Team Garnier perseveres, despite the stacked deck

Yamileth Garnier always wanted to see snow.

She was 26 in 1978, carefree, working for the Costa Rican government in the immigration department. Someone suggested Boston. Go for a month. Get your freeze on.

Garnier may have to leave OSU if he doesn't score a scholarship. (Provided to SportsLine)

That was her first mistake. The number of Costa Rican women in their prime longing to visit the frigid Northeast could barely fill a phone booth.

Even fewer time it this badly. Snow? Not only did she see it, she was trapped by it. Yamileth arrived around the time of infamous Blizzard of '78 that dumped 27 inches on the city. Slush, though, was the least of her worries.

She met Juan Ramon. That was her second mistake. The dashing Nicaraguan swept her off her feet. They quickly got married and Yamileth got pregnant. It was 1981.

Then one day Juan said he wanted her to get an abortion.

"I say, 'No, that's not the way my family raised me,'" Yamileth said in heavily accented English. "We can enjoy our life with the baby.

"He almost killed me."

There was abuse, Yamileth said. Juan eventually left, leaving behind a son and his first name. Little Juan was five months old when dad walked out of his life.

A single mother living half a world away from friends and family, with no prospects. That had to be the worst mistake, didn't it?

No, no, no. It turns out they weren't mistakes at all. Little Juan looking up at her wiped them all out. He has been a blessing, it turns out, from crib to college.

You have a special place in my heart, mother. There is no way I can keep going without your help. We are getting close to our goal. I know your mother would be proud of both of us.

The young, vibrant woman who came to the U.S. on a whim is now 55. By all accounts she lives near the poverty line, working three jobs, living in what she calls "the projects" on Peterborough Street in Boston.

They are a team more than ever, her and Juan. A struggling, wounded, fighting, dirt-poor team. She, the struggling mom sending what money she can to her son.

But where to send the money? There have been four schools in five years. Only a fraction of that has been spent on the football field.

Football is our national sport. It has inspired, and nearly ruined, Yamileth and her son.

Those are some of the reasons why Juan Garnier is CBS SportsLine.com's walk-on player of the year. In a football subculture that demands tremendous sacrifice, the Garniers might have made the biggest.

"I owe my life to her," Juan Garnier said of his mother. "She's amazing. I can't really express it, really, in words. When everyone didn't believe in me, she gave up her life to help me follow my dreams."

Those dreams come back to her in the mail.

"I wish I could send you some letters he gives me at Christmas," she says.

Instead, as you can see above, she starts reading them over the phone. She can't help it. The pride squeezes the exhaustion and hopelessness out of her voice.

Yamileth has been back to Costa Rica once in these 29 years. Two years ago her mother and sister died within three months of each other. It still bothers her that she could not get back to bury her mother Rosario. When the sister, Damaris, passed, one of her employers gave her the money to go home for a week.

She has to go now, she says. It's almost time to go to work again. When isn't it time for work again? Yamileth cleans houses, cares for a 94-year-old woman and works in a supermarket, sometimes until 2 a.m.

She has taken out a $55,000 loan to fund her now 25-year-old son's education, none of which has been covered by an athletic scholarship. Juan himself is in debt up to the top of his 6-foot-4, 315-pound frame in student loans. Ohio State is his fourth school since 2002.

The goal all along has been to become a Division I football player. Well, at least since Juan's junior year at Boston English High School. The finances and his lumpy body -- Juan was 400 pounds coming out of high school -- screamed for Team Garnier to let it go.

There were I-AA schools sniffing around that would take him. A free education. Take it! But Juan wanted the big time. Even when he sweated and hustled himself onto a scout team -- then actually played in the BCS title game -- the all-important scholarship never came.

• • •

The D-I dream has taken him to three big-time schools: Auburn in 2002-03, Alabama briefly in 2004 after a semester at a nearby junior college and now Ohio State. In the process, he has gone from practice fodder to prospect.

Just in time for what, exactly? It has been five years and the Garniers simply can't afford to keep chasing the dream.

From Boston to Buckeye

Juan has been in Columbus since January 2005. This fall was going to be his breakthrough season. He played in January's national championship game, for two plays on the extra-point unit, during the Buckeyes' 41-14 loss to Florida.

Mother watched on TV. She made the spring game in person. Yamileth's heart is bursting. She is reading over the phone from Juan's letters again:

Someday you won't have to work anymore. Mommy, we're getting close.

The national title game is a long way from Pop Warner football, which rejected young Juan because he was too big. The large, lovable kid played only two years of high school football in Boston. He was good for a raw, inexperienced, overweight teenager.

"We did a lot of water training with him," Everett High School coach John DiBiaso said. "He was so big, that his shins and ankles would be painful (from running).

"They'd have him in the pool attached to bungee chords. He went under a couple of times. I thought he was going to drown."

Kids teased Juan in the halls. By then he was pushing 400 pounds. He wasn't a gross blob. Just huge, ungainly.

Juan couldn't win. If he retaliated against the taunts, he was a bully. If he didn't, he was Shrek. A giant softie, uncomfortable in his own skin.

When mother and son came to register at Everett for his senior year, DiBiaso thought Juan was the father.

"He was not fat," DiBiaso said. "He was the biggest human being I had ever seen ... I thought, 'Holy Jesus, Look at this guy.'"

