During two-a-day practices, the punt would go up and Michael Jennings would settle under the kick like a horizon bellies up to a setting sun.

It was comfortable. Relaxed. Consistent. Routine.

Jennings, the redshirt freshman from Aurora, Colo., bear-hugged the ball with both hands. He almost exaggerated each catch as if to say, "Look, Coach, you can count on me."

But fielding a punt on the Simpson Drill Field in the shadow of the Albritton Tower is a different animal altogether than snagging that oblong ball with a wave of blue defenders rolling in to your chest in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains.

Against BYU in the Pigskin Classic, and with the Aggies leading 20-6, a fateful punt — and Jennings’ young career — took a nasty bounce.

The kick was short of where Jennings was standing, but it took off, end over end, straight at it him. The golden rule of fielding a punt like that is get out of the way quickly, if not faster.

But Jennings reached out for the punt to try and make a play that wasn’t there. Surely, he thought, he could keep the Aggies’ momentum going in this difficult road game.

But Jennings mishandled the ball, and the sea of blue pounded Jennings into the turf. The ball was loose, and in hindsight, A&M’s chances to win the game were left hanging on who recovered. BYU did, and the Aggies lost.

One month later, a kickoff floated toward Jennings to open the revenge game with Colorado. Jennings took the kick and darted to what seam was available. Hit from behind, Jennings lost the ball again. Colorado, before a stunned crowd at Kyle Field, recovered and scored a few seconds later on a reverse. Ballgame.

Two plays. Two fumbles. Two losses.

The losses cannot be blamed on Jennings, it’s just that his miscues were key plays at key moments. They were momentum-busters and game-breakers.

This was — and every Aggie has thought it — Wilbert Biggens all over again. Yes, Biggens fumbled consecutively in the season opener in 1991, but the Aggies won that game over LSU by 38.

Biggens never found a position he could flourish in until he returned to running back as a senior. And now Jennings, recruited as a running back, must begin the Biggens route and give defensive back a try as well.

So how does a young, polite, quiet, take-home-to-meet-Mom- type of kid get over the trauma of fumbling in two games when he rarely, if ever, fumbled the ball in practice? How does a guy, who was so homesick last year that many thought he would leave Aggieland to go back to Colorado, survive a run of misfortune that would send most kids into a funk 10-feet deep?

"I pray," Jennings said. "Every day."

College football is an amazing game. It can be so exhilarating, so becoming, so dream-like. It can make heroes out of kids and build them up faster than Aggie Bonfire during Push Week.

But the sport, in a second, can be debilitating, disheartening, so nightmarish. Mean-spirited fans at Oklahoma can boo quarterback Eric Moore all the way to the bench. The pressures under the Golden Dome at Notre Dame can turn white-hot so fast quarterback Ron Powlus can declare the season over after just one loss.

However, for the Aggies’ Jennings, the sun hasn’t set on his career. On the contrary. It may be just rising.

"My mom, she gets me through," said Jennings as he prepared for an afternoon practice as a cornerback. "She’s gotten me through a lot. I’m going to make mistakes, I understand that. It takes some people longer to adjust (to college football) than others. And it’s taken me longer than I expected to adjust. It’s just a stage where I have to go through."

Someone would call it baptism by fire. In any case, Jennings has the support of his teammates, his coach, and most importantly, his mother.

"She tells me no matter what happens on Saturday, I have to wake up on Sunday to face the rest of my life," Jennings said. "Taking it that way, you expect good things to happen. And I think I’ve been patient. I was patient last year. So hopefully, my patience will pay off."

A&M coach R.C. Slocum preaches patience with young players. Jennings wasn’t ready last year, so he redshirted. This season, Jennings had showed his coach all the makings of an outstanding punt returner and running back. Slocum couldn’t wait to show off what really could have become a recruiting steal.

Then came the fumble against BYU and the fumble against Colorado. Patience, at some point with a head coach mired in a 1-3 season, takes a seat on the bench.

