The Daily Orange

For Walter Reyes, this is not an act.

The cameras, the photographers, the lenses, the reporters - they're all surrounding Walter Reyes, the real Walter Reyes, not some facade produced to win the public's love.

This isn't a front, some veil to hide behind because he doesn't want to come off as selfish or egotistical or bigheaded or arrogant.

That's the real Walter Reyes speaking about how this is a team effort and the Heisman Trophy doesn't matter and how he just wants to win. That is really him. And when it kills you, that's when Reyes will stop with his achingly painful humility. Maybe.

But even if he won't admit it - and, he never will - this is Reyes' year. Just focus on the senior running back for once. He is a Heisman Trophy contender, he's threatening to break Syracuse's all-time rushing record and all-time touchdowns record. He gives Syracuse a chance to succeed, reach a bowl game, climb over the .500 mark. He's Syracuse's only hope of achieving, well, anything.

"This is a dream come true," Reyes says of his publicity. "But I'm going to put the team before me. I want to help the team."

He talks about "the team" as if there is a team. What he fails to understand is that he is the team. His unrelenting modesty blinds him of even that. He fails, the team fails. If he succeeds, the team...well, it's at least got a chance.

Reyes is the man who has resurrected excitement for football season, who started playing football only as a high school freshman, who waved off millions of dollars to earn a degree, who lost one of his closest childhood friends two years ago but persevered. Now, he has made himself the focal point. Now, Reyes is the spokesman.

"I get chills in my body," Reyes says about starting the season. "We want to show the world what SU football is all about."

Right now, it's about Reyes. Because with that comment at Syracuse Media Day on Aug. 12, someone whisks Reyes away for another photo shoot (his fourth of the day), and it appears this has become Reyes' world - an eternal photo shoot, continuous hype and unending questions about the Heisman Trophy. Oh, and football.

"Get him in the Heisman stance," center Matt Tarullo says, partly to the photographer and partly to Reyes himself.

"No," Reyes replies, and he resorts to a poor-man's Heisman pose, ball tucked away and right knee kicked, but no stiff-arm.

That this 5-foot-10, 210-pound senior is even on the list is shocking, considering two years ago Reyes appeared destined for backup duty. And that eight years ago, Reyes' mother had forbidden him from even playing football.

Continued...

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