This year, as a fifth-year senior, Devin had one of the most decorated years of any Rutgers athlete. He was a captain (like his brother before him), he was an all-league corner (like his brother before him), he was a frighteningly fast receiver (again, like his brother) and now there’s chatter he could work his way into the first round.

Rutgers CB Devin McCourty (5-11, 186)

Teams threw away from McCourty and he still had 10 pass break-ups and 80 tackles. Oh, and he notched his sixth blocked kick this year. His sixth.

McCourty learned in watching his twin Jason go through the process a year ago that special teams versatility could be as much a ticket to the NFL as corner play. And so, he rarely took a play off (he notched 111 at UConn, a game where he returned a kickoff for a score), he was Rutgers’ gunner on punts too and NFL Network draft expert Mike Mayock said he’s “been a very pleasant surprise.”

He mixed it up with some of the country’s best receivers down in Mobile this week, the experts at Draftinsiders.net wrote that he “physically beat down Mardy Gilyard on a number of instances,” and CBSSports.com’s Rob Rang said he “has the agility and straight-line speed for man coverage. He breaks on the ball quickly and has the active hands to rip away passes at the last moment.”

Mayock called him “a very quick, tough kid” and said as of now, he seems McCourty as a solid second round pick. And perhaps rising.

Greg Schiano didn’t want to underrate Joe Susan. But after 10 years, he sure wasn’t going to cop to any unease either. Even if he is losing his recruiting coordinator just one week before Signing Day.

“It will have no impact,” Schiano confidently said Wednesday, just hours after Susan accepted the head coaching position at Bucknell.

Susan’s departure ends a nine-season run alongside Schiano at Rutgers. He was one of only three remaining staffers from the start of Schiano’s reclamation project – strength coach Jay Butler and head trainer Dave McCune being the other two – and he was one of only three current Schiano assistants who grew up in New Jersey.

“Certainly Joe’s an integral part, just as all our coaches are, in recruiting,” Schiano said. “It is late in recruiting. But the guys that Joe is directly recruiting we’ve had great relationships with, they’re strong and they (chose) Rutgers. Joe just happened to recruit them. I don’t think it’s a big issue.”

The bigger issue may be replacing Susan.

As a Bucknell assistant from 1981-90, it was Susan who recruited Schiano out of Ramapo to come play linebacker for the Bison. He put in nine years as Princeton’s offensive coordinator, finally got his shot as a head coach at Davidson, went 10-0 and was named Coach of the Year – and then immediately left for a shot to coach with Schiano.

“Greg and I had always talked about coaching together,” Susan said, just a few minutes after Schiano said he’d miss the man who once recruited him.

“When you work with someone for that long and you’ve know him as long as I have, there’s a lot of anticipation that occurs. There’s a familiarity,” Schiano said. “He’s a good friend as well as an assistant coach. He’s been a real good friend for me.”

Therefore replacing him, Schiano said, isn’t just a simple “one-for-one” proposition. He ultimately had to replace wide receivers coach Brian Jenkins – who left last month to become Bethune-Cookman’s head coach – twice after his first appointment returned to a previous job, and Schiano said the short list he created then is still fresh. Susan coached tight ends, but Schiano said he doesn’t necessarily look at position specialties when weighing coaches.

“It’s my belief, if you can coach, you can coach,” he said. “As long as we know what we’re teaching and secure in our scheme, our coaches, our coordinators and myself, we get them up to speed.”

Schiano said he may end up shifting current roles on his staff and he may in fact decide to forego naming an official recruiting coordinator at all. He said as long as he has the NCAA-maximum 10 coaches out visiting prospects, the coordinator position may be better handled by an administrator in the office.

“I’m always trying to look at the whole picture, not just look at it as a one for one replacement,” Schiano said. “I want to get the best person for Rutgers right now. Timing changes what your needs are in everything in life.”

Timing of course played a huge role in Susan’s decision. He said he worried, at 54, about waiting to return to head coaching and that after unsuccessfully throwing his name into the ring at Princeton a few weeks ago, his urgency increased.

“It’s hard to leave a place you’ve been at for 10 years,” he said. “I’ve lived in Princeton longer than I lived in my hometown.”

