FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Since Monday, when the Colts arrived to South Florida, Jim Caldwell has stood at a podium each day dutifully conducting press conferences in front of large groups of reporters.
If you were a passerby and didn’t know that was the head coach of the AFC’s Super Bowl participant standing at that podium you might mistake Caldwell for some anonymous businessman conducting a seminar in Salon B of the resort hotel.
Anonymous is just the way Caldwell likes it.
His team is defined by Peyton Manning, en route to becoming one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history.
Caldwell’s predecessor was Tony Dungy, who led the team to the Super Bowl three years ago and is one of the winningest head coaches in NFL history.
His profession is dominated by men with Hall of Fame credentials (Bill Belichick), strong personalities (Rex Ryan) and new-world youth (Josh McDaniels).
So where exactly does the 56-year-old Caldwell, a journeyman coach who had paid his dues across a landscape of college and pro programs, fit into these vast environs dominated by so many dynamic coaches?
Perhaps by making history.
Caldwell is the first rookie coach to lead his team to the Super Bowl, and if the Colts win it, he will be the first to win a Super Bowl.
Maybe that will bring a few more notebooks and TV cameras to his doorstep — not that he wants them.
“I don’t think he even cares if anybody says his name or knows that he’s the head coach,” Colts safety Melvin Bullitt said yesterday. “I think he’d probably like to keep it that way. He’s not a guy that likes to be in the limelight.”
Nevertheless, Caldwell’s lack of exposure bothers some of the Colts players who feel he doesn’t get his due because he carries such a low-key persona.
“Coach Caldwell has flown so far under the radar, which I think is not fair,” Colts receiver Reggie Wayne said.
What makes the case of Caldwell so compelling is how it’s possible that the coach of a team that started the season 14-0 and essentially gave the last two regular-season games away to rest star players for the postseason could be so under the radar.
Can you imagine the hysteria that would have surrounded Rex Ryan had the Jets won the first 14 games of his first year as a head coach?
“In due time, everybody is going to know who he is,” Wayne said. “They’ll have no choice, because he’s going to continue to be successful.”
Legendary Penn State coach Joe Paterno certainly knows who Caldwell is, having been his boss from 1986-92 when Caldwell served as his quarterbacks coach in Happy Valley.
“Jim Caldwell was one of the best assistant coaches I’ve ever had at Penn State,” Paterno told The Post yesterday. “Jim is great teacher, has a plan about how he wants to get things done and he pays attention to the little details that often decide a tough football game. Besides being a great football coach, he’s a great father and a great guy.”
One man who has known about Caldwell longer than anyone associated with the Colts is their defensive coordinator Larry Coyer, who goes back to 1973 with him when he coached Caldwell as a young defensive back at the University of Iowa.
“He was so intelligent he could have done anything,” Coyer said. “He could have been a congressman, but he had a passion for this.”
“When he speaks it’s in a low tone, but everybody knows he means business,” Wayne said. “He’s a man of few words.”
Caldwell, whose faith runs deep, said he is not a bombastic motivator.
“It’s not inspiration through exhortation,” he said. “I’m not an individual that’s gifted with golden-throated oratory. I don’t talk a whole lot unless I’m forced to.
“There’s an old passage in the Bible that says, ‘When words are many, sin is not absent, he who holds his tongue is wise.’ So I kind of like hold my tongue as often as I can.”
Despite that, Caldwell instills passion in those who work for him.
When Caldwell sat Colorado coach Bill McCartney down in 1984 and told him he was leaving Colorado to take another job at Louisville, McCartney closed the door to his office after Caldwell left the room and he broke down and cried.
“No matter what his words are they’re spoken carefully,” Bullitt said. “He’s not flashy, but he’s very aggressive. A lot of people probably don’t know that. He’s a very, very aggressive coach, almost like a general.”
But he’s a modest general who doesn’t care about credit and accolades. He’s more comfortable with anonymity.
“I worked for Chuck Noll in Pittsburgh and Chuck Noll won four Super Bowls and I don’t think he was ever named [NFL] Coach of the Year,” Colts offensive coordinator Tom Moore said. “And that was OK. With Jim it’s the same way. It’s OK.”
mark.cannizzaro@nypost.com