"He’s a great young man," Slocum said. "He’s just had some misfortune. In the BYU game, he made a bad decision on a punt. And then in the Colorado game, he got hit and the ball came out. He could do that again a thousand times, and neither one would happen again.

"But you get in a position as a coach where you can’t keep beating your head against the wall."

Or beating the idea into a players’ head that you can’t fumble the ball on the college level and expect to remain in the lineup. Slocum does want Jennings in the lineup one day, but now as a defensive back.

"We try to encourage him just to work through (the misfortune)," Slocum said. "It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. You just have to get through it. He’s a young player, and he still has four years. I still have a lot of confidence in him that he’ll develop into being a good player."

Jennings played some safety in high school and played it well enough that Colorado was going to sign him as a defensive back. But Jennings wanted to play running back, and he wanted to play the position for the Aggies, a team he had followed closely growing up.

In fact, when he signed with the Aggies, he called it a dream come true to play college football for the maroon and white.

When he arrived in College Station, he stayed to himself, and friends and fellow running backs D’Andre Hardeman and Eric Bernard were concerned about Jennings’ ability to adjust to college life.

Then, as expected, the freshman became a sophomore — and all the social and football-related benefits of no longer being a newcomer began to surface.

A more comfortable Jennings excelled in spring practice and into summer drills. The coaches were trying to find him a spot on the field. With some of the surest hands on the team, Jennings landed the punt and kick returning jobs.

A month into the season, Jennings is no longer a running back or kick returner. But his buddies in the running back corps are keeping a close eye on him.

"He’s had some unfortunate times and some bad luck," Bernard said. "We’ve watched him, and he’s doing pretty well. He said he wasn’t coming back (to running back). I think he’s adjusted real well."

Added Hardeman, "It kind of hurt him at first, but he’s getting over that now and is working hard at DB. I really think he likes defensive back. Hopefully, he’ll be a great defensive back one day."

Or sooner than that.

"I’ve made a lot worse mistakes, in football and in life," Jennings said. "For me to fumble in a football game, yeah it upsets me. But I do realize I have to wake up and go on with the rest of my life. I do realize it’s going to be a setback, as far as my progress with the coaches. But I know my day is coming. That’s what keeps me positive."

Earlier in the afternoon, senior wide receiver Albert Connell had seemed almost superhuman, grabbing one key reception after another and almost single-handedly preventing Colorado from turning a showdown into a blowout.

No other receiver in the long and storied history of Texas A&M football had ever been so dominant, so dependable or so determined in a single game. His school record-setting 18 catches of the day was the envy of all Aggie receivers past and present, as well as many professional fishermen who have returned to shore with less catches after a long day.

But now, with the sun setting, the clock winding down and Connell still lying on the field after his final catch of the afternoon, Mr. Bulletproof had finally buckled. Exhausted, sweat-drenched and dehydrated, Connell first tried to pull himself off the freshly cut grass at Kyle Field. Then he desperately tried to will himself off the ground.

Neither worked, and now the young man who had carried the Aggies all day long was literally being carried off the field during the final few moments of the game.

"He did everything he could, and he had an incredible day," quarterback Branndon Stewart said of his favorite target. "He showed an awful lot of heart out there."

In cinematic terms, Connell’s effort against the Buffaloes was worthy of being labeled "Braveheart II." On the other hand, it may not have even been his most courageous display of the month.

Although it came in a loss, the Colorado game had placed Connell in the national spotlight for all the right reasons. A week earlier, however, Connell showed the courage to step into the spotlight and admit he was wrong.

Prior to the loss to Southwestern Louisiana, Connell had missed class and had been held out of the game for disciplinary reasons. Perhaps, Connell says, things would have been different if he had been in the lineup for the entire game.

Maybe he could have made a big play. Maybe he could have prevented a big loss. Nobody will ever know.

But instead of avoiding the issue after his monstrous nine-catch, 166-yard performance against North Texas, Connell chose to address it. No standing ovations. No hiding under a helmet. Just Connell standing before the media, remorse clearly evident in his tone and his expressions.

