VICK’S CLIQUE

Some 220 miles, several flocks of sheep, and countless tobacco fields east of Newport News, Va., where Michael Vick was rehearsing for a repeat virtuoso performance at Virginia Tech, the man who perhaps knows him best made a prediction.

“This,” said Warwick High School coach Tommy Reamon, “is the biggest year of his life.”

An intriguing statement, especially considering that as a redshirt freshman, Vick promptly became the nation’s most electrifying player, running and passing the Hokies to an undefeated regular season and into the national championship game. But Reamon, a man who regards Vick almost as a son, wasn’t just talking about his on-the-field exploits.

“It has nothing to do with how many touchdowns he throws,” Vick’s high school coach said. “It has something to do with if he throws two interceptions in the first game, they’re going to eat him alive. They’re going to talk about him like a dog. People are going to not accept him. And then I’m going to have to worry about him when he walks into that apartment and shuts that door and looks at himself in the mirror. And I’m going to have to wonder about his mental stability. Others worry about his touchdown passes--I wonder about where he’s going to go.

“So,” he added, exhaling slowly, “this is big.”

For the record, Reamon thinks Vick will do just fine, both on and off the field. And so far, he’s made all the right calls concerning the 6-foot-1, 214-pound left-hander, who burst on the college football scene last September with such force that just three months later, he would gain 13 first-place votes and finish third in the Heisman Trophy voting. Only two other freshmen--Georgia’s Herschel Walker in 1980 and Georgia Tech’s Clint Castleberry in 1942--had ever finished as high in the voting.

This hot and cloudy day, on the field where Reamon turned the soft-spoken Vick into what some are calling a new breed of quarterback--elusive, mobile, accurate and improvisational--Vick’s 16-year-old brother, Marcus, is flinging passes all over the place. Standing in the middle of the field, Reamon is wearing the smile of someone who knows something special is going to happen again.

“He’s going to be great and he doesn’t know it,” Reamon said of the high school junior while walking toward the sideline to greet Vick’s parents, Brenda and Michael Boddie, both of whom are sporting Virginia Tech maroon and orange garb. “He’s got more fluidness then Michael at this stage.”

Better than Michael? Perhaps Reamon, a former pro running back in the mid-1970s, has been swept up in Vickmania like nearly everyone else. But one person not questioning Reamon is Michael Vick himself, who remembers his ex-coach telling him before the ’99 season about being ready to embark on an incredible journey.

“It was like he saw it coming,” Vick said last month in Blacksburg.

Reamon wasn’t alone. Hokies coach Frank Beamer, offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Rickey Bustle, and his mother--the cornerstones of what Reamon calls Vick’s incredible support network--told Vick the same thing.

“I’m a redshirt freshman and they’re all telling me this is going to be my year,” Vick continued. “It was like they looked into the future and just knew. I sit back now and think about that. And I smile.”

Marcus said: “We knew he was going to be good, but he shocked all of us.”

Michael Vick, who in high school took a back seat to the area’s, if not the nation’s, biggest star in Hampton High’s Ronald Curry--now at North Carolina--was a virtual unknown when last season started. By season’s end, Vick had thrown for 1,840 yards and 12 touchdowns, run for 585 yards and another eight TDs and led the Hokies to an 11-0 record before a 46-29 loss to Florida State in the Sugar Bowl.

Vick was magnificent even in defeat, accounting for 322 of the Hokies’ 502 yards. He threw for 225 yards and a TD and ran for 97 yards and another score.

“That guy was awesome,” Seminoles safety Sean Key said after the game.

The 2000 season opens next weekend--the Hokies are home to Georgia Tech on Aug. 27--and guess what? The 20-year-old Vick is the Heisman front-runner.

“Michael will be good,” Beamer said. “He hasn’t backed down from anything that’s happened yet. There will be a lot written about what’s expected, but I’ve told Michael not to worry about that--just prepare yourself well, play the way you can and everything will turn out fine.”

Easy for Beamer to say now. But just what was it about Vick that gave those among his inner circle enough confidence to predict greatness?

“When I first saw him on film when he was in the 10th grade, the quick release hit you like a sledgehammer,” said Bustle, who starts his 13th season with the Hokies. “It was just, Pop! You don’t see that so early. And that was the thing--the zip and velocity on the ball and the quickness of the release. But when he came here and I saw him in person, and saw him throw a few balls with such a lack of effort, I remember saying, ‘Holy smoke! This is going to be good!”’

Ask Bustle about Vick’s greatest asset, and you’ll get this: “Is it his arm? Is it his running? No. I’d have to say it’s his personality. He is the most even-keeled young athlete I’ve ever been around. The coolness he plays with, his maturity--I’ve never seen anything like it.”

His coaches credit his mother, who was just 16 when she had Michael’s older sister, Christine, and 17 when she gave birth to Michael. Exhausted after coming home every day after high school to take care of her babies, Brenda quickly vowed her children would have a better life.