There weren't any shoulder pads to fit him. A New England Patriots equipment guy who worked with the school had to order 6XL pads and a special helmet.

Juan Garnier wasn't a great athlete at that point. Just a great conversation piece.

"Your typical high school kid wants to show you how much he can bench," said Boston University hockey strength coach Mike Boyle, who once worked with Garnier privately. "He was benching in the 400s."

That was about as impressive as Juan's passive personality. You're supposed to bench at least your body weight.

"If I worked with him 50 days, I don't know if there was one conversation during that time," Boyle said.

But just by playing, the kid intimidated.

DiBiaso tells a couple of stories:

"He hit a kid that first game, just grazed him. He buckled the kid, his knee snapped. When we watched it on film, the contact was minimal, but it looked like he got shot with a gun."

Against another opponent ...

"They had a guy try to dive at his legs the whole game. One of our coaches said, 'If he's going to do that to you, just belly flop him.

"After the first half the kid left the game, left the stadium and went home."

Went home?

"The kid didn't want to dive at his legs," DiBiaso said.

The coach made some calls. Tommy Tuberville gave the kid a shot at Auburn in 2002. No one really remembers him there now. It has been five years. But how could they forget? At that point Juan weighed 420 pounds, a giant at a major-college giant.

A couple of months later he was homesick and depressed, sporting a 1.1 GPA.

"At Auburn they told me I could die at 420," he said. "I went back home and started from scratch trying to find out, really, if I wanted to continue in football."

How could mother and son think about diet? They were living day to day. Carb overload was good. Growing up, Juan ate as much rice, beans and pork as his mother could make. When she didn't make those, he shoveled buffalo wings.

"There's a lot more to it," Juan said. "I have a lot of inner demons with depression. I had to battle that and I was failing school at the time. I got treatment for it. That was one of the reasons I left to try to regroup. I don't think I was ready to leave home."

Looking back, maybe the most significant thing that came out of Auburn was that his eligibility "clock" started ticking. The NCAA allows a five-year window for athletes to complete their four years of eligibility. Anything more requires a special waiver.

Normally, that BCS title game experience would have marked the end of those five years for Juan. But it is clear there is something else at work here. The NCAA has been more lenient in awarding hardship waivers under president Myles Brand. Even if it wasn't, this might be the no-brainer case of the century.

Everyone told me I would never make it to a Division I school. Because of your hard work I am at Ohio State University.

Yes, Ohio State was the place. Juan had always admired the program. After all his wanderings, he got right, got fit, called Buckeyes coaches himself. Former assistant John Hill and director of player development Stanley Jefferson, a former Buckeye walk-on himself, ran interference.

At that point, Juan hadn't played in a football game in four years.

In spring 2006, Juan says he made the honor roll at Ohio State with a 3.1 GPA. After working his way into the defensive line rotation last season, the on-field dream was being realized.

In April, the NCAA awarded him two extra years of eligibility based on a hardship appeal. If he plays through 2008, that would be seven years. That is believed to be one of the few times in NCAA history two extra years have been awarded. Juan would be 26.

Both Yamileth and Juan said it was based on his bout with depression and financial issues.

An NCAA spokesman explained in an e-mail:

"In this instance, the student-athlete was clearly denied the opportunity to participate for the first three years in college because of reasons beyond his or the institution's control ..."

You read that right. This mother and son ultimately might be saved by NCAA compassion.

Juan documented that he had seen a doctor for his depression while at Auburn. Are you surprised? The kid's father ran out on him. He has been dealing with weight issues for much of life. His saint of a mother is working herself to the bone to realize their shared dream.

"It's always been my mother and I, no father in the picture. He's never been there to help me and my mother out," he said.

"I think the NCAA gave me these two years to play football."

That's essentially what it would be, if Juan and his mother can hold out financially. Juan is on track to get his criminology degree in July. Ohio State hasn't offered a scholarship for the fall yet. So Garnier has been looking into transferring to Massachusetts or, more likely, Alabama. UMass recruited him out of high school. Former Ohio State staffer Todd Alles is now the director of football operations at Alabama.

Something must give soon. In the spring a couple of other walk-ons at Ohio State longer were given scholarships. Juan wasn't one of them and wasn't bitter.

"They've been there for four or five years," he said. "I've only been here for two years. It's hard to blame the coaches. It's a business."

So when is a break going to come? Maybe soon. There is no promise of a scholarship at 'Bama either, just better financial aid. With degree in hand, Juan says he will then pursue a law degree. That's inspiration, revenge, or both.

"My father has never been there to help me and my mother out," Juan said.

Yamileth chased her husband through the courts for years trying to extract child support. The last time she heard, Juan Ramon was in Florida, maybe afflicted with diabetes.

She once got a $12,000 lump payment, which equates to $480 for every year her son has been alive. That was it unless you consider the insult of a check she gets in the mail each month.

Eleven dollars.

"It's one of the reasons I want to become a lawyer," the son said.

Meanwhile, the mother's pride will never wear out. A degree is a certainty. Law school is a hope. Someday Juan might build her a house, far away from Peterborough Street.

For now, there are three jobs to work. Two rents to pay. Those are the only constants.

That and the snow. Every year, the snow.

"I went to Boston for a month," she said, "and I'm still here."