Where his kids were wary of leaving before, they’re all out of the nest now – his son is headed to law school, his one daughter just graduated from Rutgers and his youngest daughter is a freshman ice hockey player at Rutgers. And though Bucknell’s coming off three losing seasons and previous coach Tim Landis – who Susan ironically replaced at Davidson too – didn’t beat Lehigh or Lafayette in any of his seven seasons, Susan sees a lot of potential at Schiano’s alma mater.

“At this place we have a chance to be pretty good,” Susan said. “The administrators here are outstanding and there’s a lot of support.”

Leaving a BCS conference doesn’t bother him, he said, as his first coach told him, “Big time’s where you’re at.”

“The only difference in practice and preparation and getting ready for game day is that when you show up on game day,” he said, “the crowd’s a little bit different.”

It’s that attitude, and his long connections in the northeast that make Susan “perfect for the job,” Schiano said.

Now all Schiano has to do is find someone perfect for Susan’s old job.

This past weekend, as I watched Jonathan Vilma and Jacques Cesaire’s PSA asking for relief funds, I of course thought back to the Bulls. With students back on campus yesterday, South Florida’s administration generously put me in touch with a few of these young men whose families hail from Haiti. Take a read:

Every spring, Sabbath Joseph scans South Florida’s recruit list for Haitian names.

When Mistral Raymond came in from Iowa, Joseph cornered him in the Bulls’ locker room, welcomed him as a zoe (read: Haitian) and carried out an ersatz knighting.

Joseph tosses out Creole on the Bulls’ game field and he regularly harasses his teammates of less distinct bloodlines, “You’d run faster if you were Haitian.” He talks a mean game of nationalistic pride and redshirt freshman Jon Lejiste always thought it was a trip. Until this week.

When it became a saving grace.

“It’s all our parents’ homeland,” Lejiste said. “We always joke about our own little Haitian circle, but now, we really see how close-knit we are.”

The Bulls returned to class and football Tuesday, exactly one week after a magnitude-7 earthquake decimated Haiti. In a country of just nine million people, the latest numbers estimate 200,000 are dead, 1.5 million homeless and 3 million without adequate food or water. And there’s the thousands still unaccounted for, people like several of the Bulls’ extended family members.

South Florida counted 12 players of Haitian descent on its roster this past fall. No one was born in Haiti, but all had at least one parent who was or, like Joseph and Lejiste, both. Lejiste said his parents have connected with his whole family. Mistral said he still hasn’t spoken to his grandmother – “When I call, it’s just a silence, no dial tone or anything,” he said – but his cousin has. Someone finally got a hold of one of his father’s brothers two days ago and a family friend claims to have seen one last missing cousin.

Joseph’s family has not been so lucky, and as much of his father’s side still remains unheard-from, he quietly said, “My father is a very strong man. I think it’s easy to break right now, but he has a very strong faith.”

It’s a faith he and his Haitian teammates share, the junior linebacker said, in a way he never thought of before. Amidst all the joking about their special community within the Bulls, he said he’s partly only now realizing the ties that bind them.

“Being a Haitian is something we take pride in,” Joseph said. “People from Haiti come with little, work hard and always have faith. The kids, we always try to please our parents and try to (honor) our heritage. When we play football, we try to play for the whole nation of Haiti.”

Even before last week’s earthquake, the South Florida players were well aware of the nation’s poverty. The average Haitian lives on $2 a day and the average life span is just 44. Mistral and Joseph both said they haven’t visited the country since they were toddlers, but even if they could remember, it wouldn’t be what they see on their televisions now.

The wreckage is everywhere, the devastation complete. Haiti’s main port is still unusable and the airport is continuously clogged. The Presidential Palace, main government buildings and United Nations’ peacekeeping headquarters have all been destroyed. Many of the government employees and trained emergency personnel have been killed and chaos is beginning to rear in a country that never even had its own military.

“I’ve got CNN on constantly,” Mistral said, minutes before Joseph admitted he can’t watch the news, or read the internet reports, any more.

“It’s just too hard for me,” he said. “As much as we hear about the help now, it’s going to take years to rebuild Haiti.”

The Bulls are undergoing a little program rebuilding of their own right now, since last week’s firing of Jim Leavitt – the only coach South Florida has had – and the hiring of Skip Holtz. The impact of that, Raymond said, is that “there’s been so much going on, we haven’t really had a chance to talk about what we’d like to do (for Haiti).”

It will definitely be something, though, the junior safety said. He and Joseph have talked about raising money, and of the help that will still be needed by the time their season rolls around again. Until then, if it’s even possible with Joseph’s constant reminding, there is a heightened pride now.

