The quarterback is hopelessly confused; bodies are closing in,

options dwindling. A linebacker reading his eyes would see them

darting nervously, searching left and right. As time grows short

Craig Krenzel shuffles his feet, frustration building. Finally he

spots something. "Right there," he says. "Extra large."

From a set of metal shelves in a laboratory in the Tzagournis

Medical Research Facility at Ohio State's Comprehensive Cancer

Center, Krenzel snatches a box of latex exam gloves. He snaps a

glove on each hand and returns to his rolling chair at a sterile

counter, where small vials of frozen RNA await his attention.

Amid a flurry of activity he quietly resumes his small part in

the search to cure acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer that afflicts

one in 50,000 Americans and kills nearly 70% of those stricken.

Krenzel lives in two worlds. In one he's the quarterback of the

defending national champion Buckeyes, the fifth-year senior who

twice in the last month of the 2002 season led game-saving

fourth-quarter comebacks and who last January in the Fiesta Bowl

threw his 6'4", 225-pound body at Miami defenders so often that

he was the leading rusher in Ohio State's 31-24 double-overtime

victory. In the other world he is a 22-year-old molecular

genetics major with a 3.75 GPA and a staggering capacity for the

swift retention of complex information. "When you think of having

the physical attributes to compete at this level of college

football, coupled with the intellectual capacity to compete at

this level of medical research and study," says Dr. David

Schuller, executive director of Ohio State's James Cancer

Hospital, "you've brought it down to a very narrow subset of

people."

At almost any given time in his saturated life Krenzel is a

subset of one, different from everyone around him yet fitting in.

On a Monday evening in July he was directing receivers, running

backs, defensive backs and linebackers through the seven-on-seven

passing drills that are a staple of any college football team's

summer program. He blended seamlessly with the group--cursing

himself ("I suck!") and schooling the likes of still-developing

senior wideout Drew Carter ("You can't cut outside on the skinny

post, gotta get under")--and stayed until only a handful of

teammates remained, then dragged the footballs and the water

bottles inside. He was, of course, the only molecular genetics

major on the field.

Thirteen hours later Krenzel finished a weightlifting session at

the Woody Hayes Athletic Center and drove his small SUV to the

hospital, where he would spend three hours of the morning in

oncologist Michael Caligiuri's research lab. Working with

brilliant science nerds, Krenzel blended in there too. In the

spring 30 students, most of them graduate-level, interviewed for

research positions in Caligiuri's project; six were chosen.

Krenzel was, of course, the only football player in the room. "I

had never interviewed a football player before," says Caligiuri,

who has been selecting student researchers to work in his

leukemia project for a decade. "Craig not only has high

intelligence and a strong work ethic but also a remarkable degree

of humility and self-awareness of his talents and his

limitations. He is not caught up in who he is."

Who he is is what college sports craves: the athlete most likely

to stay out of jail, graduate and just maybe cure a disease. The

only knife he wields is a scalpel. (His shining image was

valuable to Ohio State this summer when the athletic program had

to defend its integrity against charges that sophomore running

back and Heisman candidate Maurice Clarett had gotten

preferential treatment for at least one exam, received improper

gifts and filed a misleading police report. Clarett was being

held out of preseason camp until issues regarding his eligibility

had been resolved.)

There are moments of hilarious disconnect between Krenzel's world

and that of his teammates. "Craig will leave schoolwork lying

around the apartment," says roommate Alex Stepanovich, a senior

and the Buckeyes' starting center. "I'll pick up a paper, and the

title will be a bunch of letters smashed together into words that

I wouldn't even try to pronounce."

Yet Krenzel also has the abiding respect of teammates for, among

other things, the toughness that allowed him to play every

meaningful minute of a 14-game national championship season. "I'm

so tired of saying, 'Man, you've got to get down on the ground,'"

says senior tight end Ben Hartsock, referring to Krenzel's

willingness to take hits in the open field.

The Ohio State offense was a running--and passing--joke in 2002,

scoring no more than two touchdowns in five of the last seven

games with a ground-based system that leaned heavily on Clarett

(who missed all or parts of five games with a shoulder injury).

Krenzel averaged a pedestrian 150.7 passing yards per game and

threw only 12 touchdown passes. (He also rushed for 368 yards.)

Yet without him there would have been no national title.

