanding of what a play should look like because he sees it from a lot of different angles,” added Pope.

“He sees it from the attack blocker, the kick-out blocker, and the lead blocker, so his football knowledge is really good. He could someday coach the position if he had to, he knows that much about it.”

Mr. Reliable
This summer, Pascoe will no longer be a “slash,” as in fullback ‘slash’ tight end. Rather, he’ll open camp as the starting tight end, thanks in part to his experience, the knee injury toTravis Beckum, and the loss of Jake Ballard, who was claimed off waivers by the Patriots last week.

While Pascoe remains willing to do whatever is needed to help the team, he admitted to looking forward to being able to focus more on the position that got him to this point in his NFL career.

“It’s been really nice to be keyed into one position,” Pascoe said during the team’s recent minicamp. “Don’t get me wrong–I’m still glancing at the fullback and I still know what I’m supposed to do there, but it feels good to be honed in on one spot.”

While some might puff out their chests if declared a starter on an NFL team, Pascoe knows that his status could change in a snap.

“Right now as far as depth charts, I’m not paying attention to any of that,” he said. “I’m just working hard and have the same attitude I’ve always had–come in and try to do the best I can for this team, and try to help us win games.”

“He knows what to do and he can play about four or five different positions,” said Pope, who referred to Pascoe as ‘Mr. Reliable.’ “We would be in dire straights right now if he wasn’t here because we don’t have anyone else right now that can model for these younger players.”

Never Forgetting the Past
These days, Pascoe, along with his teammates from the 2011 team, is a Super Bowl Champion, a feat that his father pointed out isn’t accomplished by everyone.

“There are guys that work their whole lives to get to the Super Bowl – guys that are in the Hall of Fame and never got that opportunity,” he said. “For Bear to have not only played in a Super Bowl but to also have earned a ring — it just kind of the payoff for his hard work and diligence in staying on course.”

Sean Pascoe’s voice breaks, if just for a split second, as he remembered the moment when his son’s football career reached the apex.

“When we were sitting there at the Super Bowl watching him, they were playing the National Anthem, and I am looking right there at him. He has his helmet under his arm, and his hand on his heart. I turned and looked at my wife, and I said, ‘Honey, our son is playing in the Super Bowl.’ We both kind of had tears in our eyes because it was such a moment.”

Yet for all the spoils that the Super Bowl has brought to his life, Pascoe is still the big ol’ soft-spoken cowboy who  plans to return to his roots full-time when his playing career ends because that’s what got him to this point to begin with.

“It was no bed of roses,” Sean Pascoe said of the path that taught Bear about the values of hard work and being a part of a team. “But I think my kids –and especially Bear in his line of work–have handled it very well, and my wife and I couldn’t be more proud.”