Cook eager to earn starting job again at U.Va.

CHARLOTTESVILLE Facing a year's suspension from the University of Virginia, Chris Cook considered early entry into the NFL draft. His mother and grandfather told Cook they'd support him in whatever he did, and he went so far as to sign the necessary papers.

Cook never submitted his paperwork, however, and for that U.Va. football fans can be grateful. The 6-2, 204-pound cornerback from Lynchburg was re-admitted to school in January, and he's probably as talented as any player in the Cavaliers' secondary. Cook has been working with the second team this spring, but he may not stay there long.

"I gotta earn it back," Cook said the other night. "I was prepared to do that anyway. I wasn't expecting to be on the second team. I was expecting to be a little further down than that."

Cook has started 19 games for the Wahoos. Coach Al Groh said yesterday that returning Cook to the first team immediately would not have been fair "to the players who were here [in 2008], but he's clearly strongly in the rotation. If he's not, then who are we kidding? This was one of our better players two seasons ago, and so we have every expectation that he will be in a similar circumstance this year."

Cook played as a true freshman in 2005, but a broken leg marred his first season. He started 11 games as a sophomore, and by 2007 he ranked among the ACC's top cornerbacks. But on Dec. 26 of that year, moments before he was to join his teammates on a bus bound for the Charlottesville airport, Cook learned he'd been declared academically ineligible to play in the Gator Bowl.

While the rest of the team flew to Jacksonville, Fla., Cook stayed behind. The next month, he was one of four players suspended from U.Va. for a year because of poor grades.

"I was just not doing what I was supposed to, not taking advantage of everything I had," Cook said this week. "I wish it would have happened different, but you can't change it, so I've got to live and learn."

He went home to Lynchburg. For part of the year, he worked in a Sears warehouse, moving refrigerators and loading trucks. Football never was far from his mind.

"That's all I thought about," Cook said.

He visited his former teammates in Charlottesville a couple of times last fall, but didn't attend many games at Scott Stadium. He'd watch on TV from his home. When U.Va. played at Virginia Tech in late November, Cook saw his cousin, Vic Hall, sparkle in his first start at quarterback for the Cavaliers.

"I stood up the whole game in my house," Cook recalled.

He stayed in shape by playing basketball and by running, and his weight is the same as before his suspension. His closest friends on the team remain Hall and quarterback Jameel Sewell -- another academic casualty in 2008 -- and the three of them live together.

Not everything is the same for Cook. He's taking direction from a new secondary coach: Anthony Poindexter, who previously worked with Virginia's running backs. A legend in the Lynchburg area, Poindexter starred at Jefferson Forest High before becoming an All-America safety at Virginia.

"I always had a relationship with Dex, just because he's from down in my area," Cook said. "He brings a lot of intensity to the d-backs, just because he's a former d-back, and he wants us to play a certain way, because of how he used to play. He wants everybody in the secondary to play like that."