“The two things I always stressed to them were not to have kids when they were so young, because it’s so hard,” said Brenda, who 11 years ago was married to the childrens’ father. (Christine, Michael and Marcus kept their mother’s maiden name; 9-year-old Courtney goes by Boddie). “The other thing was to stay away from the drug life. I told them there were two ways you could end up--dead or in jail. So their father and I worked to make sure they had everything they needed, like new tennis shoes, and most of everything they wanted, as well.”

As Christine remembers, Michael grew up not only surrounded by love but very much the glowing center of the close-knit family even in the absence of his father. Vick still thinks of his father as more of an uncle because of his frequent absences, but says, “He’s back home and we’re getting closer and I’m happy about it.”

He never lacked for attention, though.

“He is the best, sweetest brother in the world,” said Christine, who was a cheerleader for the Little League football team on which Michael played. “When he was little, you’d try to stay mad at him for something, anything, but then he’d give you that smile and I’d do whatever he wanted. But he never took advantage.”

These days, after gracing the cover of nearly every preseason magazine, appearing on national TV to receive an ESPY award for college player of the year and getting drafted by the Colorado Rockies after not having picked up a baseball in six years (“We think he’s that talented,” the Rockies said), it would be understandable if Vick were somehow changed by fame. But, his coaches say, he’s not.

“Michael is still Michael, that’s what’s so amazing about him,” Beamer said. “He is a kid you want to be around. He’s confident, and he hasn’t let all this get to him.”

It’s easy to see how talented Vick is. But what his family knows better than anyone else is what makes him tick. And that’s having a support system when he needs it. He calls his mother nearly every day and she still calls him “Ookie”--the name given him by his aunt after she saw the muscles he had even as a toddler. He talks to Reamon before every game, and trusts his coaches implicitly.

“He needed to go into a relationship situation,” Reamon said. “He’s not some kid from a bad background. He’s got a tremendous family and a tremendous support system, and I was happy when he chose Tech.”

And happy when Vick was redshirted in 1998.

“We just wanted to bring him along slowly, not give him too much too fast” Bustle said. “We had a quarterback, and Michael needed to get settled into school and get a good grasp of what we were doing.”

“It was best for Michael,” said Brenda, standing near her minivan with the personal license plate “VT MOM 7.”

Three years after Vick’s graduation, Reamon remains as protective as a mother hen. He was, for instance, annoyed when he found out Vick had signed 300 autographs at Virginia Tech’s media day earlier this month.

“Would you want to do that?” Reamon asked. “The most important thing is how the adults around him handle things.”

The Hokies sports information office, which set up a Web site for Vick last month (nearly 100,000 hits since July 26), has been deluged with interview requests. Beamer promises the school will do its best to keep Vick’s schedule under control.

“People need to have access to him, but his life doesn’t need to change so much that he’s getting away from what’s really important, and that’s how he plays,” Beamer said. “The thing with Michael is he has a hard time saying no, so we have to put some order in his week.”

Can there ever be order again? Agents are swarming, anticipating he will turn pro after the season. “I just don’t talk to them,” he says.

People recognize him at Kmart and Burger King. “It comes with the territory. It’s OK,” he adds.

And folks in Newport News recognize his mother, the most famous school bus driver in town. “Are you Michael Vick’s mom?” the kids ask her as they hop aboard and look up at pictures of her two football-playing sons hanging from a visor. “Can you get me his autograph?”

Brenda’s bus, No. 121, broke down last year, but she’ll be getting a new one soon. “Maybe they’ll give me bus No. 7,” she said, smiling.

And what is Michael Vick hoping for this season?

“To try to be one of the most exciting players in college football,” he said. “It’s hard to have goals after last season, but I’ll go out there and work hard, continue to make plays, make first downs and we’ll see what happens.”

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Michael Vick Profile

NAME: Michael Dwayne Vick

NICKNAME: Ookie

AGE: 20 (Born June 26, 1980)

BIRTHPLACE: Newport News, Va.

HIGH SCHOOL: Warwick High School, Newport News, Va.

COLLEGE: Virginia Tech

POSITION: Quarterback

HEIGHT: 6-1

WEIGHT: 214 pounds

40-YARD DASH TIME: 4.23 seconds.

1999 STATS: 90-of-152 for 1,240 yards and 12 TDs; 108 carries for 585 yards and 8 TDs.

FAMILY: Mom, Brenda Boddie; Dad, Michael Boddie; sisters, Christine Vick, 21, Courtney Boddie, 9; brother, Marcus Vick, 16

WEB SITE: www.hokiesportsinfo.com/vick

HONORS: Won 1999 ESPY as top college football player; Archie Griffin Award as nation’s MVP in college football; third in Heisman Trophy voting; second in AP player of the year voting; freshman of the year by The Sporting News; second-team AP All-America team; led I-A in passing efficiency; Big East player of the year; Big East rookie of the year.