Hypothetically speaking, say I just interviewed for a blogging job with a NFL franchise and things went well enough I was legitimately worried about having to make a decision that would alter my past, present and future, that I started to realize this journalism think might surrender to that blogging thing. The prospect of doing something new in a professional organization would be exhilarating, but I’d also know I was going to miss what I’d gone to school to learn and had since done for six mostly great years.

Crazy, you say, because the lure of the NFL would overpower the anchor of the newspaper world. Maybe so, but then someone like Terence Kerns comes along and you begin to understand about the anchor.

I’d never once spoken to Kerns before Friday, but after 17 minutes it seemed to me we’d been friends for quite some time. He was honest and open and really funny. He told me stuff he didn’t have to tell me.

The pressure had an affect and Kerns found it difficult to escape the speculation. He’d go out and people would ask when he was leaving. He’d check his Facebook page online and discover dozens of messages wondering the same. He had no idea how to deal with it all.

“I pretty much lied to them just to get them off my back,” he said. “They’d say, ‘Terence, when are you leaving?’ I’d be like, ‘Two weeks.’ Then they’d go and tell people I’d qualified. Two weeks would come and I’d have to come up with another answer.”

Kerns knows he contributed to the confusion about his status but it was the only thing he could do to do deal with the attention.

“There are a lot of people here who say stuff about how I could be in the NFL one day. If you can’t get into college, you can’t get in the NFL,” he said. “It kind of hurt knowing I might not make it. I didn’t want people thinking that about me.

“There’s a lot of talk here about has-beens and coulda-beens. A lot of people from here were good football players who didn’t make it because they were too lazy in the classroom and didn’t put the time and effort into it.”

Kerns tried. He tried for his family. He tried for his coaches. He tried for his teammates. He tried for his community. He tried for WVU. It just never clicked.

“I’m not a guy who’s going to cry,” he said, “but one time I cried.”  

At the end of our “interview” I actually told him how impressive it all was. What does it mean? For football, absolutely nothing beyond the rather enjoyable prospect he might be very good from the start and, thus, interviewed often.

Of course, there’s also the possibility the NCAA Clearinghouse will see his last two ACT scores jumped from a 17 to a 22 in a month and flag his case. Actually, that’s probably going to happen and the NCAA will jerk another kid around for however long it chooses while the rest of the team progresses. I’ve been assured he’ll be good to go, though, which is good news for those who follow the team as fans or as professionals.