Picture yourself at your high school graduation. Cap and gown worn with pride, diploma in hand. You’ve got it made. You’re educated, you’re ready, you know what you need to know.

Now hit the fast-forward button. Move ahead four years or so, or however long it took you to graduate from college. By this time, you’re smart enough to know you still don’t know it all and, by gosh, you knew so much less when you graduated from high school.

That college degree makes you confident but, unlike your prep diploma, it doesn’t make you cocky. It’s called maturity, something all of us think we have early and know we don’t really have several years later.

The Keith Burnell you see today in a Virginia Tech football uniform doesn’t have a college degree yet. He’s working toward one in residential property management. But he has reached a level of maturity he didn’t have – didn’t come close to having – when he left Western Branch High School.

"A year ago," Tech associate head coach Billy Hite said, "I wouldn’t have even considered starting Keith. There’s no question a year ago we wouldn’t be sitting here talking about Keith Burnell.

"Ever since spring practice, he’s just been outstanding. I don’t think I’ve ever had a back improve as much as Keith."

Without some very bad luck for the Hokies and standout tailback Lee Suggs, we might not be having this conversation, either. As all Tech fans are well aware by now, the 2001 season got off to an excellent start in the victory column (two in the first two games) but a terrible start in the injury column.

Suggs, the man who had 1,207 yards and 28 touchdowns (one on a reception) last season, was lost for the season just 37 minutes into the opener against Connecticut. He blew out his left knee and needed reconstructive surgery on his anterior cruciate ligament. He’s expected back for 2002. The 2001 season will carry on without him.

Suddenly, Hite’s spring proclamation that "you can never have enough good backs" was all too true. Hite, the running backs coach, used the line when talking about how Burnell would fit in after an outstanding spring session and outstanding spring game. Suggs was coming back and a bunch of good recruits (Kevin Jones, Cedric Humes, and Justin Hamilton) were coming in the door.

Where would Burnell fit?

How about at No. 1?

"He’s made me feel very comfortable with him out there," Hite said.

So who is this guy?

Well, the simple answer is he’s an exceptionally polite young man from Chesapeake who, for a time, was about as scatterbrained as he was talented. His nickname was "Sweet Feet," but he started his career at Tech as if he were auditioning for the lead in a movie called "The Absent-Minded Running Back."

At Western Branch High School, Burnell earned the big time accolades. All-America teams, recruiting watch lists, the works. As a senior in 1997, even slowed by a bum ankle, he rushed for 1,224 yards and 25 touchdowns (ironically, very Suggs-like numbers). He had 1,228 yards and 20 touchdowns a year earlier.

Lew Johnston, the Western Branch coach, said Burnell and Dre Bly (North Carolina) were the most heavily recruited athletes he’s ever had.

"It was very much an entire east coast type of thing," Johnston said. "About the only ones who weren’t interested were the Florida schools. I guess they don’t have to recruit much out of state.

"He was a slasher, a cutter. He’d hit the holes and make his cuts. That’s why he got his nickname. He was difficult to bring down and, if he needed to, he’d lower his shoulder. He was exciting. If he hadn’t gotten that ankle banged up his senior year, I have no idea how far we would have gone. He would have had an incredible year."

Tech won the recruiting war in the year it also landed another running back from Roanoke named Lee Suggs. Burnell went off to Tech with some serious expectations.

"I had big plans on playing," Burnell said. "I thought I was going to play my freshman year. But things changed. The blitzes, the different pass routes … I wasn’t used to all that. With the ball in my hands, I was just as good as anybody.

"Without the ball, I wasn’t. I was one of the worst."

He sure didn’t get off to a good start.

"The second meeting, he forgot his notebook," Hite said. "He went to get it. By the time he got back, he was late for my meeting and he’d also missed treatment. That one thing caused three problems.

"That’s where it all started. I told him, ‘To play for me, you have to do things right both on and off the field.'"