Mistral said every time he hears a news anchor talk about the spirit of the people of Haiti, he thinks, “That’s us.”

“It’s the way we’re constructed,” he said. “Your spirit is your foundation, and that spirit is always joyous.”

It’s why, after 10 minutes of somber talk, Lejiste could joke about super defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul commandeering “The Haitian Sensation,” as his nickname, laughingly saying, “I wanted the title, but he took it.” Reminded that with Pierre-Paul off to the NFL, he could indeed grab it this coming spring, Lejiste more soberly said no, there’s no easy transference of that mantel. Not on a team like this, with this many Haitians.

And at a time like this, he wouldn’t want it any other way.

PISCATAWAY  – Hamady Ndiaye folded his 7-foot frame onto the thin little bench in Rutgers’ track locker room.

Jonathan Mitchell had pretended he didn’t hear the booing. Mike Rosario had sworn he didn’t. Freshman Dane Miller had admitted the catcalls at his coach hurt and then changed the subject and Ndiaye, with a turned ankle too big to slide into his boot, could’ve done exactly the same.

But after logging 108 games as a Scarlet Knights, after yet another demoralizing, oh-so-close loss – this one an 81-65 setback to no. 5 Syracuse – Ndiaye wasn’t taking any easy route. He looked straight at the television camera, he smiled at the four people arced around him and the senior from Senegal said there’s no shying away from the truth.

“We’re going through some crisis right now,” he said. “There’s a lot of words going around about us, the coaches, the team. It’s hard on the team but at the same time we have to learn how to deal with it. No matter what people say outside, it’s not about that right now. It’s about us coming out and giving it our best.”

For a while there Wednesday night, the Scarlet Knights really seemed to be. It’s been a brutal week, from supposed cornerstone forward Gregory Echenique requesting a release from his scholarship to former forward JR Inman’s ranting diatribe against coach Fred Hill on Facebook. The calls for Hill’s dismissal have turned into a chorus, chatter has made a Rosario departure seem like a fait accompli and then came the introductions at Rutgers Athletic Center, when the boos rained down on Hill.

And yet, after falling into the usual ugly halftime hole (this one was 18), the Scarlet Knights kept clawing. 

Keep reading right here.

I won’t lie: this one was the hardest: Antonio Bryant or Andre Johnson or Mardy Gilyard? Sean Taylor or Adam “Pacman” Jones? Michael Vick, who had just two years in the decade, or Pat White, the first quarterback ever to win four bowl games? There were very few no-brainers on this one. So please, feel free to argue.

 The Big East’s All-Decade Team of the 2000s

Offense:

QB Pat White, West Virginia

RB Ray Rice, Rutgers

RB Willis McGahee, Miami

WR Larry Fitzgerald, Pittsburgh

WR Andre Johnson, Miami

TE Kellen Winslow, Miami

OL Bryant McKinnie, Miami

OL Dan Mozes, West Virginia

OL Jake Grove, Virginia Tech

OL Rob Petitti, Pittsburgh

OL Jeremy Zuttah, Rutgers

Defense:

DL Dwight Freeny, Syracuse

DL Mathias Kiwanuka, Boston College

DL Elvis Dumervil, Louisville

DL Eric Foster, Rutgers

LB Jonathan Vilma, Miami

LB H.B. Blades, Pittsburgh

LB Ben Moffitt, South Florida

DB Ed Reed, Miami

DB Darrelle Revis, Pittsburgh

DB Sean Taylor, Miami

DB Antrel Rolle, Miami

K Art Carmody, Louisville

P Andy Lee, Pittsburgh

RET DeAngelo Hall

RET Mardy Gilyard

We’re looking back at the decade that was in the Big East. We started with The Big East’s Top Five Teams of the 2000s. We’ll bring you the Five Most Major Off-Field Moments and the All-Decade team in a little while. But now, The Big East’s Five Greatest Conference Games of the 2000s.

In chronological order…

Oct. 15, 2005 – West Virginia 46, Louisville 44 (3 OT)

Louisville had Heisman candidates Brian Brohm and Michael Bush, and a 17-point lead at the start of the fourth quarter. West Virginia had Steve Slaton. The freshman ran for a league record six post-halftime touchdowns, the Mountaineers pushed the game to overtime and in the third extra session, Eric Wicks’ tackle kept Brohm from a two-point conversion. West Virginia went on to an 11-1 year and an upset of SEC-champ Georgia in a Georgia Dome Sugar Bowl. 

