Pugh, Amherst coach Mickey Crouch said, "was a real hard worker, blessed with good strength and speed."

Jackson, Crouch said, "had more natural ability than anybody I�ve ever coached, and I�ve been coaching 31 years."

They were two future stars.

Except one went the wrong way.

Pugh�s vision, as you know, was realized. He�s a senior defensive tackle and one of the Hokies� best players. If injuries don�t derail him, he is looking at a professional career.

But Camm Jackson never played for Virginia Tech. In the years following his signing with Virginia Tech, poor choices were his frequent companion, and he quickly produced a long criminal file. He hopes the worst is over. He�s back home now, working and raising a family, and sometimes, he admits, wondering what might have been.

"I miss it so bad," Jackson said. "I�m sitting there watching David, he�s doing great things now. I should be there right beside him. That�s run through my mind a lot.

"I�ve come to terms with it. I can�t change any of it. I have to learn from it."

David Pugh�s progress at Tech is easy to track. You simply grab a Hokies media guide and marvel at the details:

*He was an All-Big East selection after the 2000 season.
*He tied for the team lead in sacks with five and tackles for losses with 12.
*He had 10 career sacks coming into the season.
*Lindy�s magazine ranks Pugh the fourth-best defensive tackle in the country. He�s No. 6 per The Sporting News.

Finding out Camm Jackson�s history takes a little more work, because you won't find him in any Tech media guides. He never actually played for the Hokies. To find out about his activities around Virginia Tech, you must make several stops.

The first such stop is the clerk�s office of the Montgomery County Circuit Court in Christiansburg. You request file No. CR99-15888 and get a thick packet of information in return. You next go the General District Court clerk�s office in Blacksburg and type in Cameron Darnell Jackson on the system computer. While you�re out, stop at the Virginia Tech Police Department.

Here�s some of what you�ll learn:

In early 1999, Jackson stole a checkbook belonging to Richard J. Oldland, a Tech student from Chesapeake. Over the course of two months in early 1999, he signed Oldland�s name to six checks:

*$27.27 to Wal-Mart.
*$33.33 to Wal-Mart
*$22.68 to Wal-Mart.
*$34.54 to Wal-Mart
*$100 to cash
*$75 to cash.

That�s six counts of forge and utter. Jackson was arrested on May 14, 1999, and eventually, he was convicted and sentenced to five years in jail, all suspended. He had to pay court costs of $4,645.69 and make restitution, and he was also placed on supervised probation.

Unfortunately, that's not the end of his troubles. On Sept. 15, 2000, probation officer Chadwick T. Phillips filed a letter noting that Jackson's probation conditions were violated. Chadwick requested a hearing, and the next month, six months of Jackson�s suspended sentence were revoked. Jackson went off to the Montgomery County Jail.

There were also rumors that Jackson was involved in drugs. Although no charges of that nature were ever filed against him in Montgomery County, a letter in his file written by Jackson to Judge Ray W. Grubbs, asking for consideration for early release, answers the question. In it, Jackson admits to two failed drug screenings while on probation.

"The last conversation I had with him was during that spring practice (spring of 1998) his first year," Crouch said. "You could tell something was going on. He wasn�t the same kid he was in high school."

So what happened to Cameron Darnell Jackson? How did he go from potential football star to inmate? Could something have been done?

Easy answers don�t exist. Jackson, to his credit, blames no one. He made poor choices, he admits, and he paid the price.

He went to Tech excited. This was a kid who always wanted to be a Hokie, particularly after teammate Pugh made his choice.

"I followed them ever since I was six years old," Jackson said in his recruiting profile in the March 31, 1997 edition of the Hokie Huddler. "I had planned to go there to get an education anyway. I hadn�t even planned on football. As I came up through middle school, I realized I might get a scholarship, so I worked hard to get it. I�ve always wanted to go there."

Said Crouch in the same edition, "Ever since we started talking for the first time about playing college football, all he's ever talked about is Virginia Tech."

Jackson reported in August of 1997, about to burst with excitement. But his second day there, he suffered a serious knee injury and was sent home to rehabilitate. He reported back to Tech in January of 1998, the idea being that with a delayed January enrollment, it would keep alive the option for a redshirt season the following year (the 1998 season) if his knee was slow to recover.

