Paul Suhey was like a lot of other football fathers when he heard his son was being asked to take a grayshirt at Penn State. First he asked what a grayshirt was. Then he wondered what his son, Kevin, was going to do to remain football sharp during his six months away from the game.

	Matt Freed, Post-Gazette
	State College quarterback Kevin Suhey was handing the ball off to high school players last fall. This fall he will play with pros.

Grayshirting is a growing trend in Division I-A college football, where a high school graduate who signed a national letter of intent with a school delays his enrollment until January, when his school has a scholarship open.

How then does a player stay in shape and remain mentally focused away from the team for such an extended period?

Looking for some advice, Paul Suhey dialed up Detroit Lions general manager and CEO Matt Millen, a friend and former teammate at Penn State in the 1970s, and told him of Kevin's plight. Millen offered Kevin the chance to work for the Lions this fall and, in his spare time, train in a professional atmosphere.

So, while other players around the country in the same situation live at home and work out on their own or go to school part time and pay their own way, Kevin Suhey will be an intern with the Lions, working in the equipment department. When he's not working, he will be throwing passes to professional receivers before practice, sitting in on quarterbacks meetings and working out in an NFL weight room.

"It's an incredible opportunity," Kevin Suhey said.

He will be living with Millen and learning from head coach Steve Mariucci, who has agreed to allow Suhey to sit in on his video and study sessions. Suhey will be studying beside Lions starting quarterback Joey Harrington and backup Mike McMahon and throwing passes to some of the most accomplished young receivers in the game -- Charles Rogers and Roy Williams, No. 1 draft picks the past two years.

"It's a neat fit," said Paul Suhey, an orthopedic surgeon in State College who played at Penn State from 1975-78. "It gives Kevin a chance to be on his own a little bit before college. It's almost like taking a year abroad.

"[Grayshirting] takes a lot of self-discipline. You could get lost in the shuffle and get lazy. This will be just the opposite. For a kid to spend a season with a pro team as an intern ... to have exposure to that is a great thing."

Suhey won't be in total awe of his situation. He has worked as a ballboy for the Lions during training camp the past three summers and has gotten a taste of what lies ahead. He hung out the past three years with Millen's son, Marcus, a recent graduate of Easton (Pa.) High School who will miss camp this year to attend basic training. Marcus has been accepted to West Point.

Suhey is looking forward to slinging some passes to Rogers and Co.

"The receivers are incredible at that level," Suhey said. "They're so quick and fast. And they seem to catch everything."

When he's not immersed in his work or workouts, Suhey will take two classes at the University of Michigan at Dearborn. Head coach Joe Paterno mandated that Suhey maintain his schooling during the fall. (Grayshirts are allowed to take classes as part-time students).

According to the NCAA, grayshirts must also abide by other rules: no practicing with the team, no supervised workouts with coaches and no watching practice, unless their school has practices open to the general public. Penn State's practices are closed to the public.

John Bove, Penn State's NCAA compliance director, said Suhey's plans in Detroit are legal under NCAA guidelines because of the preexisting relationship with Millen and because alumni are allowed to set up student-athletes with jobs as long as they do it after they graduate from high school.

Suhey is one of two players Penn State is grayshirting this season, about the school's average the past few years. Jordan Norwood, the son of defensive backs coach Brian Norwood, is the other. Norwood has decided to remain in State College and spend his grayshirt year working out at Penn State.

Penn State signed four quarterbacks in February, including highly touted Penn Hills graduate Anthony Morelli.

For Suhey, grayshirting was attractive for a variety of reasons but mostly because he will now be a year behind Morelli and the other incoming quarterbacks, Paul Cianciolo and Daryl Clark. Suhey's scholarship will count toward the 2005 class.

"I talked to Joe [Paterno] about it," Kevin Suhey said. "He said they have an absence of quarterbacks in the program but an abundance of quarterbacks in this year's recruiting class. He thought grayshirting might be the best thing for me to do. I talked to my high school coach about it and some other people who were thinking about doing it. Everyone I talked to seemed to think it was a good idea."

Suhey leaves July 25 for Detroit.