On Nov. 9 against Purdue at West Lafayette, Ind., facing

fourth-and-one and an eight-man jailbreak blitz, Krenzel lobbed a

perfectly timed 37-yard touchdown pass to wideout Michael Jenkins

to give the Buckeyes a 10-6 victory (sidebar). One week later, at

Illinois, he directed a touchdown drive in overtime for a 23-16

win. In the Fiesta Bowl he rose from a punishing fourth-quarter

hit by blitzing Miami linebacker Jonathan Vilma (story, page 78)

and delivered a game-saving fourth-and-14 strike to Jenkins on

the first possession of overtime. "You watch the guy on tape, and

you think he's pretty decent," says Purdue defensive coordinator

Brock Spack. "Then you play against him, and he's way better in

person."

When Krenzel wasn't rescuing the team from impending defeat, he

was acting as its emotional touchstone. "He's so calm, I think

he's a little weird," says Chris Gamble, the Buckeyes'

sensational flanker-defensive back. "He threw that pass to Mike

Jenkins at Purdue and just jogged off the field like he does it

every day." During the Fiesta Bowl, according to those who were

in the huddle with him, Krenzel broke the tension during TV

timeouts by cracking jokes. On Nov. 2, immediately after Ohio

State had rallied in the second half to dispatch outmanned

Minnesota 34-3 at Ohio Stadium, Krenzel went up to senior wideout

Chris Vance, whose brother, Percy Burton, had been shot to death

outside a Fort Myers, Fla., nightclub the night before. In the

afterglow of a bittersweet victory, Krenzel put his hands on

Vance's shoulder pads and told him, "If you need anything, I'm

here. Not just tonight. Anytime."

On a rainy summer afternoon, Debbie and Al Krenzel had time on

their hands. Al, 63, an Army veteran who served 16 months in

Vietnam, lost the accounting job he had for 26 years when his

company downsized last fall. Debbie works as a school bookkeeper

and gets most of the summer off. "Let's watch the Fiesta Bowl

again," Debbie said. Seated in the living room of their small

colonial house in Sterling Heights, Mich., 10 miles north of

downtown Detroit, the couple watched one more time as Ohio State

won its first outright national championship in 34 years. Again

the youngest of their three children rumbled recklessly for 81

yards on 19 carries and held the Buckeyes together in overtime.

Again Ohio State kept Miami out of the end zone with a climactic

goal line stand. When the tape finished, Debbie clicked off the

VCR and said to her husband, "What did we do right?"

If they figure that out, they should write a book. In addition to

Craig, the Krenzels' accomplished offspring include Brian, 26,

who played safety for four years at Duke, graduated last spring

from the University of Louisville School of Medicine and now is

an intern in orthopedic surgery at Duke University Medical

Center; and Krysten, 25, who teaches fourth grade in Sterling

Heights. "We always told the kids, 'Do anything you want, but put

your heart and soul into it. Do not just show up,'" Al says.

Craig was throwing a football in the gym one afternoon in 1995

before his freshman year at Ford High. He was a skinny 6-footer,

but there was something about his motion that intrigued Terry

Copacia, the new football coach. A former quarterback at Division

II Wayne State with a jones for teaching the arcane fundamentals

of quarterbacking, he started working with Craig, introducing him

to footwork drills that he practices to this day. Krenzel,

typically, threw himself into the lessons. Says Brian, "Terry

Copacia is a huge part of why Craig has achieved what he has."

Copacia was ready to play Krenzel in his sophomore year but met

resistance from a community that was accustomed to seeing seniors

in the starring roles. However, when Ford fell behind in the

season-opener against Brighton, which was led by future Michigan

quarterback Drew Henson, Copacia inserted Krenzel, who engineered

two scoring drives to bring Ford to within a missed field goal of

a comeback victory. "Right there," says Copacia, "you could see

he had something special."

Krenzel was getting most of the snaps by the end of the season,

after which Copacia made a crude four-minute highlight tape of

his quarterback. Having never coached a top recruit, he took the

video to Central Michigan assistant Tom Kearly, who watched one

minute and told Copacia, "Coach, he can play for us right now and

play four years." Satisfied, Copacia sent the tape to 30 colleges

and gave a copy to Brian Krenzel, who showed it to Duke assistant

and former NFL guard Joe DeLamielleure. "He was one of the best

high school players I'd ever seen," DeLamielleure says. "He was

hitting players in the chest, and they were dropping everything.

I remember saying, 'He'll go to Texas or Colorado or Michigan or

somewhere like that.'"

Michigan, just an hour down the road from Sterling Heights,

recruited Krenzel until his junior year, when Henson, a class

ahead, signed with the Wolverines. Michigan State came after

Krenzel hard, as did Boston College. But after visiting Columbus

in April of his junior year he committed to Ohio State, a

four-hour drive from his hometown. "Good school, good medical

school, good football program and just the right distance from

home, where Mom and Dad can make all the games but can't show up

on my doorstep unannounced," says Krenzel. "Plus, it just felt

right."

