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That is, after all, what the Jackson guys do. Three generations of Jackson men, as if by birthright, reported to work just after dawn, finished, hopefully, in time to beat the rush-hour traffic, cashed their modest paychecks on Friday afternoons and tried to stash away enough to perhaps afford a down payment on one of the city's nondescript brick row houses.

As lifers in the school district labor pool, they personified the term "blue collar," their aspirations limited by education, the prevailing social economics of the inner city and the reality that, if they did everything right, they might one day be trained as an electrician's helper.

So try to imagine, if you will, the nervous anticipation and high anxiety of Keith Jackson, a late-blossoming defensive lineman from tiny Cheyney University, as he attempted to fit in at the annual predraft combine workouts last weekend. It was, after all, the opportunity for this Jackson to have a career knocking down quarterbacks instead of one setting up chairs for a school assembly.

"I'm just trying to look," Jackson said nervously, "like I belong here, you know? I think I do, but I'm not sure yet what everyone else thinks."

While his name is pretty famous, this Keith Jackson certainly isn't. Forgetting even the legendary broadcaster ("Whoa, Nellie!"), former NFL standout tight end Keith Jackson spent a good portion of his career with the Eagles. So the young Cheyney defensive lineman probably won't ever qualify even as the most famous one in his hometown.

That will matter little to Jackson, of course, if he just realizes the opportunity to get into an NFL training camp this summer.

To suggest the trek from Philadelphia to Indianapolis was far longer than Jackson's twice-delayed flight here is the stuff of incredible understatement. He is three-quarters Native American, with an Indian mother and an African-American father, and a flood of insults by classmates contributed to him flunking out of Roxborough High School after his sophomore year. His next school, Philadelphia Regional, didn't even have a team.

At Cheyney, he spent his first season as a Proposition 48 casualty and thought several times about quitting college to help his mother, Lena, support the family. To get to school, he walked about 2½ miles each way, because he couldn't afford a car or public transportation.

His father, with whom he remains close, separated from his mother even before Keith was born. At age 24, he is hardly worldly and obviously unpolished but still compellingly candid about his past and his future.

"When I was growing up, I didn't do bad stuff, but I did dumb stuff," he said. "Probably I didn't take things seriously enough. So while I was never in big trouble, I wasn't sure, either, exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I figured, `Hey, I'll work for the school district like everyone else in my family does.' Now, I guess, I'd hate to have to settle for that."

When he talks, it is slowly, as if deliberating over every syllable, but Jackson's eyes flash bright at the prospect of a career in the NFL. His agents, Harold Lewis and Frank Murtha, joke that he resembles the heroic protagonist in the movie The Green Mile. To a reporter, Jackson seems to possess more of the qualities that made Chief the most grounded figure in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. There is the same basic honesty and unvarnished sense of discovery.

"I know you've probably heard this a million times," Jackson said, staring in awe but also with a childlike naivete around a hotel lobby that included coaches he had only seen on television and players he had admired from afar. "But just being here is, like, beyond my wildest dreams."

OK, so there are a million kids, it seems, who have passed through the combine and said the same thing. And every year there are stories of prospects who rose above their surroundings or moved past their background to use the NFL as a way out. But, take it from someone who has covered the combine for a decade and a half, Keith Jackson is a little different from the others.

The draftniks like Joel Buchsbaum, Jerry Jones, Dave Thomas and big-coiffed Mel Kiper of ESPN (Each Strand Parted Neatly) have rendered archaic the old scouting term "sleeper," nudged it to that section of football lore reserved for modern curiosities like the flying wedge, the single wing and the white cornerback. But four years ago, when college was the furthest thing from his mind and he eked out a living doing part-time landscape work with some friends, Keith Jackson was more than a sleeper.

His football career, ended after his sophomore season at Roxborough High, was comatose at that point.

Only when his older brother Wayne, a girls basketball coach at storied Overbrook High School -- the school that produced Wilt Chamberlain, among others -- hooked up with an assistant at Cheyney did things begin to fall into place for Jackson. The two urged him to put down his lawn mower at least long enough every day to lift weights.

Four years after this real-life Rocky began to take weightlifting seriously, he found himself at the combine, participating in the standard 225-pound bench press drill. What had begun as fun back in Philadelphia was now about business, and Jackson completed 32 repetitions of the bench press, one of the top marks among the defensive linemen.

The scouts took note of Jackson's effort and, even after he pulled up lame in the middle of his first 40-yard dash, most of them scribbled down his name as a player with whom they want to get more familiar before the April 15-16 draft. Then again, just watching Jackson enter the room might be reason enough go consider him a prospect.

At 6-feet-4½ and 319 pounds, probably 10-12 pounds heavier than his playing weight, he is an imposing figure. The combine has been referred to in the past as a "meat market," and the scouts are anxious to decide if Jackson is hamburger or filet. The truth is, he's probably something in between, a player as raw as steak tartar but one who, with a few years of seasoning, might return a handsome dividend on a modest investment.

Ravens VP of personnel Ozzie Newsome (above) can't help but notice Keith Jackson. 'He passes the eyeball test, that's for sure.'(AP)

"He passes the eyeball test, that's for sure," said Baltimore Ravens vice president of personnel Ozzie Newsome. "I mean, there's some skepticism, and there should be. He hasn't got a lot of (football) background and he's coming out of a small-time program. But, geez, just look at his size and he's a guy you want to look into, you know?"

Last year at Cheyney, alternating between tackle and end, and double-teamed no matter where he lined up, Jackson collected 18 sacks. To the scouts, if you dump a quarterback on his back that many times, it doesn't matter that you might have romped through nothing more imposing than an offensive line peopled by Pop Warner players to get into the backfield.

Eighteen sacks at any level is apt to catch somebody's attention. His ability to rush the passer has elevated Jackson, who lists his favorite players as sackmeisters Reggie White and Bruce Smith, above just the latest curiosity piece among college prospects. He went to the Hula Bowl all-star game, but an injury kept him from playing. He was nearly distraught after he pulled his hamstring at the combine workouts.

But his agents and Cheyney coach John Parker assured him that scouts will come to campus to document a 40-yard time on him, and they weren't lying. After all, the scouts found future Hall of Fame receiver Andre Reed and current Denver standout linebacker John Mobley in the same Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference terrorized by Jackson last season.

Said Newsome: "Uh, we know where he's at."

The chances that Keith Jackson will be drafted in the first three rounds, realistically, are slim. The odds he will be a second-day pick, the prospect from whom not much is expected but who makes the most of the opportunity? That's the more plausible next chapter in his story.

"For the first time in a long time," Jackson said, "I have real goals for my life. I have the chance to do something no one would have ever guessed I'd be doing. That feels pretty good."