Toward the end of last week, as it seemed more likely that Tom Savage’s head injury would sideline him at Maryland, I sat down with Dom Natale to talk about the possible opening – and staying ready. He of course said all the right things about preparing the same way and not getting down, but the QB he stood behind for three years (Mike Teel) always did the same. In fact, most every Greg Schiano player habitually spits out coach-approved quotes and so when Greg Schiano was again praising Natale’s attitude, I asked him why he keeps doing that. Isn’t that team-first selflessness, I asked, what you demand – and get – from all your players?

To his credit, Schiano paused a moment. And then said Dom’s a little different. Dom came in, he said, with an uncommon maturity.

Now we know part of why. Five days ago, the Press of Atlantic City’s Susan Lulgjurag wrote about Dom’s experience with cholesteatoma, a type of skin cyst in the inner ear which left Dom deaf in his right ear at age 12. In this morning’s editions of the Star-Ledger, Brendan Prunty wrote about it too.

Dom went out to Michigan State a highly-touted recruit and then dealt with a coaching change. He transferred, sat out a year, blew out his arm, finally got the starting job and then lost the starting job. People talk about his resilience and yet when he and I were chatting yesterday, I realized that resilience was learned before football.

What neither Susan nor Brendan wrote was that by the time Dom had the surgery to remove that mass of cells in his ear, he’d been operated on nearly a dozen times. His intestines were all twisted when he was little, he needed multiple eye surgeries – the surgery he had at Rutgers three years ago was the 14th of his life. He’s only 23 right now.

“My mom always says she was so scared every time we went to the doctor,” Dom said, smiling a little but mostly being matter-of-fact, like he always is. Dom volunteered that he wasn’t premature (“People always ask that when they find out about all the problems I had early,” he said) and that his teammates’ unmerciless teasing is kind of nice.

“They try to sneak up behind me and whisper in my right ear,” he said.

Tim Brown (who instructed me yesterday to stop calling him Timmy, because “Timmy sounds like a little kid’s name”) admitted yes, the Scarlet Knights will sometimes try to mess with Dom, “but only in fun,” he insisted.

“We always say he can’t hear the crowd noise, that’s why he doesn’t feel any pressure,” Tim said. He said no one’s very good at totally catching Dom off guard (Dom can feel vibrations if not sound) and he said Dom encourages the Scarlet Knights to be at ease with what clearly isn’t an impairment.

I wrote last night of Schiano’s feeling that Dom’s leading a win at Maryland and Savage’s continued sidelining won’t re-open Rutgers’ QB competition, that Savage will return as starter when he’s healthy. Either way, I’m sure we’ll keep seeing some of Natale. And I’m fairly sure Rutgers fans will keep rooting for Natale too.