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Columbus to be their franchise player, a future Hall of Fame running back who would help them end a four-year skid in which they won only 14 games and lost 50. Carter still cannot believe what hap- pened to him. He had one year of eligi- bility remaining after the 1994 season but with advice from coach Joe Paterno, he turned pro and graduated with a bach- elor's degree in marketing shortly after the draft. One of Carter's football strengths throughout high school and college was his durability. He remembers being hurt only twice: a knee injury before his senior year at Westerville South High School that forced him to miss part of the season and a hamstring pull late in 1993. The hamstring kept him out of the last two games of Penn State's regular season but not the Citrus Bowl, in which he led all rushers with 93 yards and two touchdowns on 19 carries in the Lions' 31-13 victory over Tennessee. Maybe it was anger of the Ohio football gods for Carter's defection to Penn State or maybe just bad luck, but from the time Carter hit the Bengals' preseason training camp at Wilmington College in southern Ohio, his pro career was thwart- ed by injury after injury. It started with a strained Achilles tendon in his right leg that left him on the sidelines for Cincinnati's first two preseason games in '95. The third preseason game at Detroit's Silverdome on Aug. 17 was doomsday for Carter. On his third professional carry, he planted his left foot in the artificial turf and started to cut right. He was hit high by Lions defensive tackle Robert Porchrer, but with his shoe stuck in the turf, his left knee buckled as he went down. At first, Carter did not think the injury was serious. "It didn't feel like it was a major thing," he recalled. "I had a couple of good runs and thought, 'I'm playing against Barry Sanders and I'm playing in the league now. This is what I wanted to do and I've probably made it.' When that play hap- pened, I got up and was asked if I was OK, and said 'yeah' and walked off to the sideline. They asked me if I wanted to go back into the game, and I said, 'It just doesn't feel right.' And they said, 'Just to be safe, let's ice it. We'll treat it tomorrow and get ready for next week.' As the game went on, my knee swelled up. I'd had in- juries before and I thought the swelling would go away." Carter had an MRI the next day, and when he returned to the Bengals' training facility, he was stunned by the diagnosis. "There were all the blank stares, and I asked what was wrong," he said. "They told me I had torn my ACL. I couldn't believe it. I was walking around and they didn't understand how I could be walking with my knee. I was in tears. I had finally made it, and just like, that my rookie year was cut short." Carter had surgery and went into rehab, but he would never regain the form that made him the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy in 1994. Although he began the '96 season as the Bengals' starting tailback, he was soon moved to a backup role behind journeyman Garrison Hearst. However, in 91 carries he did manage to score eight touchdowns, the highest single-season total of his NFL career. The next year, Carter shared the starting slot with rookie Corey Dillon, starting 10 of the Bengals' 16 games. That turned out to be his best year, as he finished with 464 yards and seven touchdowns on 128 rushes. But the injuries continued, and Carter would have only five more touch- downs in the next five years. In the 1998 season opener against Ten- nessee, Carter fractured his wrist and missed the rest of the year. In his last game for Cincinnati, on Sept. 26, 1999, against, coincidentally, the Carolina Pan- thers, he dislocated his right kneecap. He reinjured the kneecap in a workout six months later and was released by the Ben- gals in June 2000. Despite all those injuries, Carter still felt he could beat the odds. He spent one season with Washington and two with New Orleans, but his role was limited and by 2004 he was out of the league. At this point, Carter was not sure what he wanted to do. Almost from his start with the Bengals, he had invested his money conservatively and could have lived comfortably on his pro football earnings. But he wasn't content to live a life of leisure. "A lot of athletes want to be entrepre- neurs. We always want to own something that's ours, and that was my final goal," Carter said. "I knew I wanted to do some- heirs is an unlikely pairing, ex- cept for all the ways that it makes perfect sense. They met as student-athletes at Penn State, competing during the same season in very different ver- sions of the game of football. Tim Shaw was the gridiron star; Paul Omekanda was a soccer standout. Shaw is white, Omekanda's black. And yet they had much in common: Both were born overseas – Shaw in England, Omekanda in Morocco – before their families settled in Michigan. Both made their mark on the field as rugged defensive players. And both talk of how their faith plays a huge role in their lives. "I always like to remind him," Omekanda says with a laugh, "that in the Bible, Paul and Timothy did hang out together." The modern-day friendship of this particular Paul and Tim is inspira- tional in its own right. Shaw, of course, is the former Penn State and NFL linebacker who in August an- T Foundation fights ALS while saluting Shaw's legacy

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