You do not believe Delone Carter, not yet. Because you cannot believe what you cannot see, and you cannot see any of Delone Carter, at least not the parts that might make you believe.

All you can see is the physical proof of his own belief – the 5-foot-10, 214 pound frame with arms that burst from underneath his shoulder pads and legs that his trainer compared to a lion’s.

All you can see are the smiles and spoken assurances that his dislocated right hip is fine. That he can be Syracuse’s running back this season. That he is worth believing in again.

‘I can’t be no more confident than I am right now,’ the redshirt sophomore said.

Because he believes he is healthy. And not just healthy, but stronger and faster and smarter and more mature than he ever was before he got hurt.

Better than the player he was in 2005, when he put up arcade-game numbers (2,788 rushing yards and 49 touchdowns) at Copley High School near Akron and won Ohio’s Mr. Football award. Better than the player he was in 2006, when he led the Orange in rushing as a freshman. Better than he was during spring practice in 2007, when he was the No. 1 running back heading into the spring game.

So why not believe?

Because he hasn’t played in a game since November 2006. Because he wasn’t allowed to hit during spring practice this year. Because he split time with sophomore Doug Hogue and senior Curtis Brinkley in training camp.

And there’s that whole thing with the hip.

That is the quandary, the reason it becomes difficult to believe. You might believe that this holds him back.

But Carter thinks this is why you should believe in him in the first place.

‘I feel like,’ Carter said, ‘I had to have something special about me to make it back from this injury.’

***

April Carter-White went to the store one day in March day two years ago, shopping on a Saturday with her mother. They talked about Delone, her son.

‘We just said that it was such a blessing,’ April said, ‘that Delone had played football for so long and hadn’t got injured.’

When she came home, Syracuse trainer Denny Kellington called.

Her son had bumped into a teammate in a 7-on-7 drill and fell on his hip. Kellington sprinted across the field when he saw Carter go down. The medical staff could see that the hip was dislocated, that the head of the femur came out of the socket. Dr. Wayne Eckhardt’s MRI that night would also show a fracture on the posterior side.

Six months before, Carter scored four touchdowns – two in overtime – to beat Wyoming. His teammates carried him off the Carrier Dome field afterward, hoisting the freshman as he smiled and lifted his helmet into the air.

Now he was carried off the field to have his hip relocated.

Surgery was scheduled for the next day at Crouse Hospital. Robert White, April’s husband, left the basketball game he was refereeing. He drove six hours with April and her mother to Syracuse.

Reggie Terry – then Syracuse’s associate director of athletics for football operations, now a front office figure with the Arizona Cardinals – led a prayer at their hotel before the family got a chance to see Delone.

‘So many people would ask God, ‘Why me?” White recalled Terry saying. ‘I say, ‘Why not me?”

White leaned forward on his living room couch as he spoke, surrounded by Delone’s pictures and plaques and trophies.

‘We all, probably collectively, went ‘Hmm. Damn. That’s profound,” White said. ‘It’s so simple, but it just slapped us all in the face. And, it was like from then on, I knew he would do what he needed to do to get back to where he wanted to be.’

***

So here he is, 15 months later, where he wanted to be. It’s Syracuse’s Media Day, a cloudy Monday morning, rain spitting here and there at the start.

Reporters start to crowd Carter almost as soon as he hits the field with the rest of the team. He sheds their questions as if they were linebackers bearing down on him in a bandbox. He answers, but with little sidesteps and short bursts into daylight.

But daylight only brings more questions.

How’s the hip? Better than ever.

What about competing with Brinkley and Hogue? They’re both good backs, but he combines the best of what each can do.

What can you learn about yourself this year? ‘I mean, I already know everything about myself. I don’t question nothing about myself.’

The questions keep coming. Why believe? People understand how serious these injuries are. They know about two-sport superstar Bo Jackson, his baseball and football careers derailed by a hip dislocation.

For the hips are the foundation, the base for blocking and tackling and swiveling and shaking. Football starts with the hips. Belief starts with the hips. And 15 months ago, Delone Carter’s right hip was wrecked.

Surgery could fix the fracture, and time could heal the dislocation. But when your hip is dislocated, time isn’t simple. Time means walking around Media Day last year on crutches. Time means watching helpless as the team limped through a 2-10 season. Time means visits from home, with April and Robert checking up on him in Syracuse when they could.

White said Delone once asked if he could transfer to Akron for a semester to take classes closer to home, to family. White shut him down, told him to stick it out.

That redshirt season weighed on Carter, the quiet kid who always had a smile and always had football. But the injury took away football and for a time, that took away his real smile.

‘There were times when I didn’t want to be around nobody, really didn’t want to talk, really didn’t want to open up,’ Carter said. ‘And I’m not a person that opens up a lot. So I was pretty much just being around, but in the background with a fake smile, so nobody could talk to me.

‘But you can’t hold all that in.

‘Finally I just told them like, ‘I am depressed. I do wish I could help.’ Watching that season was the hardest thing I could ever do. But talking to them and letting them know that made it better.

‘I wasn’t holding everything in, and depression wasn’t on me as much as I thought it would be.’

So Carter grew up. He bought into strength and conditioning coach Will Hicks’ rehab program. He built up the abs and glutes and lower back muscles that would protect his hip. Then he labored through hours of stretching drills and flexibility exercises, building his body back up to what it had been.

Carter buckled down to keep his grades up, to make sure he would have a chance to make people believe. He shuttled back and forth most of the summer between home in Fairlawn, Ohio – spending time with his family and his 11-month-old son Caden, running at his old Copley High stomping grounds – and classes in Syracuse.

As time passed, people started to notice: Carter would be back.

The medical staff knew he was on track last winter. Doug Hogue saw it when he lived with Carter during MAYmester, and watched his roommate pound the floor with push-ups.

That time is now, starting at Media Day, trying to show something with words that only actions can prove.

The Orange took team photos, most of the crowd dispersed, and Carter got a chance to talk about things besides his hip’s health. Like how Dan Boarman, his high school coach, called him ‘kind and gentle.’ Or how his family helped him mature, how his faith helped him grow. Or what he can prove this season.

‘I think just to show that with hard work and dedication and faith, you can get through anything,’ he said.

***

Two weeks later, Delone Carter shuffled off after practice, his confidence sheathed beneath fatigue. Sometimes he smiled when he spoke. Sometimes he sighed.

‘I’m tired right now,’ he said.

It’s easy to seem humble during the grind of two-a-days, his first real practices since that spring, since he tumbled to the ground and everything changed.

He’s dinged and bruised right now, his hamstring tweaked, his chin stitched up. But the hip is fine. It’s been pounded, but it’s OK. Carter still stretches it out in his spare time, rotating it, keeping it loose. Sometimes, when the weather is overcast, it feels funny.

He still does not know if he will start. He does not know how the coaches plan to use him. He does not know what he needs to show them.

He can only present who he is to them, the package of power and shiftiness and vision that he says is better than before.

His favorite Bible verse, Philippians 4:13, reads ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.’

See, Carter believes. Do you?

‘Nobody’s gonna stop talking,’ he said before camp started, ‘until they see, for real.’

ramccull@syr.edu

Published on August 27, 2008 at 12:00 pm