This is not a "Meet Curtis Brinkley" story, because that was done four years ago. It isn't a story about Brinkley's record-setting high school career, or his religious beliefs, or his numerous leg injuries, or the passing of his father. Those have all already been written.
And this definitely is not a redemption story, because I wrote that, last fall, when the spotlight was on him and him alone.
"Honestly, I don't even care anymore," Brinkley says now in regards to the ongoing running back saga that has seized the first two weeks of the 2008 season. Mostly because he knows there's nothing he can do about it. Because he knows how good his competitors, Delone Carter and Doug Hogue, are. How the fans clamor to see them, not the senior who's already had his opportunity.
Last fall, Brinkley had come full circle, as the starting tailback with the offense resting on his shoulders and the chance for a quick resuscitation of a once-promising college career.
But that was last fall, when there was hope and promise surrounding Curtis Brinkley, and now that inevitably is gone. He started his third straight season-opener on Saturday, yet the comeback story is Carter, the talented athlete is Hogue, and Brinkley is left trying to add another chapter to a book that's already been passed off as finished, sold and forgotten.
If Greg Robinson decides as anticipated to whittle his running back contingent down to two, it may well leave Brinkley as the one left out. The head coach hasn't named anyone yet, and likely won't before the kickoff on Saturday. Yet it couldn't have boosted confidence when Robinson essentially made his vanilla decision to start Brinkley vs. Northwestern purely because of seniority.
"He's made a real effort, and that's why he ended up being the guy that started the game," Robinson said Sunday. "It was really too close to call on any of them, but Curtis was the senior football player. I told all three of them that was for this game and where we go from there will be determined this week."
For Brinkley, though, seniority may be a slight, a favor insulting. Concessions are for the fifth-year walk-on hoping to steal some playing time on Homecoming. They're for the third-string quarterback in a 40-point blowout. They're not for one of the greatest running backs to ever come out of a Philadelphia high school, who battled through two knee surgeries and a broken fibula in a 12-month span.
They're not for a player who has started more games on offense than any other member of the team. Yet Brinkley must still face the fact that though he's healthy, he's bigger and stronger, he practiced with the first team all during camp, and he's been "the guy" before, the opportunity to be "the guy" again may have evaporated as a Buffalo defender came crashing down on his right leg last October.
"Emotionally and physically" painful was how he described missing the last four games of 2007, hobbling on crutches with eight screws and a plate holding together a leg that once broke Philly's high school rushing record. Yet he refused to call it a career. He refused to give up his desire to be a Big East starting running back again.
He worked his way back, through weeks of rehab, adding muscle, keeping quickness, maintaining speed. He began his rehab the day after removing his leg cast. He worked out nonstop, he said, with trainers and strength coaches as he did the year before.
People prayed he'd get healthy quickly then. This time they told him he should quit. That he would never be the same. That his time had passed.
It would've been so easy for Brinkley to listen and acquiesce, to quit cold and drift away, and he even thinks about it now.
"I could have, yes," Brinkley said. "But I wasn't raised like that. My father and my grandmother didn't raise me that way.
"I've got my personal reasons for why I wanted to come back better than I ever felt. But that type of stuff motivated me, too. It means a lot to me. It motivates me a lot when I hear people say stuff about me."
No, this is not a redemption story - this is retaliation. It would have been cleaner if Brinkley had been carted off the Carrier Dome turf last October and faded out silently into the background, but where's the courage in that? If there's nothing else to root for on this Syracuse football team, is it too much to applaud effort in the face of antagonism?
Brinkley makes no apologies: he wants to be the starter this season. It's frustrating, he said, not knowing whether it's his job again or not, and it's easy to understand why. He's not the savior anymore - that was last season. He's not the talented new face - that was two seasons ago.
He's just trying to go about his business as the long shot, no matter what anybody says. He's been a long shot before, and this time, in his senior season, he won't back down without a fight.
Zach Schonbrun is the sports columnist for The Daily Orange, where his columns appear every Tuesday. He can be reached at zsschonb@syr.edu.
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