"It hurt me a lot to be (held out of the USL game)," Connell said. "I let my teammates down. Period. Maybe if I had played the whole game, I could have done something to help us win. I regretted being on the sideline, but I think the coaches did the right thing. Being a senior, I should have known better.

"It was important for me to come back strong (the next week against North Texas). Not just by having a lot of catches, but by showing the right attitude. I want to be a leader on this team, and I want to do the right things. Everybody makes mistakes in life, but what really matters is how you learn from them and come back from them."

Connell certainly appears to have learned. In fact, linebacker Keith Mitchell found Connell sleeping in his car one early morning to make sure he wouldn’t miss class.

On a greater scale, overcoming adversity and hurdling obstacles has defined Connell’s football career and his time at Texas A&M. That’s how he became and Aggie in the first place. That’s how he made a name for himself at A&M. And that’s how he is establishing himself as one of premier pro prospects in college football --— something Texas A&M has rarely before produced at wide receiver.

On and off the field, Connell has been at his very best when the odds are long and times are tough. The bounce-back after the USL disciplinary action is just one example.

Consider these others:

• As a high school star in Florida, Connell was being recruited by many of the major powers in college football. But those schools lost interest after he had a brush with the law after attempting to help a friend. So instead of receiving a scholarship from, for example, Florida State, Connell walked on at Trinity Valley Junior College.

Connell merely led Trinity Valley to the junior college national championship, grabbing a team-high 41 catches for 738 yards as a sophomore and attracting considerable attention from major college coaches across the country, including A&M.

• After signing with the Aggies, Connell had to complete a whopping 27 hours of course work to graduate. Upon completing that stout goal, he was forced to wait on the red tape of A&M checking his transferring credits. The ensuing delay caused Connell to miss the first week of two-a-days, not to mention hours in the film and meeting rooms.

Once his class work was approved, however, Connell and A&M wide receivers coach Les Koenning Jr. became bunkmates in the Aggies’ football offices, cramming weeks of information into days so Connell could open the 1995 season on time against LSU. Against the Tigers, Connell looked as if he had been in the A&M system for years, not days. He caught three passes and scored a touchdown in the opener.

• Later in the ‘95 season, with the Aggies mired in a two-game losing streak and trailing SMU with less than a minute left in the game, Connell turned what would have been a horrifying loss into an electrifying win. Former quarterback Corey Pullig threw up a prayer into the corner of the end zone, and Connell leapt high over an SMU defender to make the game-saving grab.

• Earlier this season, Connell fumbled the opening kickoff of the second half against Iowa State, giving the Cyclones momentum and outstanding field position that eventually led to a score. But with Iowa State threatening to take control in the fourth quarter, Connell took over.

He turned a short pass into an incredible 70-yard touchdown, breaking one tackle and eluding several others for what proved to be the game-winning touchdown.

"He has certainly showed the ability to bounce back in the face of adversity, whether it’s personal or from a team perspective," Koenning said. "He’s grown up a lot in a short period of time."

Indeed, Connell grew up in places like Brooklyn, N.Y. and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. But he probably didn’t become a grownup until arriving in College Station. In less than two years, the junior college kid with a somewhat questionable past has evolved into the main man of Texas A&M’s offense and one of the more mature young men on the team.

He sincerely wants to lead by example, which is why he was utterly disgusted with himself for violating a team rule on class attendance. But even in that instance, Connell is trying to bounce back and turn a setback into a comeback.

Not only did he face the media and take responsibility for his mistake, but Connell also took sophomore wide receiver Aaron Oliver aside and gave him a pep talk from a perspective Oliver needed. Oliver was temporarily suspended from the team earlier this season for his involvement in a check fraud incident.

"I’ve talked to Aaron about that, and I’ve told him that it’s important how you bounce back," Connell said. "When you make a bad decision or do something wrong, you can’t go back and do it all over differently. But you can learn from it. That’s my advice: Learn from it and move on."