Krenzel redshirted his first year, in the fall of 1999, and was

buried in the depth chart the following season. In January 2001

Jim Tressel replaced John Cooper as coach, but Krenzel remained

third-string, behind senior Steve Bellisari and fellow sophomore

Scott McMullen. "It was obvious he had a great understanding of

football," says Joe Daniels, the quarterbacks coach under

Tressel, "but he needed reps throwing the ball. He was

inconsistent."

Though frustrated about his football career, Krenzel flourished

in the classroom. He had been interested in medicine since

childhood, but at Ohio State he upped the ante by choosing to

major in molecular genetics. "If a person just wants to get to

med school, they'll major in biology, not genetics," says

Adrienne Dorrance, an Ohio State graduate who supervises Krenzel

in the leukemia study. "To major in genetics you have to love

science, and you need a great desire to learn." Even fellow

premed football players like Hartsock were amazed at Krenzel's

classroom prowess. "We've been in a lot of the same classes, and

we have about the same GPA," says Hartsock, a biology major. "But

the joke is, he's spent about half the time getting there. He

just has this amazing ability to absorb and retain knowledge." In

the premed crucible of organic chemistry, Krenzel set the class

curve, often scoring higher than perfect on exams by nailing

bonus questions.

In the fall of 2001 a preseason thigh injury kept Krenzel a

distant third on the depth chart. "I was barely getting any reps

in practice," he recalls. The bye week on the Ohio State schedule

that year was Saturday, Oct. 20, and nearly two years earlier

Krysten had scheduled her wedding for that day so Craig could

attend without missing a game. But Sept. 11 changed so much,

including team schedules. The Buckeyes' Sept. 15 game against San

Diego State was moved to Oct. 20. Krenzel would have to miss

either the game or his sister's wedding. "Krysten was crushed

because Craig isn't just her brother, he's her buddy," says

Debbie.

Craig wrestled with his options and talked to teammates. In the

week before the wedding he got no first-team snaps in practice,

so on Wednesday he talked to Tressel. "He went into it with so

much class," says Tressel. "He was considerate of his teammates

and the coaching staff. When he asked me if he could go home, I

said, 'Go.' Let's face it, the fall of 2001 was not a time for

conventional thinking."

A month later Krenzel's career would turn dramatically. In the

early hours of Friday, Nov. 16, Bellisari, who was Krenzel's

roommate at the time and a close friend, was arrested for drunken

driving. Tressel suspended him for a game, and McMullen was

elevated to starter that weekend against Illinois, with Krenzel

his backup. McMullen struggled, and just before halftime Krenzel

got his chance.

Krenzel wound up completing 11 of 23 passes for 164 yards and a

touchdown. Though the Buckeyes lost 34-22, Krenzel's performance

was stunning given that he was thrown into the fire with

practically no previous game experience and few snaps in

practice. "A kid who learned without playing," says Tressel,

shaking his head in wonder. Says Krenzel, "People always hope for

an opportunity, but you have to be ready because, at least in my

case, there might not have been another one. I was mentally

ready. So I did some good things."

He did more of them the next week, in the regular-season finale,

leading Ohio State to a 26-20 victory over Michigan, the

Buckeyes' first win in Ann Arbor in 14 years. Although Bellisari

returned to play most of the Outback Bowl, Krenzel took his fresh

confidence into spring ball, won the starting job easily and

carried his momentum into the 2002 season.

On a recent afternoon Krenzel sat in a meeting room at the Ohio

State football complex, reliving part of the 2002 season at a

reporter's behest. His lab work was finished for the day, and a

tee time awaited. Krenzel turned to a computer and scrolled

through the season's tape catalog, selected the Fiesta Bowl

offense and found the fourth-and-14 completion to Jenkins that

kept the game alive. The play unspooled on the screen, Jenkins

exploding off the line then stopping abruptly 20 yards deep and

whirling to find the ball already nearing. In retrospect it was

an easy completion, except that the stakes were so high. "I knew

I had Mike one-on-one," says Krenzel. "He runs the comeback route

well, I throw it well, and we time it up pretty well. The corner

had no chance, really."

He talks a more assured football game than an outsider might

expect. After all, Krenzel is supposed to be the weak link in the

Buckeyes' offense. "If I was in a different system, where we

threw the ball 35 times a game for 3,000 yards," says Krenzel,

"with my athletic ability and my size I'd be one of those

quarterbacks everybody would be talking about now for the NFL,

instead of harping on my major and how smart I am. Don't get me

wrong--I'm extremely proud of what I've done in the classroom,

but as a quarterback I'm in the Ohio State system. And what

matters is where we are in January."

