The first thing you notice when Tyson Gentry's press conference begins Thursday afternoon, of course, is the wheelchair. It's right there like an attachment to him and a constant reminder that this young man's life is radically changed, probably forever.

The next thing you notice are Tyson's spindly legs. He was never thick of build or overly muscular even while earning respect of his teammates as an Ohio State football walk-on, but these are not the legs of a kid who was a superb all-around athlete at Sandusky (Ohio) Perkins High School and that were once strong enough to handle the duties as the backup punter for the Buckeyes.

The next thing you notice about Tyson is the scar on the front of his neck that serves as a reminder of the major surgery he had after he broke the fourth vertabra on the practice field April 14 and lay motionless for what seemed like an eternity to his parents, who were watching their son try his hand at wide receiver during a spring scrimmage.

He looks wan, weak. You feel weird, cold even, for observing a fellow human being the way a car owner assesses the damaged fender after a collision.

Then something wonderful happens: Tyson and his family answer reporters fumbling for appropriate questions to ask and you witness the unbelievable resolve emanating from a physically broken yet undeterred young man, his sister and his parents.

You watch a college kid who just turned 21 on July 20 handle life-probing issues better than you could ever imagine if you were the one in that godforsaken contraption. He smiles several times, even makes a joke about his weight. He never for a second displays a shred of self pity.

You hear him recount what it was like to lose the use of his limbs – Tyson can now maneuver his right arm with some success hand and has limited up and down movement in his left – on a freak play and yet talk encouragingly about his improving condition. He even puts some perspective on the situation by telling those in the room he met others in worse states of paralysis while stuck in Dodd Hall, the school's rehabilitation center.

You see a glint in his eye when he talks about his love for school, football and his teammates. You see his parents, Bob and Gloria, gulping a bit and welling up whenever he tries to describe the pain and hardship he has endured to this point. You wonder what it must be like for a parent to see their child going through that kind of hurt and suffering, both physically and emotionally.

But before you break down at that thought, Tyson has revitalized your spirit again, saying he never once asked God "Why me?" and could recall only two moments in three-and-a-half months of potential anguish where he broke down into tears of disconsolation.

His sister, Ashley, appears to be a large source of that strength. At 22 and recently graduated she has committed to venture out into her adult life with Tyson as a roommate in her Columbus apartment. Her next weeks, months and years are going to be rife with helping a loved one handle very basic chores, yet, she too, sounds poised and wise beyond her years when asked about the situation. (Tyson's oldest sibling, his sister Natalie, is a 2003 graduate of OSU and did not attend the press conference.)

You stand in the back of a newly minted locker room that is just one of the many impressive accoutrements for more than a hundred student-athletes who play a sometimes brutal game that offers no guarantees of avoiding irreparable harm. No matter how big-time a college football program can be it still can't make the promise that every player is immune to a debilitating injury.

You stand no more than 2 feet behind a highly accomplished head coach who is listening intently to every word his former player is uttering, thanking reporters for asking good questions and smiling fatherly when Tyson speaks of his "Buckeye family" and the tremendous support he has received.

Jim Tressel has stressed the importance of family and togetherness since the day he was announced Ohio State's head coach in 2001 and he knows it is paying off now in a most dire time. Tyson smiles when asked about his recent birthday and being serenaded by his teammates. He said he received hundreds of letters a day from well-wishers in the weeks following his injury and the total number of cards has now reached more than 2,000, including about 500 for his birthday.

"It's really blown me away," he said of the support.

You are reminded that this type of injury – in Tyson's case a C-4 fracture that required a pair of surgeries and threatens to keep him from walking ever again – is more than just an inability to compel body parts to move, as horrible as that alone sounds. It's about long, arduous rehab sessions, atrophied muscles, infections, bed sores, loss of weight, grief, sweat and tears. Tyson was listed 6-2 and a svelte 165 pounds in OSU's spring prospectus but he said he was about 175 pounds at the time of the injury. He's now a wispy 150 thanks to being on an IV for a full month and hiving to ingest loads of antibiotics that all but killed his appetite. He also endured a urinary tract infection and a staph infection on his back.

Through all this doctors are ever careful in this litigious and sometimes dank society of offering any real form of encouragement. They stick to pointing out all that has gone wrong and may still go wrong and tell patients like Tyson that anything they are able to recoup from the bodies should be considered gravy.

You wonder what it must be like to deal with such prognoses and assume a fighter like Tyson must simply block them out. You know now how important it is for him to have wonderful, loving parents who will put energy they didn't even know they had into encouraging their son. You realize how much it must mean to him that a teammate like Ryan Pretorius has come over to see him every day possible. You know at least some of those cards and letters have been read to him and must sustain him when he doesn't feel like tackling the biggest challenge, by far, of his life.

You see Tyson's family holding hands and paying attention to his every word during the press conference and you know there is no quit in the whole group.

"You just continue to be moved by the strength of the family, and the togetherness of the family unit of the Gentrys is incredible," Tressel said. "Just to see Tyson's perspective and his glow. He's had that smile since he came here to Ohio State."

"It almost just seems like this is something I had to do," Tyson says, making the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

Tyson came to Ohio State, where his father played defensive back on the great teams of 1973-75, knowing there were no guarantees of anything other than he would be termed a "preferred walk-on." He doesn't feel that anyone needs to apologize to him or explain his new fate.

Still, Tressel, who saw a player die on the field in the first game he ever served as a head coach, at Youngstown State, said it's hard to describe the sinking feeling a coach has at such a moment.

"It's a risky thing," he said of football. "Just like when we talk to our children when they get behind that wheel, you say, `Hey, it's risky. And when you go to that place that serve alcohol, it's risky.'

"Now, do you sit there and think about it constantly as a player, that it's risky, every time you line up? Probably not. That would probably retard your ability to play the game. But as a coach you think about it when you see collisions, when you see somebody in pain, that type of thing. It is part of the game and injuries are part of the game, and as Tyson said, that wasn't even a collision. But falls, funny falls, are part of the game.

"Adversity does occur, and how you go about it is everything. His demonstration of handling it has been a sense of strength for everyone around here."

You not only believe Tyson when he tells you he's going to do everything in his power to continue to regain movement, you'd bet the ranch he will get his degree from Ohio State with a double-major of psychology and speech pathology. You can even imagine the dreamy day when Tyson is able to somehow amble on his own to midfield of a packed-in Ohio Stadium and has the strength to raise his arm for a full minute and turn to acknowledge the thunderous roar of applause bellowing from the stands.

"Of course I have a goal of walking again," Tyson said. "So I have pictured it. I don't think I can comprehend what it would be like emotionally to do that."

He'd be standing not far from the very place where his world was turned upside down, where his quest to help the Buckeyes win a game ended before he could leave his own small mark – and he'd be smiling broadly, soaking in a well-earned moment he and his family would never, ever forget.

Man, would you love to see that.