Standing on the Superdome field Tuesday, Brock said he never doubted he would be able to make the N.F.L. from Belhaven. He ultimately was not drafted but signed with the 49ers before the 2010 season. After bouncing back and forth from on the team to released to the practice squad to the active squad, Brock stuck as a reserve on defense and special teams player. He appeared in all 16 games this season.

While Sunday’s Super Bowl will feature two quarterbacks from colleges with relatively unheralded football programs, it would be incorrect to say that either Baltimore’s Joe Flacco, who went to Delaware, or San Francisco’s Colin Kaepernick, who played at Nevada-Reno, have the most modest college pedigree in the game.

That honor belongs instead to 49ers defensive back Tramaine Brock, a third-year player out of tiny Belhaven University in Jackson, Miss. He gave a long laugh Tuesday when asked if he thought any other player might have a similarly small-time background.

“I don’t know for sure if anyone here went to a smaller school than me,” Brock finally said. “But I doubt it.”

Belhaven, which was known as the Belhaven College for Young Ladies when it was chartered in 1894, is a liberal arts school with about 2,600 on-campus students. It is best known for its Christian foundation, its commitment to the performing arts and, at least to some, its proximity to the International Ballet Competition, which is held in Jackson every fourth year.

Certainly it is not known for its athletes. Brock is the first student from Belhaven to play in the N.F.L., an honor which is hardly surprising when one considers that Belhaven is not even a member of the N.C.A.A.; it competes as part of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (N.A.I.A.), which mostly comprises smaller colleges with modest sports budgets.

“It’s small-college football,” said Joe Thrasher, the coach of Belhaven’s football team. “You have to love it. You have to have a passion for it. And you have to be able to stretch your dollars.”

So how small is small? Thrasher said the Blazers’ football team shares its stadium, H. T. Newell Field, with the local public high schools, as well as with several other Belhaven sports teams. That can make practice timing difficult — “when our time is up, some days we’ll have to make way for the soccer team or one of the high schools,” he said.

It also requires the players to make what is known as the Blazer Walk. “We would get dressed for games on campus in our locker room and then walk a little ways down to the stadium for the game,” Brock said. “It was a little weird but it was cool.”

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