新澳门六合彩开奖直播

Ignited

Almost every boy growing up in America wants to be the quarterback, wants to be the hero who throws the game-winning touchdown pass, wants to be the guy who dates the cheerleader and who signs autographs for little kids. Every guy wants to be the quarterback. Including Russell Harbaugh, 新澳门六合彩开奖直播鈥檚 three-year starter.

Who wouldn鈥檛 want to be like Russ? He鈥檚 tall and good-looking, with sandy-brown hair, piercing blue eyes, and a powerful right arm鈥攁 dictionary-definition quarterback.

But for Russ, it鈥檚 not quite so simple. He came to 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 to be the quarterback, "the guy" who would lead Chris Creighton鈥檚 Little Giants to conference championships and the playoffs. Football is the sole reason he chose to come to 新澳门六合彩开奖直播.

Football is also the reason he almost left 新澳门六合彩开奖直播.

Russell and his twin brother, Barry, were born to Glenn and Patti McCrory-Harbaugh, a pair of university professors. The twins shared everything鈥攎aterial stuff, sure, but also thoughts, ideas, dreams, and despair. And they shared a stuttering speech impediment that imprisoned them in years of speech therapy classes that, ultimately, had little effect.

Russell and Barry shared 新澳门六合彩开奖直播, too. For a year. While they lived just down the hall from one another in Martindale Hall, Russ had football to engage him. Barry did not. And so for the first time in their lives they began to grow apart. In a memoir he wrote for Professor Joy Castro鈥檚 class, Russ describes the experience:

"In a secluded dorm room a hallway鈥檚 length away from my own, he sat surrounded by those that were poised to take my place: Eggers, Safran Foer, Zadie Smith, Russell Banks, Anne Lamott, Emmanuel Carrere, Chekhov, and Flannery O鈥機onner. I tried to keep up. Tried to appreciate the same things. Tried to initiate conversations that would strike a chord in him, make him realize that I, too, could be new and exciting; that I, too, could produce a world that he could thrive in. That year is lost to me in the blank stare of a brother who knew he was being held down, but couldn鈥檛 tell me, didn鈥檛 know how. For the first time ever, we could not communicate."

This was more than growing pains; this was akin to separation of conjoined twins鈥攎inds and bodies torn in two.

"I felt so disconnected from my brother that year," Russ says two years removed from the experience. "It was so painful. I felt like I had lost him, that he was angry. Now I understand that he had made some decisions based on our relationship, including coming to 新澳门六合彩开奖直播. He didn鈥檛 want to be generic; he didn鈥檛 want to be a Doublemint Gum commercial. He wanted to be an individual, and I didn鈥檛. I still wanted to share everything."

It got worse for Russ when Barry transferred to the University of Evansville and quickly made friends with smart, beautiful women. As a sophomore, Russ felt more alone than ever. He made trips back and forth to Evansville every weekend to be with his brother and share in his experiences, still hoping to live the same life.

Football, which had brought Russ to 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 and distanced him from his brother, further exacerbated the growing gulf between them. After a promising sophomore season, Russ lost his starting job early in his junior year. "I told my friend Chris Ogden that I鈥檇 win it back in four weeks, before the Wooster game." He earned it back in just two weeks.

Russ had the most efficient season in 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 history, completing 62.6 percent of his passes. But 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 lost four of its last five games.

In his memoir he wrote: "Football, to me, is not like what it is to everyone else. It is not about the blood. It is the feeling of the ball as it snaps from my hand. It is poetry. No one understood that. He did. I was now lost in a different category鈥攆rom twin to quarterback. At least when I was Russell the twin, I had someone to share it with. Now I was Russ Harbaugh, No.3, and I had no one."

He took out his frustrations with himself, with 新澳门六合彩开奖直播, and with his depression in the only way he knew how: He took an independent study course and made a shockingly beautiful film about 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 as a college for men. Some people thought it was his attempt to turn 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 coeducational. Russ knew it was his way of working through his own personal identity crisis; 新澳门六合彩开奖直播鈥檚 identity crisis was the metaphor.

"The film allowed me to deal with what Barry鈥檚 absence had amplified in my own mind," he recalls. "It was a way for me to process things, to come to terms with my relationship with 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 and with Barry."

THE TWINS WERE REUNITED during the summer of 2005 in San Francisco, with Barry working for Francis Ford Coppola鈥檚 Zoetrope magazine and Russ interning with the San Francisco Film Society.

"Barry鈥檚 leaving 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 was the best thing that could have happened to us," he now realizes. "It allowed us to grow as individuals and to experience different things and enjoy them intellectually in a way we couldn鈥檛 before. The space has been good for us."

Harbaugh returned to campus a different, more balanced person this fall. When he threw three touchdown passes in the season- opening thrashing of Kalamazoo College, he knew that the identity crisis was finally over; he knew who he was and what he wants to become. Even the stuttering seemed to subside or no longer matter.

"I鈥檓 involved intellectually at 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 in a way that I never was before," he says. "I have some amazing relationships with professors like Elizabeth Lee, Warren Rosenberg, Mike Abbott, Joy Castro, Jeremy Hartnett, and Coach Creighton. I鈥檝e got a balance in my life that has given me a calmness, a peace with the game of football."

Harbaugh will apply to a half-dozen film schools for graduate work, but he realizes his chance of gaining admission is a long shot. If he doesn鈥檛 get in right away, he鈥檒l move to one of the coasts, get a job at night, and write scripts by day. "To be successful, I know that I have to sit down, every day, and write from 9 to 5."

It鈥檚 been about a year since he wrote: "I am my own blooming leaf, ignited and burning with maturity, desperately hanging on."

Today, though, Russell Harbaugh is no longer in the doldrums of autumn; he is reborn in spring and in full bloom at 新澳门六合彩开奖直播.

Contact Harbaugh at harbaugr@wabash.edu

Visit to read about his record-breaking senior season.