MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- His father died of AIDS when he was 3 months old. His mother died of AIDS when he was 11 years old.

He had Pop Warner local-legend status at 13. He had recruiters wooing him as a freshman entering high school. He had YouTube stardom after just a few games as a 145-pound freshman.

At 15, he witnessed the death of a friend, with whom he went somewhere looking for a fight, only to see him killed by a blast from a sawed-off shotgun.

He had a daughter then a son, by different mothers, in his junior year. He had Deion Sanders that next summer try to legally adopt him and move him into the NFL players' residence in Prosper, Texas, as if this equally cursed and blessed teenager could inhabit such a blissful-sounding place.

Before the first practice at Prosper High, he borrowed Mrs. Pilar Sanders' Cadillac Escalade, drove to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport and, with the vehicle still idling, boarded a flight back to the only life he knew.

He had a grandmother, Lee Turner, who served as his legal guardian even though he hardly resided under her roof. He had, mostly, Robert and Liz Harlow, the parents of a former teammate and a white family who so welcomed this young black man, they openly displayed photos of his children, Abbigail, named after his mother, and Andre.

Noel Devine has spent a lifetime on the move, eluding obstacles, striving to break free and clear.

It isn't that he runs from his Florida past. It is more consequential to him about where he runs to.

West Virginia. And beyond.

"I stay focused, humble and hungry," said he.

"Noel never asked for or expected any special treatment because of his situation," said Kim Lunger, the North Fort Myers High principal who, even after she suspended him two games last year for a school altercation, he greeted her with a hug every meeting afterward.

"And I think that's what makes him very unique. He's a survivor. He is well grounded and very focused, and he wants to do the right thing" for his future, for his children. "I attribute that to the many people who have really cared for him the past four years."

Count Steve Slaton among those who care for him, or help to, now that the young man has left the village that tried to raise him.

Slaton was Devine's host on a recruiting trip last fall. He is his practical Big Brother on the fifth-ranked Mountaineers, with whom Devine makes a Gulf Coast homecoming tonight against 18th-ranked South Florida in Tampa's Raymond James Stadium.

He is, as suggested by the name handed down from his late father, a joyous Noel in the new and different environs of Morgantown. He is a determined athlete and student, one who seemingly had an entire North Fort Myers faculty assisting him last year to attain freshman eligibility. He runs toward more goals.

"He's a very strong person. He's a very humble young man because of that [background]," Slaton said. "I knew a lot of kids who came from one-parent families, and they weren't really raised right. Here he comes from none. To be the way he is, it speaks about his character."

"No matter what happened during the course of it, I'm looking at the outcome: He made it." said North Fort Myers coach James Iandoli of Devine's route from being a Florida orphan, to tugs-of-war among adults, to the Mountaineers, to Tampa tonight.

An island in Fort Myers

He had a football reputation before puberty. "When I came up, I heard of him," said fellow Mountaineers freshman tailback Jock Sanders of St. Petersburg, Fla., 100 miles up the Gulf Coast.

He had recruiters attending midget football games. Recalled Larry Lease, an East Carolina reserve offensive lineman who wound up blocking for him at North Fort Myers: "In Pop Warner, the big hype was Noel Devine. Which high school was he going to? Who's going to be lucky enough to get Noel Devine? I was like, 'Who's Noel Devine?' "

He had his teammates' support after his varsity debut, when he replaced a Division I recruit and bolted 82 yards for a touchdown against Barron Collier.

He had a recruiting letter, early his freshman year, from Florida State coach Bobby Bowden.

He had Internet cred, with sunshinepreps.net posting a freshman year highlight reel downloaded 50,000 times in one day crashing the site.

He had the principal, coach and North faculty preventing people on ladder lifts from trying to watch practices, sifting through his 75 pieces of daily recruiting mail, toiling to help with his academics.

He had the eyes, said one recruiting service writer, of a 35-year-old.

It always came back to those Devine runs, though.

