Here was Denard Robinson, a freshman at football-delirious Michigan, with his free-flowing dreadlocks popping out from the back of his helmet and his shoelaces untied.

And here was a problem.

Not a problem with a position change or a coaching change. That would come later. Not a problem with an injury -- like the one this season that was kept secret for months and landed him in the hospital.

No, this problem was quite simple compared to all that:

No one could understand a word the guy was saying.

Robinson was young, unsure of himself, and, according to center David Molk, "a scared little kid who didn't know what to do."

And this kid wanted to play quarterback? At Michigan? A school known for producing guys that win Super Bowls?

Sure he had the guts. He grew up in a tough section of the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Deerfield Beach, where the realties of life require faith and tenacity. It's not too far from Riviera Beach, where quiet-but-beloved receiver Anthony Carter was raised.

But Anthony Carter could go an entire collegiate career without speaking. Not Robinson. Not if we wanted to win the starter's job.

Yet Robinson, shy by nature and careful with every word spoke nearly as quickly as he ran. His southern drawl -- described by teammates as "Talking Florida" was barely discernable to Molk, who struggled to understand snap counts or checks Robinson made at the line of scrimmage.

Molk knew if this quarterback-center relationship was ever to work -- if Robinson was ever to work -- someone was going to have to slow down.

"I told him to take out his mouthpiece when he talked," Molk says now, three years later, in a hotel ballroom in New Orleans, where Michigan will play in its first BCS bowl game in five years in Tuesday night’s Sugar Bowl against Virginia Tech.

"I couldn’t understand anything."

Three years later, after many tough losses, coaching dramas and injury scares, the tentative kid from Deerfield Beach has become the face of Michigan football. And if he stays healthy, Denard Robinson has a chance to leave campus next year as one of the best ever to wear the winged helmet.

It's somewhat appropriate that Michigan is playing Virginia Tech Tuesday, as Robinson's childhood hero was Blacksburg hero Michael Vick. Robinson patterned his game after Vick but realized he wasn't as big and didn't have the arm. College offers -- especially to play quarterback -- were almost non-existent. Recruiters considered Robinson more of an athlete, a gifted runner with a knack for making enough people miss to get him into the open. But how many of those come out of Florida every year? Plenty.

"When I got to high school, I was like, 'Hopefully, I can get to a Division II school,'" Robinson says. "I was undersized and I didn't know anyone would look at me. I was like, 'Hopefully, I can just get out of the city of Deerfield.'"

Rich Rodriguez, the mastermind behind the spread offense, saw Robinson as a perfect fit for the new, free-wheeling system he was installing at Michigan. Robinson had run more of a pro-style set at Deerfield Beach High School, but he figured if Rodriguez wanted to bring him to Michigan, he wasn't going to argue.

The coach was sold, but Molk, who would go on to be named the nation's top collegiate center in his final year at Michigan, had his doubts.

"He'd sit back there as the quarterback and he'd be so scared, he wouldn't catch the snap half the time," Molk says.

If nothing else, Robinson had his legs to bail him out. He was far from polished and struggled with throwing the football, but he could run. His feet, unlaced cleats and all, could take Robinson places. Even if his hands and throwing weren’t sure, "Shoelace" (as one of his football coaches back in Florida crowned him) had a second line of defense.

"He'd just go -- that's what he does," Molk says. "He can make a play out of nothing."