That time away from football proved extremely valuable to Spence's maturation. For one, he had to attend group rehab sessions as part of his penalty. One of the most vivid memories he had from that experience involved a young woman with a heroin addiction arriving high to a meeting. Spence had witnessed many troubling things before that point -- "I saw people who were a little older than me who looked like they were 70," he said -- but the image of that stoned lady sitting down to get help haunted him.

What was more reassuring was the way his parents reacted to his problem. Instead of bashing him, they took the approach that helped them deal with the troubled youths they encountered in their own jobs: They created a plan that included finding a new school, committing to graduating early and regaining a focus that would make Noah what Greg terms "a mature, humble adult."

Said Greg: "We had a three-hour meeting with Coach Meyer and [defensive line coach] Larry Johnson, and it was upsetting to hear. But I also didn't want to kill [Noah] while he was down. I didn't want to lose him. And I didn't want him to get reckless. He was 20 years old. He still had his whole life ahead of him.

Spence appealed the suspension in an effort to stay eligible at Ohio State. When that failed, Meyer asked Spence to meet with an old friend, Dean Hood, who was coaching at Eastern Kentucky at the time and had driven to Columbus to visit in early January. Meyer -- who declined to speak for this story, as did Larry Johnson -- thought EKU could be a good fit for Spence. After meeting with Hood for 45 minutes, Spence liked the idea so much that he enrolled at EKU two weeks later.

It wasn't just that Hood talked about building the defense around Spence's disruptive talents, or the fact that Hood told him that "we have the same drug counseling program that you had at Ohio State and we're going to beat this thing." Spence simply wanted to make everything right as soon as possible.

"It was hard for me to even be around my family during those first few months," Spence said. "We would talk on the phone, but I felt like I didn't want to see anybody until I did something right. As I started playing football again and getting good grades, I became more comfortable with them coming around."