People constantly wanted to talk about or revisit the amazing plays in a career that ended with 6,842 yards and 92 touchdowns and three all-state selections. His high school highlights have been viewed on YouTube more than 1.9 million times. He is Britney Spears with a football: People cannot take their eyes off him.

Their hands off? At one point, the college recruiting all but dried up.

"Yeah, he was getting all that mail, but as far as coaches coming down here ... there were only a handful," Iandoli said.

Apparently, they were scared off by whispers about Devine's academics and comportment -- though he never was arrested, never was suspended until a school fight as a senior and a locker room incident at an all-star game.

"He had so much going on," said offensive coordinator and running backs coach Calvin Magee, who assisted defensive line coach Bill Kirelawich in their pursuit of the kid ranked as America's No. 1 running back prospect. "And there were so many rumors about him. We did our homework. He was lost in that stuff there, I think. He was just looking for someone to look out for him."

They coupled him with Slaton. They tried to sell what they term their "family" atmosphere. A smitten Devine watched the spread offense on ESPN in West Virginia's loss at Louisville, Iandoli said, "and the courtship began."

After Deion Sanders swept in -- initially, a friend of Devine's dialed North Fort Myers 911 and reported Devine kidnapped by "the one and only famous" then-Ravens cornerback -- the NFL Network analyst remained a mentor, text-messaging and calling and running interference throughout. Most construed this as a path to Neon's alma mater, Florida State.

"There were a lot of people who didn't want him to go to West Virginia," Iandoli said. "He was getting some outside pressures about some other schools. I'm just a middle guy, and I told him, 'You have to go with your heart.' "

"I thought I could be more successful," Devine said.

He signed with West Virginia March 30, six weeks after the first day of the official letter-of-intent period but still wasn't eligible as a freshman.

"He had a plan, the school had a plan for him, and we hung in there with him," added West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez. "He made it."

Country roads

He had a standing ovation from Mountaineer Field fans after his first collegiate carry, which netted a yard.

"It made me feel like I was at home," Devine said afterward.

Since then, he has shed the golden grill he wore over his teeth that opening game. He is more in line with the rest of his Mountaineers mates, how they dress, how they look, how short they cut their hair.

Fatherhood also is somewhat of a routine circumstance on this team.

"He's not the only one, just maybe the youngest one," kidded Perry Traditional Academy cornerback Vaughn Rivers, the father of a 15-month-old.

In the secondary, Rivers said, four defensive backs have children.

This father, though, has something of a dependency.

"He's addicted to Skittles," Iandoli said, and it became his nickname.

Lunch was often two bags of the colorful candy for a kid who stands only 5 foot 8, but is so sturdy that he bench presses more than twice his 170 pounds.

"That's what was mind-boggling, the body he had eating Skittles every day. My gosh."

About his exploits on the field for the Mountaineers: He has gained a lot more than a yard since that inaugural college carry.

He had six carries for 43 more yards and his first touchdown in that Western Michigan game aired on ESPN Regional ("My baby boy saw it; my little girl was cheering," Devine later said, proudly).

He scored the first time he carried the ball on the road, compiling five carries for 76 yards and two touchdowns in turning a 27-23 lead into a 48-23 rout at Marshall.

Then at Maryland, he sprinted 31 yards to the 1-yard line on his first carry, 76 yards to the 1 on his second, then left the field so Slaton could get the touchdowns.

Maryland defenders later claimed they knew little of the freshman No. 7, to which Mountaineers fullback Owen Schmitt responded: "In the game, he kind of did those things he did on YouTube."

His West Virginia highlights on that site have been watched more than 300,000 times already.

Tonight, Devine returns to Florida's west coast, though Lunger, Iandoli and North Fort Myers folks will be absent because they have a homecoming date against Riverdale. He has a new family surrounding him now. And he has a flight leaving Florida with them afterward.

"See a lot of family and friends, get a lot of support," Devine said of this homecoming's advantages. "And, going back home, playing on grass, I might be able to play a little better."

He has his reasons to run.