By Bill KochGoBEARCATS.comLast November, shortly after Isaiah Pead was involved in a car accident that almost claimed his life, long-time University of Cincinnati trainer Bob Mangine and his wife, Marsha, were at his bedside at Grant Memorial Hospital in Columbus to offer their support and present Pead with a red UC jersey bearing his No. 23.What they found was the same Isaiah Pead that Mangine remembered from Pead's playing days at UC, with the same positive outlook and determination even at such an early stage of his recovery. It was a good sign."He was very much still in that acute trauma phase," Mangine said, "but he was upbeat. That was the surprising thing. Even though he was in pain, he was upbeat. His message was that I'm getting over this and I'm moving forward. I love life. I've got a child. I want to see my child grow up and be successful. For what he went through he was very positive."Nearly 10 months later, Pead remains optimistic as he focuses on making the most of his new life, even though he has to carry on without his left leg, which was severed in the accident."My life has changed," Pead said during a recent telephone interview, "my tangible life. But my outlook on life, no, because I've always been a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. I have a missing leg, but there's nothing else wrong with my health. It's still the same as it was before the accident. My body is still freakishly crazy, the way it was before the accident. I just don't have a leg. That's a message that God was telling me, that me and football have to part ways. For whatever reason it is I don't know, but I strongly believe that. I just put my trust in God. I've got a strong faith."Pead, who will be honored at Nippert Stadium on Thursday night before UC's season opener vs. Austin Peay, is the third-leading rusher in UC history.Like most young football players who grow up in Columbus, he dreamed of playing for Ohio State. When that didn't happen he accepted a scholarship from UC, then proceeded to show the Buckeyes what they were missing. He gained 3,288 yards in his four-year career, leaving him behind only Reggie Taylor (4,242 yards from 1983-86) and DeMarco McCleskey (3,487 yards from 1998-02) on UC's career rushing list. Pead's 6.03 yards per carry surpasses both of them.A running back who played at UC from 2008 to 2011, Pead was a first-team all-Big East selection in 2011. He had 11 100-yard games for the Bearcats and scored 27 rushing touchdowns. His best game was against Rutgers in 2010 when he ran for 213 yards, but the one he remembers most fondly was a 175-yard performance in 2009 at Nippert Stadium against West Virginia."That was the first game I ever started, which was my sophomore year," Pead said. "That was sweet. I'm in a room right now and my old jersey is hanging up on the wall. I'm looking it right now. UC is always in my heart, man."Pead, who still lives in the Columbus area, succeeded on the field with a combination of dazzling speed and devastating moves in a spread offense that suited him perfectly."The greatest thing about Isaiah was that he had very elusive hips and very elusive speed," said Tim Hinton, who currently works as a special assistant to head coach Urban Meyer at Ohio State. Hinton recruited Pead for UC while he was the Bearcats' running backs coach from 2004 to 2009."When I saw him run in high school track meets and I saw what he was able to do as far as his acceleration and his ability to cut and plant, I knew we had work to do," Hinton said. "I was afraid he was going to go to West Virginia. That's when Rich Rodriguez was there and they had a lot of those kind of guys on their roster. He was being heavily recruited by them and he was always waiting for the Ohio State offer, so I was like, we've got to get in there and go get this guy because he will be tremendously dynamic in the spread offense. He's exactly what we were looking for in that area."During the recruiting process, Hinton learned something else about Pead that made him an even more desirable recruit. And it had nothing to do with football."He lived with his grandma and grandpa," Hinton said. "His mom was there too. His grandma and grandpa had adopted a special needs child. He was in a wheelchair and needed to have daily care. From my years of coaching, I always knew that the kids who grew up and constantly had to be around a family with a special needs child had a certain humility to them and dignity to them that said life is bigger than me."The game of football was not as hard as what they would go through every day just to live life. Watching (Pead) interact with him, how he felt about him, how he dealt with him, told me this guy would be very grounded to be successful in college."But there was nothing humble about Pead when it came to football. He was good and he knew it. He was a favorite among the reporters who covered the Bearcats on a regular basis because of his playful boastfulness. He would make a brash statement now and again, but it was all in fun. And besides, he backed up what he said with his play on the field.The St. Louis Rams drafted Pead