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		Wheel of Fortune Turnabout is fair play; Huskies on top as preseason darlings. By Paul Perillo This year, it’s a whole new kind of problem. Before his first two seasons as Northeastern football coach, Don Brown faced an issue that’s confounded so many NU teams in the past: a pronounced lack of respect. Last year, for instance, the preseason Atlantic 10 coaches’ poll ranked the Huskies tenth within their eleven-team division. Yet the season didn’t unfold quite as predicted—Northeastern won the league title and a Division 1-AA playoff berth for the first time in school history. This year, Street & Smith’s, one of the country’s most reputable sports preview magazines, predicts the Huskies will not only repeat as league champions, they will capture the 1-AA national title (outstripping such contenders as McNeese State, Western Illinois, Montana, Grambling State, and Georgia Southern). And the preseason Atlantic 10 coaches’ poll has ranked the Huskies number one. But lofty status comes with a price. This year’s challenge for Brown: Finding new ways to motivate players. “I used to yell at them last year,” he says. “Show them the [coaches’] poll and say, ‘This is what they think of us.’ I have to figure out what I’ll say now. We’ll have a bull’s-eye on our backs every week. Things will be different.” If you expected Brown to be satisfied with his program’s meteoric rise, you’d be wrong. He’s set higher sights than last year’s 10-3 mark. For starters, he wants a return trip to the postseason, this time with a different outcome. NU’s 29-24 first-round loss to Fordham at Parsons Field left a sour taste in his mouth. Then he wants his program to be regarded as one of the best in 1-AA throughout the nation, not just in New England. And he wants to earn that reputation on an annual basis, not as a one-year wonder. Brown is smart enough to realize that all the preseason glory, however flattering, doesn’t mean much once the season begins. He’s quick to point out that William and Mary was the team at the high end of last year’s coaches’ poll; by the time the sixteen play-off teams were announced, the Tribe wasn’t one of them. “If you’re not ready to play in this league, you’re going to get your face punched in,” Brown says flatly. “That’s just the way it is, and it especially holds true on the road. I couldn’t have been happier with our spring practices. I thought we worked really hard.” But, the coach says, “we’ll need to continue that all season if we’re going to prove worthy of the praise.” The Huskies have lost ten seniors from last year’s club; most had served as part of Brown’s vaunted ball-hawking defense, five as starters. But solid recruiting has fueled NU’s rise, and the team’s overall depth, Brown believes, is becoming its greatest strength. So there are plenty of capable bodies who can step up. Two transfers—cornerback Jeremiah Mason from Syracuse and defensive lineman Andre Taylor from Tennessee—are in this year’s mix. And Liam Ezekiel has become a dominant middle linebacker. Over the summer, the Sports Network named the junior a preseason second-team All-American, after Ezekiel led the Huskies with 145 tackles last season. Brown’s defenses are never passive. The Northeastern blitz forces turnovers at an alarming rate; NU scored 8 defensive touchdowns in 2002. Last season, the Huskies led the league with 403 points—an average of 31 per game—a large chunk of which were defense-driven, both directly (on returns) and indirectly (as a result of favorable field position). Though there may not be as many defensive points in 2003, the Husky offense shouldn’t need them. That’s because junior quarterback Shawn Brady is entering his third year as starter, and Brown believes he’s getting better with every game. Brady, who took over midway through his freshman season, is 14-5 as the starting QB. Last season, he tossed 16 touchdowns. And this year, he’ll have an even more experienced cast to throw to, including Quintin Mitchell, who’s returning from an injury that limited him to seven games last year, Cory Parks, and Curtis Guilliam. Brown hopes the increased air production will help balance an already potent ground attack, allowing the team to better withstand early deficits. Tim Gale (860 yards, 14 touchdowns last year) and Anthony Riley (940 yards) will give the Huskies one of the most productive ball-carrying tandems in 1-AA. “We’ve obviously come a long way in three years,” Brown says. “Winning the league and being the preseason number one . . . We’ve accomplished some things people quite frankly told me we couldn’t do here. But that stuff won’t mean a thing if we don’t continue to work.” High on the to-do list: Figuring out how to motivate a bunch of winners. One Track, Mines: Not Your Average Marathon Story Marathon running—one of the most grueling of sports—calls for athletic ability, physical fitness, and, perhaps most important, supreme mental toughness. Consider, then, the race Raymond Youngs, CJ’01, ran last year. A first lieutenant in the U.S. Army, Youngs was sent to Afghanistan in July 2002 to serve as a military police platoon leader with Operation Enduring Freedom. As a way of lifting troop morale, military officials decided to organize a marathon for the day after Thanksgiving. And so, with Bagram Air Base the unlikely backdrop, Youngs laced up for the first-ever Minefield Marathon. More than 200 runners, including soldiers from Poland, Germany, Korea, and the United Kingdom, competed. The course was four laps around the base’s perimeter, on dirt roads threaded between shredded fighter jets and land mines. Signs warned runners of the potential dangers. Despite the distractions—and a course that, when remeasured, turned out to have been over 27 miles, instead of the standard 26.2—Youngs crossed the finish line first, with a time of 3:01:65. “It was certainly a different running experience,” says the twenty-five-year-old, who’d enjoyed a strong long-distance running career as a member of the NU track and cross-country teams. “Nobody got to train properly for the race. I even had to work all night the night before.” One thing was certain, though: “With the course set up the way it was,” Youngs says, “at least we knew nobody would be cutting any corners.” The runners were accompanied by extra security, including bomb-sniffing dogs and a Black Hawk hovering overhead, as they worked their way through the course’s heavy dust and rocks. Generally, the base’s military personnel were required to carry their weapons at all times, even when enjoying a jog. Though some marathoners competed gun in hand, Youngs decided to run without. “Our guys were providing the security, so I knew I was safe,” he says, with a laugh. As a youngster, Youngs was a military brat, moving frequently before graduating from high school in Germany. (His father, Raymond Youngs Sr., also served as a member of the Army’s military police.) At Northeastern, Youngs participated in the Army ROTC program before being commissioned as a lieutenant. Back now from Afghanistan, Youngs lives in Deerfield, New Hampshire, working as an exploring executive with the Daniel Webster Council Boy Scouts of America, where he provides career counseling for high school kids interested in law enforcement. He’s also set up a running camp. Eventually he hopes to attend law school. “I really enjoy working with kids, so I’d like to continue my work with the Boy Scouts,” says Youngs, himself an Eagle Scout. “But I still have some aspirations for running.” That means Youngs is looking toward competing in the military-personnel Olympic trials. His career best is currently 2:31, logged at the Philadelphia Marathon. He plans to run the Chicago Marathon next month. But Boston is his favorite race of all. Last April, just after he’d returned from Afghanistan, he was invited to join the Boston runners, but declined because he hadn’t had time to train. He still got to be part of the festivities, though—he held the finish-line banner for the women’s race. “Watching Boston got me running in the first place,” Youngs says. “When I run it, I want to be ready.”