Graham a threat for Pack

RALEIGH -- From the moment T.J. Graham arrived at N.C. State, football coach Tom O'Brien could sense something different about the freshman.

Not his speed -- everyone could see, in plain view, the speed that made Graham a state sprint champion at Wakefield High. What O'Brien saw couldn't be measured by a stopwatch or scale.

"Right away, you could see he had a confidence about himself," O'Brien said.

Graham is building that kind of confidence in his coaches as well. He has emerged as State's most dangerous big-play threat on special teams and moved up the depth chart at receiver.

With the Wolfpack 2-4 and still looking for its first ACC win going into Thursday night's game against Florida State, Graham has been one of the bright spots of the season -- even though he's often been more of a blur.

In the process, he's redeeming a family name sullied by one of the biggest scandals in sports. With every touchdown, he builds his own legacy as a college football player and distances himself from the legacy of his father, disgraced track coach Trevor Graham.

"I kind of take it like I have something to prove," T.J. Graham said. "You can't stop us, the Grahams. You can say what you want to say."

After coaching drug-fueled champions such as Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery and Justin Gatlin, Trevor Graham was convicted in May of lying to federal investigators in the BALCO steroids case.

He was banned from track for life by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and is to be sentenced Oct. 21 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. He could face five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. (Late Tuesday, prosecutors urged a judge to send him to prison for 10 months; Graham's lawyer asked for probation.)

Two years ago, as a junior at Wakefield, T.J. Graham fervently defended his father, who had yet to go to trial. Now, even after the conviction, he hasn't wavered.

"He's like my best friend," T.J. Graham said. "I didn't have a brother, so he's like my brother, my friend, but also my dad. He's my biggest role model. People can say whatever they want to say, but knowing the truth and knowing everything, it makes him the strongest man I've ever seen."

Still, it's interesting that T.J. Graham is using his speed so effectively in a sport other than the one that made his father famous (Trevor Graham won a silver medal in Seoul in 1988) before it made him infamous.

Coming out of Wakefield, Graham could have written his own ticket in track. In football, he was only mildly recruited as a junior and made an early verbal commitment to N.C. State before catching nine passes as a senior. It wasn't an overwhelming football resume.

But season-ending injuries to Toney Baker and Donald Bowens this fall opened opportunities for Graham to play right away as a receiver and a returner, and he has made the most of his chances.

One of only two State receivers to catch a pass in every game, Graham leads the nation in kick return yardage with 628 (which has something to do with how often State's opponents have been kicking off) and leads the ACC with a 28.6-yard average (which has more to do with Graham's speed).

In State's 38-31 loss to Boston College on Oct. 4, Graham followed a 60-yard return with a 100-yard touchdown return to keep the Wolfpack in the game.

"He's a real threat," receiver Jarvis Williams said. "Hopefully, we can still get some balls kicked to him."

It's a long way from the first time most State fans noticed him, when he dropped what could have been a touchdown pass in the opening-night loss to South Carolina.

On the bench, Graham was stunned -- dazed, even. But he also realized that with his speed, any play could be a touchdown. Any play could be the difference in a game. Since then, he has put that lesson to good effect.

Few saw this kind of early success coming. Few, that is, except Graham himself.

"I'm not surprised that I got to play," Graham said. "I'm just kind of disappointed. I thought college football was going to be a lot harder to be, I guess, productive in, you know? Other than that, that's the only surprise that I've had."