Twenty-eight days shy of the 2010 football games, the Miami Hurricanes opened fall camp training sessions on campus with two yours of intensive practice under a warm morning sun.

New recruit Seantrel Henderson, the 6’8″, 330-pound 18-year-old from St. Paul Minnesota attracted much attention on the practice field as much because of being a much-sought-after newbie as for his impressive physical dimensions and dreadlocks. Schools like Florida and USC had wanted him on their team. In fact, for a while it looked like he was determined to wait out the two-year bowl ban with which USC had been penalized by the NCAA. But he finally decided to go in with the Hurricanes.

The season’s Hurricane coach, Randy Shannon, is looking forward to training the big guy for his first serious game for the team. According to the coach, the first week will be spent breaking the guy in. He expects that time to be the hardest for the new recruit. By the second week, the big guy will have adjusted his pace and should, by the third week, be going full-gear. Henderson should be in top shape for his first game by the time the football season officially opens.

Senior Running Back Graig Cooper is back on the field after tearing his anterior cruciate ligament in the right knee last December 30 during the Champs Sports Bowl in which Miami lost to Wisconsin. The injury came after he slipped on the badly conditioned field. After a quarter of a year later, he says he is fit to play in all 14 games of the season. However, coach Randy Shannon is thinking of giving him until the fourth game to prove he can really make it. Otherwise, that is as far as he goes this season.

A great career was ahead of Cooper before his mishap. On record he has 2,218 career yards. He had been ranked fifth in a list which featured all the top back runners of UM. Just before his accident he had been thinking about the 2010 NFL draft.

The case of Cooper isn’t the first. Before him two other running backs suffered the same fate. One of these was Willis McGahee who eventually recovered to become an NFL player. The other one, Melvin Bratton, did not recover and is currently working as a sports agent. Bratton’s accident preceded McGahee’s and Bratton had the chance to visit him while he was recuperating in the hospital.

The USA Today preseason coaches announced one day after the opening of Fall camp that the Hurricanes currently rank 13 according to their polls. The teams occupying the top 5 positions are Alabama, Ohio State, Florida, Texas and Bois State. The hurricanes came up higher in this count than they had been in the same poll last year when they were number 19. The team is scheduled to play against six of the top 25 teams.

The Hurricanes do not probably have that good a chance for becoming national champions this year because the USA today poll count is one of the determining factors used in choosing the national champion. But who knows?

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