A Year Later, LeGrand Has Reason to Believe

He's got an itch. He can't scratch it because he is paralyzed below the shoulders.

If his mom was close by, he'd rub his face against her chest, shoulder or arm. He does that with his girlfriend, too. He'll even do it to one his physical therapists now and again.

But when no one is close enough, he just makes that face.

"I miss the most being able to take care of myself," he says.

On Sunday, Oct. 16, it will be one year since the 21-year-old LeGrand played his last football game, made his last tackle. Rutgers had just scored, and kicked off to Army late in a game at the new Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey. LeGrand, then a 270-pound defensive lineman for the Scarlet Knights, made a hit on Army kick returner Malcolm Brown and fractured his C3 and C4 vertebrae. LeGrand remembers going down and being dazed, but didn't understand at the time how severely he was hurt.

The amazing thing now is, for a guy who still can't scratch his nose, LeGrand will tell you with a smile — always with a smile — why he has so many reasons to be grateful.

He survived an injury that not everyone survives.

He's breathing without a ventilator, something doctors had told his mother would be unlikely.

He spent five months as a patient at Kessler Institute in West Orange, N.J., where he saw people with spinal cord injuries who could not even eat. Now he's an outpatient there, rehabbing three days a week.

After missing most of his junior year, he's back to working on his degree at Rutgers. He takes classes three nights a week, using an online video conference to watch the lectures from home.

He greets his former teammates in the locker room before each Rutgers home game, then he goes to his new job.

Like most athletes do when they are done playing, LeGrand is now a sportscaster. He does analysis during pregame, postgame and halftime of Rutgers radio broadcasts. He's already done his first TV spot, too.

He hangs out with his friends and his girlfriend. He tweets — (at)BigE52_RU has more than 21,000 followers — and posts on his Facebook page thanks to a voice activated laptop.

He's often asked to speak at schools and churches, to talk about overcoming adversity by staying positive, never giving up hope, believing in God and yourself.

Believing is a big part of LeGrand's life.

In the two-bedroom apartment where he and his mother, Karen LeGrand, live in Woodbridge, about a mile away from the home where he grew up in Avenel — which is being rebuilt to accommodate him — there is a wood carving of BELIEVE on the TV stand.

The art work on the living room wall, BELIEVE.

On the front of his mom's black shirt, BELIEVE in red letters with LeGrand's number, 52.

Eric LeGrand believes he will walk again.

"When I get better ...."

He says that a lot. Never if. When.

Karen LeGrand would have it no other way.

"We have faith and we pray and we know in the long run — we don't know how long it's going to be — but in the long run he's going to be OK," she says. "He's going to be fine. He's going to walk and he's going to do great things. And he's going to do great things in the interim as well."

A day in the life of Eric LeGrand is, in a word, busy.

It takes Karen LeGrand, with the help of a nurse and a nurse's aide, about two hours to get Eric out of bed, dressed and into the $40,000 wheelchair that Eric adroitly controls with a mouthpiece.

After five months at Kessler, Karen figures she knows just as much as any caregiver about the proper way to take care for her son.

"I'm really hands on. I have to make sure they do it my way. I'm sure the nurses and the aides hate me."

View the original article here

Kelly: 'I still believe in this team'

A previously unthinkable 0-2 start does not have Brian Kelly ready to give up on Notre Dame two weeks into the second year of his tenure as the Fighting Irish's head coach.

Not when his team has put up 1,022 yards of total offense, production outdone only by the head-scratching mistakes that have led to 10 turnovers and 17 penalties over 120 minutes of game action.

[+] Enlarge Matt Cashore/US PresswireBrian Kelly says it's the little things that are keeping his team from reaching its potential."I think when we came out of preseason camp we felt like we had the chance to be a good team," Kelly said during a teleconference Sunday. "And so when you put that modifier in front, 'chance,' to be a good team, I can see those things in practice, I can see those things in the development of our players. But that chance to be a good team is everything you just mentioned — those turnovers, the little detail things. And until we can clean up those detail things, we can't be a good team.

"I still believe in this team, I still believe we'll be a good football team. But the chance to be a good team is all the things that we're doing right now. We're not giving ourselves a chance to be a good football team."

The challenges of getting a team over the hump may draw greater pressure at a school such as Notre Dame, the third-winningest program in FBS history and a team that had its sights set on a BCS bowl two short weeks ago.

Kelly downplayed that notion, saying he has come across challenges at each one of his three previous head-coaching stops.

"Not one school is the same," he said. "I had challenges at all the schools that I've been at in terms of getting a team over those inherent challenges, and there are inherent challenges here. But we'll get through those as well. And the product that we're putting out on the field, I understand we've gotta win and our players wanna win.

"We're not, we got a chance to be a good team. We can't be a good team until we take care of the little things that are popping up. It's pretty clear that until we get those things taken care of on Saturdays, we'll be a mediocre football team."

When asked if he felt the Irish were close or far from being a good team, Kelly pointed to the demanding early-season schedule, saying his team's mistakes were magnified because of the spotlight it was playing under.

Other schools, he said, have gotten by unscathed by the public.