Connell’s words of wisdom are matched only by his awesome actions on the field. He has definitely become the Aggies’ go-to guy, a big-play threat every time he touches the football.

A prime example of his explosiveness and knack for the extraordinary is the Louisiana Tech game. In the previous two contests against North Texas and Colorado, Connell had caught 27 passes and may have been the intended receiver 25 other times.

Against Louisiana Tech, however, Connell touched the ball only twice during the entire game. Both times, he scored, taking a reverse 63 yards for a touchdown and catching a 40-yard scoring strike from Stewart.

When nothing else worked against Colorado, Connell came through. When the offense became stagnant against Iowa State, Connell made the big play.

"We feel like he’s one of the guys on our offense that has to make plays," Koenning said. "We just try to get it in his hand and let his ability take over."

Over the years, the go-to guy at Texas A&M has usually — if not always — been a running back. In fact, prior to Connell’s All-Southwest Conference selection last year, the Aggies had not even produced an all-conference receiver since Jeff Nelson in 1986.

But the drought of big-time receivers at A&M may be coming to an end. Although Connell will likely be playing on Sunday afternoons next year, his presence may be felt at Texas A&M for years to come.

Among other things, Connell’s achievements have given the Aggie coaches ammunition for the off-season.

"(Connell) really brings something that has been missing in our program," Texas A&M head coach R.C. Slocum said. "When we go out and recruit some top wide receivers, we can point to what Albert has done and say, ‘You can come here to this program, because we do throw the football. (The Colorado game) is a prime example (of what a receiver can do) at Texas A&M."

That statement — more than any touchdown reception or long run — makes Connell the proudest. When he was considering Texas A&M, Connell was told by some other schools that his talents would be wasted as an Aggie. Texas A&M is a running backs school, they said. Why would a top receiver talent want to go to College Station?

Perhaps Connell has changed that image now. Certainly, he dramatically altered the Aggies’ offensive diversity.

"A lot of people told me not to go to A&M because it wasn’t a passing school," Connell said. "I feel like I’ve been a big part of that image changing, and that’s a good feeling. I’m excited about what we can do with our offense and our passing game the rest of the season. We made some mistakes early on, but I really believe we’re going to finish strong."

Just like Albert Connell, who has made some mistakes, but appears ready to finish his career at A&M with a flurry of success.

QUESTION: What is your general assessment of the athletic department and the direction it is heading?

TEXAS A&M PRESIDENT RAY BOWEN: I think athletic departments and universities are complex entities. At the university, our job is to educate students and to provide human resources for the industry and people of Texas to benefit economically. We have a tremendous service responsibility. There are a lot of things, but down in the middle of it, you’ve got intercollegiate athletic programs. So in some sense, we’ve got a responsibility to run that in a way that is compatible with the larger enterprise.

I can tell you about universities where there is always conflict. There are always debates and difficulties about the athletic department. Is the athletic department taking resources? Is the athletic department maintaining the academic standards? Here at A&M, we’re not engaged in any of those problems. The athletic department pays its way; the athletic department has a good set of people who are sensitive to the academic needs of the student-athletes. To the extent they need to interface with the registrar, admissions or the greater university, it’s always in a very supportive way.

I think that goes back to the quality of people we have coaching, the athletic director, the academic counseling people and compliance people. The people in the athletic department seem to be very much a part of the greater university. It’s not isolated, and I’ve worked at places where they felt isolated. When that happens, you just don’t have the same success.

Q: The A&M football team struggled coming out of the gate this season, and there probably has been a vocal minority upset with the program. What has been your reaction to that?

BOWEN: It’s understandable. But we got essentially none of it here. I think we had one slightly inebriated person call the voice mail late one night when nobody was here. And they did not give a return phone number, so my sense is that they felt telling us was a waste of time anyway, but they felt like they had to say something.

