There is a place where the summer's ravages in college football have not reached. In my next-door neighbor's backyard, the police didn't show up once, no one threw up, there were no penal colony workouts, no one died.

Chris Daniels' last summer before college passed without incident. Every so often, he would gather up a friend, set up a couple of tennis shoes a few yards apart in the yard and run shuttle drills around them. On other days, he would lift weights alone, armed with only a sheet of paper instructing him on his summer workouts.

It was an honor, not a risk, to put his body on the line to play in two high school all-star games. Through it all, this 18-year-old all-conference linebacker in suburban Kansas City was the family's designated lawn-mower.

Isn't that the way it's supposed to be?

Maybe we've forgotten that Daniels' simple summer is like that of thousands of teen-agers shipping off to their first college camp. His step dad, Jim Lippert, could be seen loading up the SUV Friday morning. Jim played small-college ball and once went to the camp with the Philadelphia Eagles. For the life of him, he can't remember who the coach was back then.

"Before Vermeil," Jim said as he prepared to drive Chris to college. "I've got three hours to figure it out."

Sometime Friday, the everyman offseason ended. Daniels, a 6-foot-2, 220-pound freshman linebacker, reported to Division I-AA Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. The rite of passage would begin with a bag full of energy bars and hope that roster depletion would give him a chance to play right away.

Daniels has no scholarship, because Drake doesn't offer them. The National Honor Society member will have half his school costs covered by academic scholarships. A wry smile crossed his face when asked about the news of the summer, news that seems light years away from his backyard in eastern Kansas.

Korey Stringer?

"I was kind of disappointed, actually," Daniels said. "They've got to be smarter than that. He's been in the NFL for six years! He's gotta know his limits. He's not going to lose his spot."

Kids with their hands out and boosters' will to grease them?

"Some people need the money, you know?" he said. "Personally, I have higher moral standards."

Daniels' story of innocence is certainly not unique. But sometimes we need to be reminded that there is a huge sub-culture beneath the one we see on television each Saturday. Or, in the case of current commerce, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, too.

Daniels' goals are as simple. He wants to play, obviously. He also wants to graduate with a 3.5 grade-point average. If that's the case, his grades will have to slip. His high school GPA was 4.26, a number that included 20 hours of college prep work.

It's just as well that Drake is now home. With little need for tutors, Daniels would have never made it at Minnesota.

There are apprehensions that go beyond anxiety over competing at a new level. The first buds of homesickness were poking through the soil.

"I really liked high school," Daniels said. "I knew everybody in the office. I knew all my teachers. I liked that a lot."

Now it's onto a world that, on a different level, is surrounded by barroom brawls, charges filed by girlfriends and $100 handshakes. For the record, Daniels isn't the violent type. He doesn't have a girlfriend, and his hearty, damn-glad-to-meet-ya handshake would bring Schwarzenegger to his knees.

Besides, we're talking Des Moines here, not South Florida. One regret is that the Drake assistant who recruited him, Rock Bellatoni, has moved on to Eastern Illinois.

"He was the coolest guy," Daniels said. "He genuinely cared, he was honest. He came and watched me wrestle. He asked me what music I listen to. I listen to everything. I listen to country. He said, 'It makes my teeth hurt.'"

But even at this level, money talks. Bellatoni did what any coach would do, took a better job during the summer. But when contacted Friday morning, he remembered the quiet kid from Overland Park, Kan.

"That's the tough part of the job, when you develop a relationship with these kids," Bellatoni said. "He might get thrown right into the fire at Drake. Talking to the coaches up there, they're counting on him this year. I think he'll have a great year."

Daniels' hero is Brock Olivo, a special teams player for the Detroit Lions. Olivo, Missouri's leading career rusher, once ran out of gas, and rather than be late for practice, he pushed his car to the Tigers' football complex.

"Is it true," Chris asked, "that he was cut from the 49ers after he beat Steve Young in some of their preseason workouts?"

We don't know. It doesn't matter as we say goodbye to summer. In a way, we're glad it's over, considering the negative headlines in the offseason. In a way, we want to chuck it all and buy Drake season tickets.

Talk about your reality programming. It's still all wide eyes and urban legends to Daniels. Soon, he will learn the ways of the world while reminding us what the college game is about. Just check his major when he hands his information sheet in to Drake sports information.

Education.