Nov. 9, 2006 – Rutgers 28, Louisville 25

West Virginia, Louisville and Rutgers all opened this November undefeated. Louisville took care of West Virginia, 44-34, on the month’s first Thursday. The following Thursday, with Rutgers’ administration having erected temporary bleachers to give Rutgers Stadium its largest-ever crowd, the third-ranked Cardinals came to Piscataway. They went up 18, Rutgers’ then-receivers coach John McNulty ripped into his corps for its dozen dropped passes and the Scarlet Knights stormed back.  An early Louisville jump gave Jeremy Ito a second shot at a 28-yard field goal with 13 seconds left. He coolly nailed it, even more coolly looked up at ESPN’s skycam and there was “Pandemonium in Piscataway.”

Dec. 2, 2006 – West Virginia 41, Rutgers 39

Rutgers was playing for the Orange Bowl and with Pat White nursing a sore ankle, West Virginia didn’t have its starting quarterback. Sophomore Jarrett Brown still managed to put the home team up 10 in the third quarter; Rutgers’ Mike Teel rallied his team back. After James Townsend dropped a perfect touchdown pass, Rutgers settled for a Jeremy Ito field goal, to go up 23-20 with 3:55 to play. Pat McAfee responded with a 30-yarder with 53 seconds left, the teams traded touchdowns through three overtimes until the final two-point conversion, when West Virginia corner Vaughn Rivers batted down Teel’s pass to Ray Rice. Rutgers ended up in the Texas Bowl.

Dec. 1, 2007 – Pittsburgh 13, West Virginia 9

ESPNU named this 100^th edition of the Backyard Brawl its Game of the Year. West Virginia was 10-1, ranked second and a 28-point favorite over the 4-7 Panthers. With a win over a team the Mountaineers had hung 45 points on in each of the previous two seasons, West Virginia would be in the BCS title game. Then Pat White spent most of the game on the sidelines with a dislocated thumb, West Virginia missed two field goals and the Mountaineers twice in the fourth quarter couldn’t convert from Pitt territory. Fifteen days later, West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez left his alma mater to coach at Michigan.

Dec. 5, 2009 – Cincinnati 45, Pittsburgh 44

Cincinnati went on the road, amidst a storm of rumors coach Brian Kelly was leaving – and a literal snow storm too. The Panthers went up three touchdowns, a packed Heinz Field started shaking and then Mardy Gilyard returned a kick 99 yards into the end zone, and took a pass 68 yards into the end zone too. With 5:46 left, things were knotted at 38 and 4:10 after that, Pitt freshman Dion Lewis took the last of his 47 carries and put Pitt up. The Panthers bobbled the PAT snap, Cincinnati’s Tony Pike caught a streaking Armon Binns in stride with :33 left and Jake Rogers’ kick secured the Bearcats’ undefeated regular season. And yes, Kelly did indeed leave for Notre Dame afterwards.

Honorable Mention: Oct. 24, 2009 – West Virginia 28, UConn 24. Seven lead changes, three touchdown-scoring 50-yard plays and a final minute decision made for plenty of on-field theatrics. But a week after Jasper Howard’s stabbing, this game was about more. Kashif Moore, who cradled a dying Howard, carried the corner’s jersey on the field, the Mountaineers wore Howard’s number on their helmets and the West Virginia fans fiercely and consistently applauded the Huskies.

There was Dwight Freeny.

There was the ACC raid, West Virginia’s Sugar Bowl stunner and the undefeated Bearcats. Officially launched in 1991, the Big East Football Conference’s second decade was one of transition. Twelve teams called the league home at one point and nine won at least a share of a league title (Temple lost its chance forever, Rutgers and South Florida are still waiting theirs’).

Of the current eight members, seven have been nationally ranked while in this configuration. Seven have won bowl games and three have had to twice make coaching changes (Cincinnati, Louisville, Syracuse).

This last year of the decade suggests the Big East has stabilized, and may be on an ascension that sticks. But that won’t be certain till Jan. 1, in what will formally be a new decade. So before then, let’s take a look at the decade that was in Big East football.

First, The Big East’s Top Five Teams of the 2000s.