The load could shift this year. While Ohio State lost five

starters from the Big Ten's second-ranked defense, the entire

offense is back. "I expect us to throw more this year," says

Krenzel, "and I expect to be better." His degree requirements are

nearly all completed, so his course load will be lighter this

fall. Daniels says Krenzel called plays at the line of scrimmage

15% to 20% of the time in 2002 and expects that number to rise to

more than 30% this year.

Krenzel's football ambition does not stop with the 2003 season.

He intends to play in the NFL. The league will watch him closely,

the main areas of concern being his accuracy and mobility. "This

is obviously a critical year for him to be seriously considered,"

says Cincinnati Bengals scout John Garrett. "What we know about

him is that he has astute decision-making ability and he won a

national championship going into hostile environments. Those are

important traits."

The other half of his life, however, has been affected by the

work he has done this summer. Krenzel once presumed he would

follow his brother's path into orthopedic surgery. Now he isn't

so sure. Caligiuri's project, which seeks to understand how a

particular gene mutation causes the most common form of adult

leukemia, is cutting-edge, and Krenzel has become absorbed in it.

"One of the great things about being an oncologist," he says, "is

that you have the opportunity to offer patients hope when they're

facing the worst time in their life. It's an awesome

responsibility."

In the meeting room the hard drive of the computer hums and a

play is frozen on the screen. Nearby, coaches and players dart in

and out of doorways. "I'm blessed to have the ability to do the

things I do, to have a mind that works the way mine does," says

Krenzel. "Now, whether it's in the NFL or in medicine, or both

someday, I just have to figure out what I'm supposed to do with

it."

COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL O'NEILL

COLOR PHOTO: DAVID BERGMAN SCIENCE NERD? When not outthinking defenders, Krenzel simply outmuscled them while leading the Buckeyes to a 14-0 season.

COLOR PHOTO: MICHAEL CONROY/AP Krenzel read blitz...

COLOR PHOTO: MICHAEL CONROY/AP ...and hit Jenkins on the go.

TWO COLOR DIAGRAMS: DIAGRAMS BY JOE ZEFF

COLOR PHOTO: AL TIELEMANS HAPPY FEET Krenzel had the Buckeyes jumping after he directed them to their second straight win over Michigan.

COLOR PHOTO: JASON WISE DOUBLE PLAY Debbie and Al raised two sons, Brian (left) and Craig, who played major-college football and studied medicine.

COLOR PHOTO: MICHAEL O'NEILL SMOCK DRAFT Krenzel was the only quarterback chosen to work on a cutting-edge Ohio State leukemia research project.

How to Save a Perfect Season

A gutsy fourth-down play hinged on instant analysis and

reaction

Ohio State spent much of its 2002 season on the edge of

disaster, winning five games by six points or less and two more

in overtime. No single play better represents the

resourcefulness of the Buckeyes and quarterback Craig Krenzel

than his 37-yard touchdown pass to Michael Jenkins, on

fourth-and-one with 1:36 to play, that gave Ohio State a 10-6

victory at Purdue on Nov. 9. Here's how Krenzel describes the

sequence.

"We didn't huddle up. The play came in from the sideline. It was

King Right 64 Y Shallow Swap. King Right is the formation; 64 is

the blocking scheme, with five linemen and two backs protecting;

Y Shallow means the Y receiver--the tight end--runs a shallow

cross; and Swap means the flanker, Chris Gamble, runs a dig

[crossing] route and the split end, Mike Jenkins, runs a post. I

just called out the play at the line of scrimmage, because Purdue

doesn't know what King Right 64 means in our system. Then I used

hand signals for the patterns, because most teams use the same

terminology for receivers.

"When I looked at the defense I saw they'd be blitzing, because

the strong safety and linebackers were just about on the line of

scrimmage. Even the free safety was creeping up. That meant Chris

and Mike were getting one-on-one coverage on the outside.

"At the snap my first option was tight end Ben Hartsock on

something short for the first down. But the safety jumped Ben's

route. I had seen that the corner was playing inside technique

against Mike, which means he's walled off the inside part of the

field so Mike can't run a post. Mike read that too, so he gave

the guy a little inside move and ran a go pattern, straight up

the field. On the other side Chris Gamble saw what Mike was doing

and abandoned the dig route, because he didn't want to bring his

man into the middle of the field; he also ran straight up the

field. Purdue got some good pressure on me, but I had just enough

room to step up and get the ball out to Mike. The whole play was

an adjustment from the beginning." --T.L.

"If I was in a system where we threw the ball 35 times, people

would be talking about me for the NFL instead of focusing on my

major."