in the second round of the 2012 National Football League draft, but he was never able to match the success he had in college. In 2013 he served a four-game suspension for violating the league's substance-abuse policy. Then he tore his left ACL in 2014 while returning a kickoff during a pre-season game. He had a brief stint with the Pittsburgh Steelers and then with the Miami Dolphins, but didn't stick with either team. In 30 NFL games, he carried the ball 27 times for 100 yards, a 3.7-yard average with no touchdowns.Pead's positive attitude in the face of such overwhelming adversity didn't surprise Mangine. Trainers sometimes get closer to players than their coaches. They see them at their most vulnerable, encourage them after injuries and help them get back in the game. Mangine had that kind of relationship with Pead during one of the most successful periods in UC football history."He was a great kid to work with," Mangine said. "He had some injuries, so we really started to work on how to handle staying healthy. He was very, very tuned into how to stay healthy and how to preform at a high level, so we got to spend time together in the training room and actually some time with each other outside the training room. When you have an injury, you go through the same stages of having to handle someone passing away – the grief, the anger, and then you finally get to the acceptance."Pead, 27, is so mature and so full of life, Mangine said, that he was able to progress through the steps quickly."We've kept in touch after the accident mostly by phone," Mangine said. "He wasn't gonna be slowed down. He's already started a business. He's gotten settled in with his son and we talked quite a bit about him going back to school, finishing up in school. I think he's got a well-laid plan."Don't be misled, though. Pead is engaged in a difficult struggle. In addition to the severed left leg, the accident also tore up his right knee to the point where he had to have it reconstructed. Between both legs, he has undergone eight surgeries."I was doing therapy for maybe the first four months," Pead said. "I lost one leg and I tore up the other one, so I was rehabbing that. And then I started working on my prosthetic. My knee was so strong that they stopped sending me to rehab, but I'm still recovering. My knee still feels tight and aches. I just don't go to therapy."Because his right knee still aches, he gets tired as he learns to master walking on the prosthetic. The simple act of getting up and going to the bathroom, he said, looms as a complex task."That's when my competitiveness kind of just takes over," Pead said. "It's a competition just walking around. When you're thinking about it, it's like, 'Man, I've got to get up, I've got to put my leg on, I've got to put my shoe on my leg.' I have to keep a bottle of hand sanitizer with me because that's how you slip the leg on and off."One of the worst aspects of Pead's ordeal and the toughest for him to come to grips with is not being able to remember what happened during the accident that occurred in the early morning hours of Nov. 12. All he knows is what his former UC teammate Wesley Richardson, who was in the car with him and escaped with no serious injuries, has told him. The Cadillac that Pead was driving on I-640 hit a bump in the road. Pead lost control and the car hit a guardrail, which entered the car through the driver's side and pinned his legs behind him."Mostly I had to be told about it because I didn't know," Pead said. "I had a concussion so I blacked out. I can't really explain it. All I know is I woke up in the hospital and I didn't know what happened. Wesley never blacked out so he's telling me what happened, but this is all after I blacked out. I have flashes of right before the accident. But the actual accident I don't remember nothing about it."You can't explain it. It almost seems unfair. (You think) at least you could have done something for yourself, just something. You can't just wake up with a missing leg. I wanted some type of explanation. Something. It's an empty space. It is what it is though. I just felt it was unfair."Through it all, Pead receives inspiration from his baby son, Deuce, who was born a week before the accident."He's been my hero," Pead said. "I don't even know how else to put it. His mom (Ruby Bowman) goes to work and I sit here with him every day. It's been a blessing in disguise. If I was still playing ball I would only be here for half of these moments, let alone all of them."Pead plans to walk onto the Nippert Stadium turf Thursday night using his prosthetic leg. He's adamant about not using crutches because he wants fans to remember him as the athlete he was in his prime even as he basks in those memories himself and strides confidently into the future."I won't feel anything but love and memories and emotions," Pead said. "I'm going to have so much going through me that I'll be speechless. It'll be all emotions."Bill Koch covered UC athletics for 27 years – 15 at The Cincinnati Post and 12 at The Cincinnati Enquirer – before joining the staff of GoBearcats.com in January, 2015.