"We've made so many mistakes against two pretty tough teams coming out," Kelly said. "Again, as you see the schedule, Ohio State's playing Toledo. I mean, teams are playing easy games early on in the schedule. We don't get that luxury. We gotta go play in front of 115,000, and those mistakes get, obviously, they're more glaring against opponents that are physically pretty good as well.

"I believe that we're gonna be a good football team. We won't be until we clean up the little things that keep popping up on Saturdays."

-- On personnel matters, Kelly said tight end Mike Ragone (knee) and linebacker Danny Spond (hamstring) would undergo MRIs. He also said the staff decided to move Theo Riddick from punt returns because it thought both those duties and his wide receiver duties were too much for him.

View the original article here

UConn Huskies believe they belong

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Connecticut, humbly, would like a moment of your time, if you can spare it. You see, the Huskies know what you think about them. They know what the pundits are telling you. They know that much of the College Football Nation doesn't believe they belong in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl opposite a program of Oklahoma's stature. They, again humbly, beg to differ. And perhaps you can find a spot in your heart to see their merits and recognize the charms of their story.

First of all, they are fully aware of their circumstances. UConn was not ranked in the final BCS standings. It will be the first team unranked in the final BCS standings to play in a BCS bowl game. The lowest ranked team playing in any other BCS bowl game this year is No. 13 Virginia Tech.

[+] Enlarge Elsa/Getty ImagesDespite their 8-4 record, the Huskies know they deserve to play in the Fiesta Bowl.The Huskies finished 8-4 overall. Every other BCS bowl team won at least 10 games. They lost to Temple 30-16. On Oct. 23, they fell to 3-4 after suffering a 26-zip whipping at Louisville. It's no secret that the only reason they are here is because they won the tiebreaker over West Virginia atop the struggling Big East.

And if they weren't fully aware of this, everyone has told them about it -- over and over and over again -- just about every day since they tried to celebrate their Fiesta Bowl berth.

"I'm tired of hearing it," Huskies linebacker Scott Lutrus said. "I've heard it so much. We started hearing it on selection day. But I understand it, where people are coming from. We're an 8-4 team, not even ranked, going to a BCS bowl game. But we earned it. We deserve it. We won our conference."

UConn played by the rules of the BCS system. It's the champion of a BCS automatic qualifying conference. If we are to believe the winner of the BCS championship games -- past, present and future -- are "true" national champions, then we also must believe that UConn deserves to be in sunny Arizona where it can enjoy the notoriously over-the-top hospitality of the Fiesta Bowl.

If you want to get mad, get mad at the BCS system. But when you finish with that, take a moment to consider the possibility that UConn might be worth embracing.

Start with this quote from Huskies coach Randy Edsall, "To me, this is a dream come true." Edsall, who looks a bit like a Marine drill sergeant, later added -- not sounding much like a Marine at all -- "You know, sometimes you pinch yourself."

How many coaches talk like that? Even better is that it's true. Edsall is the architect -- mother, really -- of an extraordinary program construction project. His Huskies jumped up from I-AA football and played their first season of FBS football in 2002. According to this calculator, that's just eight years ago. By way of comparison, the Sooners have seven national titles. UConn played its first Big East game in 2004. It recorded its first victory over a ranked team in 2007.

Paging Horatio Alger: How can you not respect that?

UConn didn't become competitive because it landed a bunch of high-profile recruits, either. The Huskies rank at or near the bottom of the Big East recruiting rankings most years, which means their signing classes rank at or near the bottom among AQ conference teams most years.

America's team? Huskies hail from 17 states, and three are from Canada.

And about that embarrassing 3-4 start. It was followed by a five-game winning streak to conclude the season, with three wins by a combined eight points, including a 16-13 overtime triumph over West Virginia. Shouldn't that resurrection be celebrated? The Huskies could have waved a white flag on their season. Instead, they persevered and grew.

Further, while many teams that make fast climbs in national stature often get there with high-flying passing attacks, the Huskies have taken a blue collar route. They rank 112th in the nation in passing. They run right at you. If you stop that, they run some more. This is a physical team that's unquestioned strength lies with a veteran offensive line -- 75 career starts among them -- and a running back, Jordan Todman, who fights and claws for every yard against defenses that know he's coming.

Finally, this program has arrived at this point 14 months removed from an unimaginable tragedy: Cornerback Jasper Howard, just before he became a father, was stabbed to death on-campus in October of 2009.

"We think about him every single day," defensive tackle Kendall Reyes said. "He's a big part of where we are now. He's still with us."

Don't belong? Connecticut players busted their butts during offseason and summer workouts and preseason camp. They played through injuries. They fought through adversity. They found ways to win.

And when all the sweat was wiped away, the Fiesta Bowl handed them an invitation.

Perhaps if you take time to get to know UConn, you will grow to respect them and see that they belong.

And if you don't, well, then you can suck on a lemon.

"I know the question is out there," Reyes said. "But we deserve to be here. That's the rules. But I'm not concerned with that. We have a game to win. Honestly, I really don't care."

Comments that include profanity, or personal attacks, or antisocial behavior such as "spamming" or "trolling," or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. We will take steps to block users who violate any of our terms of use. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

View the original article here