In chronological order…

2001 Miami – Sure, Larry Coker was in his first year, but Butch Davis had left him with a roster of 16 eventual first-round NFL draft picks and 12 Pro-Bowlers. Ed Reed, Clinton Portis, Frank Gore, Jeremy Shockey – is there any wonder in the Hurricanes going 12-0, outscoring opponents 512-117 and bludgeoning Nebraska, 37-14, in the Rose Bowl? 

2002 Miami – The Hurricanes lost 11 players to the NFL and then again rattled off 12 straight wins. They demolished no. 6 Florida, 41-16, on the road and only one little, late, late (late!) yellow flag kept them from a second consecutive national title. (Craig Krenzel’s fourth-down pass fell to the ground, line judge Derrick Bowers signaled incomplete and as the Miami sideline started celebrating, field judge Terry Porter – from the back corner of the end zone – threw a flag. Porter said Miami corner Glenn Sharpe interfered with Chris Gamble, Ohio State got a new set of downs on the one-yard line and then won in an OT that never should’ve been, 31-24.)

2005 West Virginia – Uber-freshmen Pat White and Steve Slaton led the Mountaineers to an 11-1 mark that year, with the sole loss coming in a 34-17 setback against third-ranked Virginia Tech. The game that will forever mark that season, though, is the 38-35 upset of SEC-champ Georgia, in a Sugar Bowl that was moved to the Bulldogs’ backyard Georgia Dome because of Hurricane Katrina. The win revived the Big East’s credibility after the ACC’s raid and the media’s subsequent near-constant denigration.

2006 Louisville – Bobby Petrino put together and Brian Brohm ran an offense that averaged a shade under 40 points a game and led the nation in yards. The Cardinals trounced a Miami team that stomped on its logo 31-7 (Miami should’ve known better: after Rutgers did the same the year before, Louisville had hung a 56-5 beating on the Scarlet Knights) and brushed aside ACC champ Wake Forest in the Orange Bowl. A 28-25 nail-biter at Rutgers was all that kept the Cards from a perfect season.

2009 Cincinnati – This team’s story won’t be fully written until the Jan. 1 Sugar Bowl is in the books, but the Bearcats belong regardless of how that final chapter reads. They opened the season with an annihilation of Rutgers at a sold-out, newly-expanded Rutgers Stadium. They flew across the country and ended Oregon State’s 13-year old home non-conference win streak. They won a clash of 5-0 teams at South Florida and they completed an undefeated regular season with a three-touchdown comeback at no. 14 Pittsburgh – while both snow and Brian Kelly rumors swirled.

Honorable mention: 2007 West Virginia

PISCATAWAY – It was after a game, fairly early in what would be that magical 2006 season.

He was leaning up against a wall, across from the Rutgers locker room, wearing a black jacket. He looked like he could’ve shouldered the whole building with that one lean and so I asked him his name.

“Anthony Davis,” he said, quietly, but politely too.

Without any brush off, and with him still looking at me patiently, I asked him how old he was. He said 16, I said something about my high school not growing them that big and then I asked him if he was coming to Rutgers.

“I’m thinking about it,” he said.

“If you do,” I said, “you’ll get to talk to me for the next four years.”

“Three,” he said, showing me for the first time that impish grin I’d soon spend – yes, three – years smiling back at.

Davis announced Tuesday he’ll forego his senior season and enter the NFL Draft, making official what just about every Rutgers follower had to know. No lobbying would’ve made a difference, no promise could’ve kept him, no, Davis said, nothing could put off his dream any longer.

“It’s been in my heart for a while,” he said, wearing a black and white button-down shirt, standing behind a podium in Rutgers’ team room and still speaking quietly.

Davis had walked into the room almost bashfully, seeking out a familiar face and with, yes, that same shy smile. He’s dreamed of this since he was seven, since he whooped at the sight of the Seahawks’ Walter Jones upending people and since he bawled, he said, at the scene of the Super Bowl on his TV screen.

He’s an All-American, he’s months from becoming Rutgers’ highest draft pick ever and yet, Davis still has none of the same self-assured gregarious swagger Ray Rice and Kenny Britt had oozed in the two years before him, when they’d become the Scarlet Knights’ first early entrants. Davis is a classic lineman. And a beast of one too.

            He’s a 6-foot-6 325-pound left tackle who quarterback Tom Savage just last week said “punishes people” and who Rutgers coach Greg Schiano said Tuesday will “be a dominant player in that league.”