As this level, it’s been essentially a non-issue. There have not been people raising concerns with me. Maybe it’s the kind of people I interact with. They’ve been longtime supporters, and they’ve been people who have seen the success and the ebb and flow of the success of all of our athletic programs. They know we have a first-rate athletic staff over there, a first-rate head coach and good athletes. And (those coaches) identify problems which are fixable. I think you have seen that. We have gotten just a little bit better every game. We have not played anybody who has fielded a better set of athletes than what we’ve got.

Q: Are you pleased with the job R.C. Slocum has done with the program?

BOWEN: I like R.C. Slocum in a personal sense, and I like him in a professional sense. I am allowed in the dressing room after the ballgames, and I listen to what he tells the athletes. He doesn’t berate them. He doesn’t criticize the mistakes. He has a clear understanding that here are young people trying to do the best they can. He’s very positive and very upbeat. He talks to them about how they conduct themselves, and about taking advantage of the next Sunday to get ready to go to class on Monday. He says all the right things. It’s a consistent message. I’ve been in there after he’s lost, and I’ve been there after he’s won great games. He’s a pretty steady character, and he deserves for us to be steady as well in our support for him. We’re lucky to have a person with his obvious success here. He’s in a very competitive business, and he understands that. I think he handles it very well, and in turn, I think we need to support him.

Q: You have been directly involved in the start-up of the Big 12 conference and are currently the Big 12’s chairman of the board. Can you discuss the push to upgrade the academic requirements (only four partial qualifiers per school) for the conference?

BOWEN: I came at this from my Oklahoma State position when I was interim president. I was there when the idea of creating this larger conference was discussed. The academic standards in the Southwest Conference have always been higher than they were in the Big Eight. One of the issues raised up there was, do we want to raise our standards to the Southwest Conference’s and was that an issue? And we as presidents concluded that’s not an issue. We’ll raise our standards to theirs.

To be very frank with you, when it came down to actually doing it after we had four (more) teams with us instead of eight and there were some changes with the presidents, there was some rethinking of that on the part of some institutions. Some of us never wavered. I was at a different job, but I kept reminding them that this was part of the understanding when we joined with the Southwest Conference that we would raise our academic standards.

I saw both sides of it. At Oklahoma State, we had no partial qualifiers the year I was there. It was legal to recruit them, but there were no partial qualifiers at any of the sporting events at Oklahoma State. We heard virtually the same thing from OU, which had one. Kansas had none; Missouri had none; Nebraska had a few. But their chancellor, who is the campus chief executive officer, said we’d be happy not to have any. I think later Nebraska had second thoughts about that. But the initial feeling was if we want to create this entity, it ought to have high academic standards.

It was never a Southwest Conference vs. Big Eight issue. First of all, it never would have passed if it had been that. If we hadn’t had the support of several of the old Big Eight presidents, we never would have gotten the votes. The final vote was a majority. In earlier straw votes, there were people trying to stake out slightly different positions. Quite frankly, some of us wanted no partial qualifiers. We all compromised a little bit.

Q: How do other member schools view A&M in terms of academics and athletics?

BOWEN: Academically, this university and the University of Texas represent probably the two strongest academic institutions in the Big 12, in terms of national merit (scholars), research funding, quality of the faculty and so forth. There some good schools up there. Colorado is a fine school, Missouri is a good school, Kansas is a good school. Probably, if you just look at the raw numbers — SAT scores and such — we bring a lot to the table academically.

Athletically, we probably we don’t have the balance and strength in some of the minor sports that we ought to have, where we have across-the-board uniformity. We’re great in women’s basketball, but we got to develop in men’s basketball, where (the old Big Eight schools) tend to be good in both. So I think we’ve got some place to go in our so-called minor sports or non-revenue sports to be at the level we want to be, to be the best in the Big 12.

But academically we’re strong. And clearly our football program is one of the best. Baseball, women’s basketball and a variety of other things are quite strong. We just don’t have the uniformity.

Q: What are some of the misconceptions about A&M that you’ve noticed in your discussions and meetings with CEO’s from around the Big 12?

