Next-to-Last Man Standing

His on-field bounty proved less plentiful. King, a solid center fielder and an average hitter, suffered the nomadic rigors of the minor leagues. He ascended no higher than Double-A while playing for affiliates of the Braves, Cincinnati Reds, and Tampa Bay Devil Rays, drifting from Chattanooga to Durham to Wherever. By 1997, he heard his athletic clock ticking.

"I gave myself a timetable of four years to make it to the majors," he says. "I'd seen guys who would get called up to the show for a week or two at the end of a season, and that's all they ever got. I didn't want to be like that."

Nor did he want to be "one of those guys who goes back to real life and drives a UPS truck." So King stopped wandering baseball's back roads to walk on at Miami, which had courted him as a high schooler. He would earn a degree, if not an NFL career.

Initially, the decision could not have seemed worse. He soon learned after arriving that a pair of fellow freshmen, Santana Moss and Reggie Wayne, were the team's preordained stars at receiver. Next to two teenagers, the then-23-year-old King resembled a new baby-sitter.

He resisted the knee-jerk urge to transfer to another school, instead becoming a mentor to his teammates in general and an older brother to Moss and Wayne in particular. In the end, King says, playing behind two All-Americans benefited him more than if he had posted 60 catches a season for, say, Troy State.

"I wouldn't trade the experience at Miami. Yeah, I might have been a starter somewhere else, I might have had better numbers. But I got to play with two of the best."

King flourished on special teams and backed up Moss and Wayne, pulling down 64 catches and three touchdowns over four years. Nice numbers to brag about around the office water cooler one day, but nowhere near the stats that set NFL scouts to purring. Those were posted by Moss and Wayne, both of whom were first-round choices in April.

The selection of two teammates and pals might have been as close as King got to the draft, if not for the Browns' hiring of head coach Butch Davis in January. Davis had coached King at Miami for four years, rewarding him with a three-year scholarship after he walked on. When the time came for the Browns' last pick, Davis remembered the receiver everyone else forgot.

A final-round NFL draft choice can be likened to the playground runt picked last for kickball. While he's on the team, almost nothing is expected of him, and sooner or later -- probably sooner -- he gets the ax. Some football insiders considered King a sympathy pick, a coach's way of saying thanks to a loyal soldier with no real shot at the NFL. Davis felt otherwise.

"To some extent," he says, "Andre was in an unfortunate situation, playing with Reggie Wayne and Santana Moss. He probably could have started at any other school in the country and had 40 or 50 catches a year."

But never mind numbers. "You couldn't ask for a finer person," Davis adds. "He's a terrific guy. I compare him to Ernie Banks -- he wants to play a doubleheader every day."

Few plateaus in professional sports are easier to reach than that of "terrific guy." Stay off the police blotter, don't spit on fans, refrain from referring to yourself in the third person -- that's all it takes. Yet King qualifies without lowered expectations, a truth vouched for by coaches and teammates.

"He's one outstanding individual," Curtis Johnson says. "They don't make 'em any better."

Johnson, Miami's receivers coach, can tick off from memory King's lunch-pail efforts in college: a lunging catch over the middle for a first down, a downfield block that sprang Moss for a score. It's recalling his off-field manner, however, that brings Johnson to full gush.

He remembers how King always arrived before practice to study game film and stayed late to rehash strategy. Or how King, a self-avowed "aquarium freak," took time to fix the fish tank of Johnson's 11-year-old son. Or how he responded when coaches paired veteran players with newcomers to smooth their transition to college.

King inherited the hardest-headed freshmen -- the high-school phenoms too cool and callow to listen to coaches or attend class. He broke them down as he would an upcoming opponent, exposing holes in their approach to life. In time, King helped bring the young men to heel.

"The Browns got a steal with that kid," Johnson says.

King validates the appraisal in person. He shows disarming patience in answering questions he's heard countless times before. He smiles easily -- evidence that, in contrast to too many other athletes, he recognizes there are actually worse plights than dealing with reporters. When he recalls his shyness at meeting Reds shortstop Barry Larkin a few years back, he becomes sheepish all over again. His eyes drop to the floor as he paws at a jersey hanging in his locker.