Editor’s note: This story was originally published in Friday’s edition of Touchdown Times.

E.B. Halsey has only one speed – fast.

At practice, the running back skirts around defenders to catch a pass before tumbling to the ground. He jumps up and hustles to where his practice line will wait to run through the drill again. He is not afraid to grab ahold of a teammate and explain how a play should be run or correct a mistake. It is this leadership that Illinois head coach Ron Zook admires and has endeared Halsey, a junior, to his teammates.

“I like to win; I play hard, I think the guys on the team understand that,” Halsey said. “Sometimes I might be shouting and yelling at them, but they know that I love them.”

Halsey has also proven himself on the field.

Despite an injury-filled sophomore year that limited his ability to maneuver around defenders, he was eighth in the Big Ten in punt returns and tied for second on the team with five touchdowns. He needs just 25 rushing yards to reach 1,000 career yards.

“He’s a competitor; he’s tough,” Zook said. “He’s a guy that when the bullets start flying, you want him on your team.”

This weekend, Halsey will add an extra dimension to a team that is utilizing its high-speed, no-huddle offense for the first time.

“I definitely won’t be 100 percent,” said Halsey, who only returned to full-speed practices Monday after sustaining an ankle injury. “But I will be playing in that game – guaranteed.”

Halsey has made it clear that losing the season opener is not an option.

But very little of that determination comes from the Illini’s need to recover from two disappointing seasons, where Illinois won just one Big Ten game in its last 16 attempts. Nor does he seem particularly concerned about starting the Ron Zook Era on a positive note – the atmosphere surrounding practices is already upbeat thanks to the seemingly endless energy Zook provides.

This game is personal.

When Rutgers arrives from Piscataway, N.J., for Saturday’s game, there is a lifetime worth of bragging rights at stake.

Halsey, a native of Elizabeth, N.J., came to Illinois to compete as a gray shirt in the spring of 2003, despite being highly recruited by Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano.

“I’ve always wanted to get out of state and get away from home and see other places,” Halsey said of his decision to play for the Illini. “When I was growing up, I was a huge fan of the Big Ten conference, so I knew that that was a conference I wanted to play in.”

Since his decision was made, though, Halsey’s career – and the team’s performance – has been quite different than one might have expected.

There were coaching changes and a brand new offense to learn this season. And, before that, Halsey found himself in scrapes with the law.

Halsey’s enrollment was originally delayed by a year until after he was cleared of a sexual assault allegation involving a girl he did not know was underage. Shortly after Zook was hired, Halsey found himself in trouble again, when he was pulled over for speeding, and the rental car he was driving was registered in his uncle’s name – a mix-up that resulted in a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.

“We made a little pact right there, and he’s lived by it, and I stood behind him,” Zook said. “As I told the whole football team when we got here, everyone is going to start out fresh and we’ll go from there.”

The Rutgers program is in the midst of an about-face since Halsey led Elizabeth to the New Jersey state championship in 1999 and 2000. Under Schiano, Rutgers has been able to recruit some of the most talented athletes in New Jersey and has returned 16 starters from last year’s team. Illinois has only four senior starters this weekend.

But, Halsey said, he is not predicting how the game will unfold quite yet.

“I’ve never seen a game won or lost on paper,” he said.

He has, however, been fielding phone calls from friends in New Jersey who know Halsey will see high school teammates Keith Taylor and Ishmael Medley this weekend. The game has been circled twice on his calendar since last year when he found out Rutgers was on the schedule.

“They know that I want to win, and I know (they) want to win,” Halsey said. “It’s definitely going to be a competitive game, but at the end of the day, we’re still friends – we still love each other.”

The teammates-turned-opponents have been trading good-natured barbs as Illinois’ season-opener approaches, but Halsey said he has blocked it from his mind for now.

“Nobody wants to go home a loser and have the other one be able to do all the trash talking,” Halsey said. “I don’t think, right now, trash talking is the key.”

Sharriff Abdullah, Halsey’s roommate, has noticed some changes in the 5-foot-10, 200-pound running back and the way he is approaching this weekend’s game.

“He’s really focused about these boys coming into town because he knows once he goes home he has to have that bragging right,” Abdullah, a defensive back on the Illinois team, said.

If Halsey has changed his behavior, though, he believes very few people will notice. He prides himself in being able to separate his job on the field and his life away from the gridiron.

“I really like to go incognito off the field,” Halsey said. “Off the field, I don’t really feel like I have anything to prove to anybody, I can just be me.”

Instead of the fiery personality that he brings to the football field, Halsey is shy in person. He will talk to anyone, he said, and tends to put people at ease with his engaging smile, but he does not like to be the center of attention. Despite being a standout on the Illinois football team for several years, he is still somewhat surprised when he gets asked for autographs.

“It’s kind of flattering when you walk around and see little kids, and they’re pointing at you and asking for autographs, that stuff is special to me,” Halsey said. “What I can do on the field can make me a special person in some people’s eyes.”

To most people, though, Halsey is “like a normal person.”

He prefers the smooth balladry of Luther Vandross over the popular music played on many local radio stations. He is the neat one in the apartment he and Abdullah share. Instead of going out to dinner like many college students, he prefers cooking – almost anything, except pork, which he does not eat – at home and is a good cook, according to Abdullah.

On game days, Abdullah said, Halsey tries to keep everyone calm. The men will sit around and crack jokes or talk about other teams’ games.

Once Halsey pulls on his No. 26 jersey and runs onto the field of Memorial Stadium, however, he is on stage.

“This is my chance to perform; I feel like an entertainer when I’m out here, so I want to give it my all,” Halsey said. “I want people to, when they see me play, get that energy and that feeling that good things are coming. I really feel that this is going to be a magical year for us.”