BOWEN: That we’re a rogue school on compliance. I think it’s unfair, and I think it’s going to take a generation of close attention on the part of the university, the athletic department and really the whole community of former students to get that behind us. The NCAA never forgets. If you have a problem 15 years from now, there will be someone who remembers we had (a problem) a few years ago. It’s a long-term process. We can never drop our guard.

Q: Is there any animosity among Big 12 presidents toward the four SWC schools who helped form the conference?

BOWEN: I think the answer is no. There has been tremendous turnover the last couple of years (with the presidents). Different people now are the heads of those institutions than when I sat down as interim president at Oklahoma State.

A number of the people weren’t even sitting at the table when we talked about reaching out to the Southwest Conference and going through it step by step. I don’t see the animosity. If you look at the selection of the commissioner (Steve Hatchell), it took a majority vote to select him. There had to be some people in the North that liked him. Exactly the same thing played out in the selection of the site for the home office. We had good proposals from several cities, and we looked at them. We did not let Steve Hatchell make that decision. There was a perception that he wanted to stay in Dallas. Even after we agreed Dallas was the place, we had a couple of choices there, and we did not let him make that decision. We’ve pretty well controlled it every step, and we’ve done it as a team.

Q: What were the dynamics behind the formation of the Big 12?

BOWEN: I think the Big Eight knew that they definitely had to be bigger. And the Southwest Conference was the obvious one. In fact, they talked about a Big 16. They talked at one time about a Big 14. When it finally came down to a Big 12, it was driven by a television contract and ABC’s desire to pick up the four most competitive teams — from a TV standpoint — down here.

Q: The reaction to A&M, and especially the Aggie Band, was really positive at the Iowa State football game. Do you feel like the Big 12 is a great way to spread the word about A&M?

BOWEN: We got a preview last year at Colorado. The fans are different in Iowa than they are in Colorado. The people were on their feet clapping for the Band, and the same thing happened at Colorado. And Colorado, that’s a tough crowd. They’re pretty aggressive. When the Band stepped off, they booed. But then they said, ‘Wait a minute.’ And they were on their feet clapping and cheering. The Band does that to people.

Q: You see to enjoy going to A&M athletic events. Have you always been a big sports fan?

BOWEN: Yeah, I really like it. If I thought we had compliance problems, I’d be their worse enemy over there. I just don’t think you can be honest with yourself and your university to look the other way and allow things like that to happen. But I enjoy it because of I’m comfortable with what I hear from the head coaches, the athletic director and the assistant coaches as well. They’re concerned for the young people, and they’re concerned for compliance. They know their position at the university. Our head coaches don’t think they’re bigger than life. That’s not always the case at some universities. I like being around people like that.

If we didn’t have that attitude among the people over there, you wouldn’t see me enjoying it as much as I do.

Q: Where do you want the A&M athletic department to be in five years?

BOWEN: What we’ve got is a program, by any standards, that is outstanding. They pay their own way and take care of their business. Wally Groff watches his money carefully. He knows how to invest in his facilities to protect them. He has a real good sense for Title IX, and gender equity is a high priority for him. And I really like all that, so I don’t see any of those things as problems.

I could be perfectly happy five years from now if our level of competition is essentially unchanged. But I think you’re going to see a much stronger basketball program. You get the Reed Arena and you get the ability to recruit athletes who want to play in the Big Eight kind of environment and get the national visibility those programs get. Our men’s basketball program is going to come up to snuff. That’s going to happen naturally. If it doesn’t, well, I’ll be disappointed. But the world won’t come to an end. The basic enterprise is going to be just as good then as it is now.

I think you’re going to see some of the minor sports get better. Golf will get better; tennis will get better; track will get better. Softball has always been good.

Q: Is this a dream job for you as president of Texas A&M?

BOWEN: Yeah. I wake up every day surprised and marveling that I’m here. I get to live on campus. When I go for a walk, I’m walking through areas I walked as a student. When I walk by Sully’s statue, that thing has been here ever since I’ve been here. That’s too good to be true.

You meet so many people who love this university. And there is so much support for this university and what it stands for, that you can’t help but be happy to be around it.