He’s a consensus first-round pick, pegged as the country’s seventh best prospect on an SI.com list and as the nation’s best junior tackle in ESPN analyst Mel Kiper’s ratings. He was slotted ninth in ESPN.com analyst Todd McShay’s latest mock draft and even as Davis himself said he hasn’t and won’t put too much stock in any of that, he did sweetly admit, “It’s nice to hear.”

            He’s still only 20, with his next birthday not coming till what should be the second month of his NFL career. He’s not all naïve innocence – Schiano suspended him (and Britt) for the Morgan State game in 2008, he spent six days with the second team during this past camp after he let a summertime eye injury bloat his weight a tad, and he sacrificed a start at Army in the fall, after sliding into a team lunch late.

            But he’s in no way a bad kid. And just one conversation will prove there’s neither “baggage” nor attitude to him and he said Tuesday he’s certain he’ll erase that tag – assigned him by the draftnik McShay – soon enough. Schiano said he’s not worried by any of it either, that as much as Davis will physically impress at the combine, he may do more with that quiet mouth.

            “He loves the game of football, that is the number one,” Schiano said. “This kid, he’s a football player, he loves it.”

            By all accounts, and my own eyes, he does – and his teammates too. This year during camp, when right tackle Kevin Haslam went down, dropped his helmet and called for a trainer, it was Davis who picked up his helmet, followed him over to the sideline and waited for the trainers to pause. When they did, he told Haslam, “I’m holding onto your helmet” and he did, for the next 20 minutes.

            After long touchdown passes, I’ve watched him run back to congratulate a left-behind Savage before racing to join the rest of the offense in the end zone. He takes all his linemates’ teasing, except of course when they started calling him “Ginobli,” after that one-quarter suspension at Army and in honor of the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year. Because after all, underneath all the playful charm, there’s a steely drive, the one without which he wouldn’t be so appealing. It’s the one that has him cuing up a highlight reel of Orlando Pace, in a 1996 domination of Penn State, on YouTube every single day. It’s the one that had him say last week, before Rutgers’ St. Petersburg Bowl win over Central Florida, that he was grossly disappointed he hadn’t yet had a game where he dominated every play.

            He did have a great game, he has had a great three years and so now, off he goes, free to sign with an agent Jan. 15, head out to the combine Feb. 24 and finally fulfill what he said Tuesday was “always in the back of my head.”

            And somewhere, in the back of my head, I’ll still see that 16-year old kid. The one who once upon a time had to introduce himself.

Confusion crossed Zaire Kitchen’s face.

Standing in Rutgers’ practice bubble, a day before the Scarlet Knights left for St. Petersburg, Kitchen shook his head. He looked down at the scar on his right knee, he looked at the two on his left knee and then the senior safety said, “I forgot. I forgot which one came first.”

They’ve defined him and they’ve branded him, these three complete knee reconstructions he had in a five-year span. They’re a testament to every cell of his character and they’ve been the stirring model for every Scarlet Knight who’s undergone any kind of surgery. And Zaire Kitchen can’t even remember their most basic details.

“Hey, I’m more than just the injury guy,” he said, laughingly protesting. Seeing the raised eyebrow, he laughed again and said, “Well, I want to be more than the injury guy.”

Consciously lost memory or not, Kitchen has certainly earned at least that: he is indeed more than just the injury guy.

As is tradition, the Scarlet Knights carried their seniors off their practice field Thursday, two days before that group will play its final game in the St. Petersburg Bowl, against Central Florida. Each of those seniors has a story and each has indubitably had a flash wondering if he’d get to that final sweet moment. But none wondered so strongly, and none got there so astoundingly than Kitchen.

“I did wonder,” he said, admitting he’d readied to trade his jersey for a coach’s shirt two winters ago. But he never did and so, he quickly said, “the dream’s still alive. My dream is still out there.”

Kitchen isn’t the can’t-miss natural he once was, he knows that. He was an All-State prospect at Hightstown High in New Jersey and then one of the country’s top safeties out of Hargrave Military Academy. He’d had his right knee reconstructed (after much prodding, Kitchen “remembered” it was the right) as a high schooler, but it hadn’t scared off any recruiters. He came to Rutgers and was an immediate impact, playing from the season’s first game.

Then in the 11^th, against Syracuse, he felt a familiar wrench and knew he’d popped ligaments in his left knee. He rehabbed and trained and pushed and was back three games into the next year. When again in the season’s 11^th game, this time against Pittsburgh, he again felt the wrench, again heard the pop and again found himself having a knee reconstructed.

