And so it wasn't surprising when the University of Texas defensive tackle was asked what he planned to do with the $4 million signing bonus he figures to bank as the first-round pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers and 19th player selected overall. He promised to invest a portion of the windfall moving his mother and the rest of their family into a new house.

Injuries limited Casey Hampton to portions of five seasons at Texas, but he still had 329 tackles, including 54 for losses.(Allsport)

Casey Hampton is a terrific tale of a prospect who should have been another crime statistic, but instead beat the overwhelming odds inherent to every hardscrabble inner-city neighborhood.

It remains to be seen if Hampton, a squat but powerful inside force who seems a perfect fit in the NFL's last remaining 3-4 defensive front, ever matures into an All-Pro performer. But at 23, Hampton certainly belongs on somebody's all-perseverance team, a fact that did not go unnoticed by a scouting staff that believes its players should reflect the city's proud blue-collar image.

"From what I understand about the fans up there, how much they admire the guys who play with heart and emotion and never cheat you effort-wise even on a single snap, they are going to love Casey Hampton," said Nick Voris, the football coach at Ball High School in Galveston. "The guy is the type of player who will do whatever it takes, buck whatever odds you throw at him to get the job done. Let me tell you, in football and if life, Casey is a survivor."

Raised in a single family home in the projects, his mother declining welfare support for herself and four children, Hampton had more than a few bouts with trouble during the evening hours in which adult supervision was absent, and some run-ins with the law.

Were it not for the bad aim of a gunman who burst into the apartment where he and best friend Brandon Ford were playing after seventh-grade classes one day, Hampton would have been dead.

The gunman, who had been chasing another man in what was believed to have been a drug deal gone bad, fired three shots at close range in the tiny apartment. Somehow none of the ricocheting bullets so much as grazed Hampton or Ford.

For the 13-year-old Hampton, the incident was a wake-up call, a brush with death that came complete with an imaginary street map directing him to the intersection of Straight and Narrow. One might have assumed Ford was similarly moved to unwavering righteousness but Hampton's old friend, a tight end at the University of Missouri, was arrested in November when the police found 50 pounds of marijuana at his off-campus apartment.

"All I know is when there are bullets flying in an apartment the size of a phone booth, and you get up and walk away from that, you feel like you've been given a second chance," Hampton said at the NFL combine workouts two months ago. "Man, if that (doesn't) scare you straight, then you are either crazy or beyond help. Lots of guys in the projects probably would have been proud of getting shot at like that, might have been bragging about it. Those guys are dead or in jail."

Hampton can recite by rote the kids with whom he grew up "whose names should have been written on diplomas but instead are chiseled on gravestones." Two of his older cousins are in Texas prisons, one for trafficking drugs and the other for murder.

In an environment rife with all kinds of temptation, Hampton suffered the occasional weak moment but never surrendered.

Hampton talks a lot about how he was saved and ignores the obvious -- he mostly saved himself.

Timid and wary, Hampton is transformed into engaging talking his family and passion for the game. Or how much he enjoyed volunteering at the Austin Children's Hospital during a college tenure he wasn't certain he would ever have but which Texas coach Mack Brown said "he deserved as much as anyone we've had here."

Four times he took the SAT, having stayed for hours after school for special preparatory courses, and finally achieved a score sufficient to make him eligible to play football. After Texas A&M deemed him an academic risk and reneged on a scholarship promise, Hampton sold himself to the staff at Texas, in part by pitching his track record for successfully hurdling every obstacle.

Hampton didn't have to make the sales pitch to the Steelers scouting staff.

Fire a game video into the tape machine and, despite a physique that is anything but a prototype for the kind of stature most personnel directors now want at defensive tackle, Hampton manages still to quickly rivet your attention.

Granted a medical redshirt in 1997 after an injury limited him to three games, Hampton played portions of five seasons and finished with 329 tackles, 54 for losses. The widebody authored a body of work on the football field that was made all the more notable because of the injuries he overcame.

Even at his campus workout for Steelers scouts last month, Hampton politely refused an invitation to skip some of the drills; the offer made because he was still rehabilitating a hamstring injury. With a slight limp, Hampton completed the session.

The Steelers knew they had their man to line up at nose tackle, a prospect that will permit the club to move Kimo von Oelhoffen to end in the 3-4, a player who might approximate the steadfast play former Pittsburgh nose tackle Joel Steed provided the club up until a few years ago.

It is, to be sure, the kind of feel-good story repeated every spring at draft time. Hampton is quick to point out, though, the story has a lot of chapters remaining.

"It only turns out right," he said, "if I make it so. And I definitely intend to do that. People keep saying I'm a survivor, and I like that label so much, it's kind of like a badge to me."