Said Johnston, "He was a kid who went off to school with not necessarily inflated ideas but big ideas of what he was going to do. He possibly needed a little more self-discipline. He got into the doghouse early. He didn’t seem to understand that if he was performing well, did these things matter?"

They did, and it took a while for Burnell to register that. In the meantime, he fell behind. He got into two games as a redshirt freshman, with seven carries for 14 yards. Last season, he had 17 carries in nine games. He gained 111 yards. He had the Hokies’ longest run of the season – a 59-yarder against Rutgers.

It wasn’t a particularly happy two years and he thought often about relocating.

"I wasn’t playing and when you’re not playing, you want to go somewhere else and play," Burnell said.

Johnston listened, to a point. Then he got serious with Burnell.

"We starting talking after his freshman year," Johnston said. "Basically I just listened after the first year. The second year got a lot more serious. He said, ‘I’m out of here if things don’t work out in the spring.’ We started exploring the options. He still wanted to play major-college football. He felt he was a major-college running back.

"It was the same thing last year when he came home for Christmas. I finally told him, ‘Your white daddy is going to tell you what you need to hear, and you listen if you want, or do what you want.’ I was tired of it. My first thought was that he was too far along in his education (to transfer). He was making good grades and he liked his major. That got his attention.

"The second thing I told him is that he never did exactly what they told him to do. I told him, ‘You just follow Lee Suggs around and you’ll be fine.’ All this was just accumulation. The classic light bulb went on. Keith thought he was doing a good job in the weight room. You put him against Lee and you could tell he wasn’t doing the same job as Lee."

Johnston said Burnell promised him he’d see a new man. "And I have," Johnston said. "What I saw in the spring for the first time was a totally focused Keith Burnell."

Just in time, too, because Hite was about out of patience.

"Coach (Frank) Beamer has always told me, don’t ever give up on talent," Hite said. "It was just being tired of all the other things. The biggest thing was just being prepared."

Consider spring ball the first sign of the rededicated Burnell. He didn’t let up through the summer and into preseason. He had accepted his role as Suggs’ primary backup, not a bad place to be, considering Tech makes good use of at least two tailbacks.

Then one third-quarter run against Connecticut changed everything, and Burnell was the Hokies’ top tailback.

"I’ll tell you I’m good," said Burnell, who will certainly do just that. "I also know I can be better. I’m willing to do that. Whatever it takes to be the best, I’m willing to work to get that extra."

Burnell and Suggs aren’t that much alike and yet, at the same time, aren’t that different. They’re both 6-0. Suggs is listed two pounds heavier at 204.

Suggs is fast, but is more of a power runner. His incredible strength sometimes overrides his speed.

Burnell is fast, but more of a dancer.

Suggs is quiet. You have to pull it out of him. Burnell eats up batteries on a tape recorder.

"Keith is an outstanding back," Hite said. "He can run with power. He can run with speed. I don’t know that I’ve seen a back as good as Lee at breaking tackles, at finding that little seam and being able to get through the hole. Keith has a little more ‘juke’ than Lee has."

Johnston is delighted to see the new Burnell. A veteran coach, he’s had a ton of good players come through his program. Two others (Emmett Johnson, Marvin Urquhart) are on the Tech roster. Johnston’s family is a Tech family. Daughter Mandy is a freshman there. Son Bryan, a former Western Branch player, works in the school’s Sports Information office. One of his jobs is to line up player interviews.

Burnell, Lew Johnston said, is a part of his family, too.

"He’s real special," Johnston said. "I don’t mind telling you I’m a born-again Christian and I feel like the Lord put Keith in my life and my heart a long time ago. He just became part of the family. Mandy thinks of him as her brother. He’s real special to all of us.

"He has a little ‘street’ in him, a little ‘cockiness,’ but Keith is a warm, people-loving person with a lot of charisma."

Not to mention a big responsibility, one he’s finally ready to handle.

"I have the opportunity and I plan to run with it," Burnell said. "I don’t plan on looking back."