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Editor's Note: Every week as part of Powerade Two-Star Tuesday, we'll feature a college football player who was lightly recruited and overlooked by most -- but is now proving them all wrong. When Steven Long crossed the goal line, he wasn’t thinking about the doctor who told him he might die if he ever played football again. He wasn't thinking about tearing his Achilles tendon in 2012, condemning him to a rehab that cost him a year of football and the twilight of his teen years. “I was thinking about the people who thought we were going to lose,” Long told ESPN.com. “To be able to cross that line was a special feeling because [my team] believed, man.”  Portland State’s stunning 24-17 victory over Washington State on Saturday – its first-ever win against a current Pac-12 team – was arguably the most resounding in program history.
The 31-point underdog Viks had only a 2.4 percent chance of actually winning the game, according to ESPN's FPI -- tying for the second-biggest college football upset of the past decade. But those odds aren't as vast compared to what Long, PSU's sophomore running back, has personally overcome. Long was a Haitian orphan, adopted and transplanted from Port-au-Prince to the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, by his parents, Jeff and Angie Long, when he was 4. He was always undersized -- even now, he stands 5-foot-7, 180 pounds -- but he compensated with superior instincts and speed throughout high school. And always, always he won. Long anchored back-to-back Oregon state title teams, first at the 5A level, then at the highest 6A after transferring before his senior season. He was in Sports Illustrated's “Faces In The Crowd” after a seven-touchdown game against the best high school team in Washington. Despite his one-star grade by ESPN's RecruitingNation, he graduated with a bright future as one of the most prolific high school running backs on the West Coast. Until he started losing. The Achilles injury was a freak thing -- a pop and a rupture while running hurdles during training. The cost was a grayshirt season spent rehabbing an injury from which some professional athletes never return. But Long climbed back, adding muscle to his frame and regaining his speed. He stood a summer away from finally returning to the field when the seizures began.  Jeff and Angie Long were woken up at 4 a.m. one night with the news their son was on his way to the hospital, gripped by spasms he would later liken to dreams. A battery of doctors found a parasitic lesion, possibly a souvenir from his early childhood in Haiti, that required immediate surgery to remove.
"He’s just an unbelievable young man," former PSU head coach Nigel Burton told The Oregonian shortly before his surgery. "I think a case study should be done on how to handle adversity by using him." Five days after the surgery, Long was back on the practice field reciprocating the support he had received from his teammates. "Everybody’s got a plan of what’s going to happen in their life," Long told reporters then. "I’m kind of a miracle child, being adopted and coming here and having everything that’s happened to me. It’s really put life into perspective." His health cautiously assured, doctors still warned Long there was no way to fully predict what would happen if he returned to football. How would his body and brain react to a hit? Would the titanium plate surgically installed to protect his skull hold up under football’s relentless violence? “When you go through a seizure and a doctor says you’ll never play sports again, you rely on the people around you,” Long told ESPN.com. "Your family and friends are your foundation. They help you see things a little brighter." Once again, Long made a full recovery. He gained confidence with every practice collision, and he entered this season projected as one of the Vikings' top contributors. So, no, the stakes weren't overwhelming when Barnum leaned on Long in the fourth quarter, with the Vikings tied 17-17 against the Cougars -- a team that had paid $525,000 expecting the Vikings to show up, receive their beating and go home. It's just a football game, after all; not life and death. "We knew we could run the ball against them," Long said. "Coach trusted me to go in and get the job done. I knew he was gonna put the game on me, and I knew I had to keep the ball high and tight and just get whatever yards I could. Don’t try to do too much, you know?" All game, the Viks bruised the Cougars with doses of traditional QB Alex Kuresa and wildcatter Paris Penn, and they ran 12 times during their 14-play, 69-yard go-ahead drive. But inside the red zone, it was all Long -- 6 yards, 4 yards, 3 yards, down to the 1-yard line. “During that last drive, I told my offensive line, ‘Don’t give up now. We’re right there,’” Long said. On third-and-goal, Long’s number was called again. Touchdown. “We still needed a big stop on defense,” Long points out. “Hats off to our defense playing a helluva game. They’re our backbone.” Aaron Sibley’s interception off a tipped ball, upheld on official review, clinched the upset. Asked if this game feels for him like the start of something new or the end of a long, uphill journey, Long paused and thought for a long while. "It’s obviously the start of a new era, new coach, new way of doing things,” he said. “But I really think it’s also about the past and putting that behind me. I overcame a lot. I’m a strong-willed person, and that goes back to my parents, instilling those roots in me. After all those injuries, to get a big win like this? It’s incredible." A tough Big Sky Conference slate awaits Portland State, against FCS heavyweights Montana and Eastern Washington among others. But Long warns the doubters: "This is just the start." After years of injury and uncertainty, the same can be said of Long.
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