Both times the knee gave way too late to get Kitchen a redshirt year and both times the fight back was more of a slog than the previous time. But fight he did, playing in all 13 games last year, snagging special teams’ MVP honors and then starting all 12 games for Rutgers this year. He has 61 tackles, five pass break-ups and an absolute lock on the Knights’ perseverance trophy.

He won’t say how long getting ready for a simple practice takes, but it may as well be a practice session in itself. There’s treatment and ice and massage and absolutely no psyching up, he said.

“No, I love football,” he said. “There’s no questioning playing now.”

Physically, coach Greg Schiano said, “Zaire’s not as gifted as he was when we saw him as a high school senior in our camp. (But) what he’s done is, he’s worked incredibly hard to be a really, very, very smart, intelligent, resourceful football player.”

That he is, with junior safety Joe Lefeged saying he can’t imagine not having Kitchen to key off. Lefeged said there’s no mistakes, physical or mental, out of his secondary-mate, and he even sometimes wonders if the three surgeries are mere urban legend.

“No, I’m a little slower,” Kitchen said. “But I’m stronger and I know I’ve done everything I can to compensate for not having the same physical ability.”

Schiano said it’s not so much compensation as simply adding another facet to an already strong game. “Whatever he may have lost through his surgeries is (almost irrelevant),” he said. “He’s made himself stronger physically and he’s made himself a coach on the field which has allowed him to play at a high level this year.”

And so he will, for the final time as a Scarlet Knight Saturday. After that, he does want to participate in Rutgers’ Pro Day and hopefully get a few tryouts. If not, though, he promised he’s a realist. He graduates in May with a degree in criminal justice and he has another dream waiting: to be a DEA agent.

“I understand my position,” he said. “I’m not going to prolong anything if it’s not there. I won’t chase that NFL dream forever.”

And hey, he already has the key if that’s the case: he’ll know how to forget that dream was ever there.

To recap: Monday, former Bulls beat writer Brett McMurphy wrote on AOL Fanhouse that Leavitt grabbed sophomore walk-on Joel Miller by the throat and then hit him twice in the face during halftime of South Florida’s Nov. 21 game against Louisville. McMurphy wrote that five witnesses corroborated that allegation and he quoted Miller’s father Paul, a former Tampa police officer as saying, “You do something like that (on the street), you put them in jail. Somewhere (Leavitt) crossed the line.”

Tuesday, current Bulls beat writer Scott Carter wrote in the Tampa Tribune that Leavitt told him the allegations were “untrue and completely false.” Carter wrote that Paul Miller also refuted the original AOL story, and said Leavitt only grabbed his son by the shoulder pads and did not strike him in the face.

“That’s absolutely not true,” Paul Miller told Carter of the AOL allegations. “As a father, that’s absolutely not true. That’s all I can really tell you. Joel wasn’t having a very good game. I guess Coach Leavitt noticed he was just sitting there all by himself and wasn’t responding.”

Now, today, USF President Judy Genshaft told her school’s board of trustees that the school’s associate VP of human resources, Sandy Lovins, and private labor lawyer Tom Gonzalez are going to spearhead a review of the AOL piece’s charges. President Genshaft told the board Leavitt met with Lovins and Gonzalez at 9 a.m. yesterday and that the pair would be conducting other interviews.

I’ve said it several times before and I’ll say it again: an assault that happens in the halls of a football complex or the bowels of a football locker room is still an assault. I’ve also said that in our generation, it’s become far too much of a reflex to question the credibility of a writer when the news reads unfavorably. I know I certainly wouldn’t write something so explosive, and so potentially damaging, if I didn’t have complete faith in my sources. However… and it’s a big however… I am not so naive as to think reporters don’t get stories wrong. I am not so naive as to think people, emboldened by the spotlight, don’t sometimes embellish stories to reporters. I am not so naive to think all these allegations may have somehow been misconstrued and that’s why Jim Leavitt’s career hangs in the balance.

Ultimately, our reputation may be our most valuable possession. The first report has already done untold damage to Leavitt’s reputation. It’s attacked his character and questioned his fitness for the position he currently holds. If that’s deserving, then the report carried out one of our most noblest charges as journalists: to expose ills and abuses. If it’s not deserving, if the report isn’t correct, then it’s just as ugly an assault as the one it alleged.