Better sooner than never: two ACL injuries--one on each knee--cost Oklahoma quarterback Jason White most of two seasons. How healthy and at the helm of a surprisingly potent offense, he's making up for lost time.(College Football)

In the dorm of destitution, Jason White was No. 3 on the pity list.

At the top of the list was roommate Michael Thompson, the one-time rising star cornerback for Oklahoma who was battling back from a horrific car accident that left him with a broken leg, a broken jaw, two broken ankles, bruised lungs and nearly dead on a barren country road. Roommate No. 2 was Dan Cody, the Sooners' one-time star defensive end whose life had gone from battling 300-pound offensive tackles on the field to fighting the frightening enormity of clinical depression.

Then there was White, the one-time future star at quarterback recovering from a measly ACE surgery on each knee, operations in which they open your knee like a helpless frog in a high school biology experiment, then say, good luck, kid. Ten months of rehab for each knee; nearly two years of lonely, soul-searching nights and monotonous, isolated days. Still ...

"How was I supposed to feel sorry for myself?" White says.

To know Jason White is to know he wouldn't have, anyway--no matter the circumstances. So when he took a helmet to the chin from Texas defensive tackle Marcus Tubbs last weekend, when he was split open and bleeding and staggering to his feet in the middle of yet another Sooners blowout in the Red River Rivalry, when no one would've blinked had he sat for the remainder of the game, he shook it off and led OU to its zillionth touchdown in what has become a one-sided series.

It's just the way he's wired. His dad busted his hump for years pouring cement in the tiny town of Turtle, Okla., where young Jason spent many days doing the same thing. There is no questioning why; you just do it because, frankly, life is tough, and the lessons learned from the highs and lows eventually will pay off. Who could've imagined the lows would include suffering the worst injury in sports on each knee, one right after the other healed, both occurring without contact and away from plays?

So, don't read so much into Jason White's subdued, sensible tone after he threw for 290 yards and four touchdowns and missed just four of 21 pass attempts in a 65-13 rout of Texas. Two years of painful purgatory have left him with a perspective few can grasp. That's why he avoids conversations about a Heisman Trophy race he has suddenly seized control of. And it's why folks say his play has him--hushed tones, please--closing in on Josh Heupel status. In 2000, the last time OU won it all, Heupel became a folk hero with his gutty, determined play as the Sooners' star quarterback.