The injury, many people say, is what started Jackson�s slide. Here�s a guy who, in Pugh�s words, "was always the best baseball player, always the best football player." Now he was hurt, and he couldn�t play.

He handled it poorly. He didn�t keep up with his rehabilitation. And he started hanging out with the wrong people.

"I kind of got discouraged," Jackson said. "I had never had that happen to me and it was all new. I didn�t know what to do. I just wasn�t hitting on anything. I�d already fallen behind other players. It just wasn�t going well.

"It was a heartbreaker. I went up there excited and eager. Once that happened, it just takes it all from you."

Said Tech offensive coordinator Rickey Bustle, who recruited Pugh and Jackson from Amherst, "When he came back, he wasn�t in very good shape. It was just a struggle for him. I don�t think he liked the classroom right off the bat. He just never made a great effort to succeed."

Crouch agrees.

"He did not get back into it and do what he was supposed to do academically or athletically," Crouch said. "I don�t think he prepared himself the way he should have. He would come by our practice (at Amherst) after his surgery, he�d jog or go to the weight room. It went on for a couple of months, but then he stopped doing the rehabilitation, stopped lifting. He sort of faded out of the picture. He should have been here every day. I remember telling him he had a chance to get a free education, he had a great opportunity in football. Probably the next week, he was back to doing the same thing he was before.

"Maybe if he hadn�t been injured and had been there with the influences of other players and coaches, it would have been different."

But it wasn�t. That Jackson never played for the Hokies is a shame, considering everyone who talked about him raved about his ability. His freshman profile listed him as a 5-11, 215-pounder. He was a top-notch runner and determined tackler. He was Group AA defensive player of the year as a junior. Most likely, he would have ended up as an outside linebacker or rover at Tech.

"If he�d have gone to Tech and did what he was supposed to do, he�d have been playing in the NFL right now," Crouch said. "I have no doubt in the world about that. He was that good. He started for us his freshman year, and we went to the state championship two of his four years."

Said Bustle, "I thought Camm was a heck of a player, a very athletic guy who could run. I've thought about him a few times in the past few years. I really think he could have helped this football team. I don�t know what he was doing on his own, what kind of desire left him. Somewhere, something changed � the desire or whatever that made him as good as he was at the time."

Jackson is back home in Madison Heights now, convinced his troubled days are over.

He�s working at Lynchburg Steel and says he�s going to a technical college next year to learn the computer business. He says his personal turnaround started with the birth of his daughter, Alexis Nichole Jackson, 14 months ago, though he was sent to jail after her birth. He�s living with his girlfriend, Tiffany Sales, the mother of his daughter.

"I�m just working and spending time with my family," Jackson said. "I�ve done a lot of growing up. If I had another shot at it, it would be good. A lot of things have changed, and if I knew then what I know now, it would have been a lot different."

He says he tries to talk to kids he comes in contact with back home, warning them to pick their friends wisely -- something he didn�t do when he was younger.

"They should learn from my mistakes, do what they have to do, and stay away from people that are doing wrong," Jackson said. "They can hold you back.

"Sure, people had told me that. But I didn�t listen. The ones who will keep you from doing the right things, they�re the ones you need to stay away from."

At Virginia Tech, now seemingly worlds away from Camm Jackson, David Pugh said he still thinks about his old teammate.

"Camm had the opportunity to be a hell of a ballplayer up here," Pugh said. "I wish he�d taken that opportunity and made the best of it.

"A lot of people do get into trouble. Others are ready to take responsibility. They understand what�s at stake. You are on your own, you have to learn to fend for yourself. You have to grow up in a hurry."

Pugh did grow up in a hurry. His next stop may be the NFL.

Jackson didn�t.

Crouch said he wonders to this day if he could have done something, seen something, said something that would have helped. A coach gets that way with his players. Out of a hundred kids, if there's one who isn't a success, the other ninety-nine success stories aren�t as sweet.

"They�re my kids," Crouch said of his players. "When they play for me, we sort of bond. When we have a kid like that, one we KNOW is going to make it big and have a good life, and it goes wrong, yeah, it bothers me. I don�t know what to do to help those kids. There probably isn�t anything.

"I just wish it had turned out better for him. His life isn�t over. He still has a chance to have a good life, and to correct some things he�s done. I hope he does that."

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