MORGANTOWN — There is a football game today, an important football game for West Virginia University and its No. 5-ranked Mountaineers.

To some, it is all that matters on this Saturday afternoon.

They are the unfortunate ones, for they miss the point entirely.

Football games are fun, entertaining, exciting. But they are games.

Put another way, they are games people play and, on this afternoon, we want to look not at x’s and o’s or box scores or instant replays, but at hearts and at souls and to try and understand the mini-dramas that go on within each game.

This isn’t about fumbles and laterals, unless you are talking about the fumbles and laterals of life.

East Carolina will come and it will go, followed by South Florida and a host of other schools, each of them just a scene in the real-life play that is developing here.

If there is intrigue it is not about why WVU has fallen two spots in the polls while winning games, but it is about the interplay within the team, the chemistry that has changed so much with the emergence of freshman Noel Devine.

They say two is company, three’s a crowd, but with Devine stepping forward to join All-American Steve Slaton and Big East offensive player of the year Patrick White in the West Virginia backfield, there are adjustments that must be made.

First one must understand the Noel Devine story, the tale of a kid in search of himself out of Fort Myers, Fla., wonderfully gifted on the athletic field but cursed in his real life, both his parents having died from complications from AIDS by the time he was 12.

This left him without the family structure that is so necessary for character development, left him to fend for himself in a world that often devours its unguided young.

“He’s a very strong person,” said Slaton, who has been the big brother figure Devine needed on campus. “He’s very humble because of that. I know a lot of kids who come from one-parent families and aren’t raised right. Here’s a kid who has no parents and to be what he is seems to be amazing. It shows his character.”

Slaton played a big hand in recruiting Devine. He was his host during his recruiting visit, guiding him during Rutgers week, letting him know that he wasn’t coming to WVU to be part of a team, that he was coming to be part of a family.

“I just let him see the atmosphere at West Virginia,” Slaton said. “The people here did a lot to help out. He liked the place overall.”

It is much like the emphasis running back coach Calvin Magee used with him as he led the early recruiting of this much-sought-after high school star.

“It’s definitely different recruiting such a high-profile player because of all the attention it gets,” Magee admitted.

Normally, you sit in the kitchen with his parents, but there were no parents. There was a coach, a grandmother, and Deion Sanders, the former NFL great from Fort Myers who had befriended Devine.

The nation’s eyes were on this one. Sanders seemed to be in favor of Devine going to a prep school, but he wouldn’t buy that. WVU had found the way to his heart.

“He’s just a kid. He needs to hear people care for him,” Magee said.

In the end, that was what got him to Morgantown. But how would he react once he was here? He was behind Slaton on the depth chart, needing to adjust to a different football situation, adjust to school, adjust to life as it is.

And, he had to do all that while being the father of two children before age 18.

The football part was the easiest. He advanced far more quickly than anyone had a right to imagine he would.

“He’s learned as quickly as any true freshman we’ve had at that position. He’s where Steve was at this time two years ago.,” coach Rich Rodriguez said.

Slaton disagreed.

“He’s further along than I was,” Slaton said.

“It’s good to hear him stay that. Steve is just special. He’s so unselfish. There’s a bond that has developed there,” Magee noted.

Indeed, the bond is so strong that Slaton is hardly threatened by the early success Devine had, by his coming-out party at Maryland when he gained 136 yards on five carries, averaging 27.2 yards a try. All of a sudden he was the new story in town, if not taking some of Slaton’s reps from him on the field, taking some of the national media attention from him.

By Tuesday night, USA Today was in Morgantown for a story on Devine.

Other players might be offended. Not Slaton.

“It’s probably a welcome relief for Steve. He’s got someone else to deflect the attention,” Rodriguez said. “This is a small town, and you get a lot of attention when you are Steve Slaton. It can be a burden. You can’t go the grocery story without someone stopping you for an autograph. You should be glad that happens, but some people don’t understand that it’s happening all the time.”

Slaton admits that Devine’s ability to take some of the interviews from him and White is a help, but he also understands the obligation that comes with success.

“It comes with the territory,” he said of the interviews and autographs and interruptions that are part of being famous.

Rodriguez is less worried about the affect it might have on Slaton than the affect it might have on Devine, who has not yet “been there, done that” as Rodriguez indicated Slaton had been.

“We have to make sure he keeps it in prospective. I know after he came off the field (in Maryland) the first thing I said to him was, ‘Stay humble, stay hungry,’” Rodriguez said. “But he’s so much like Pat and Steve that I don’t worry so much about him.”

In this era of cocky athletes who strut and dance, Devine is more low-key, quiet. The word most used to describe him is “humble.”

“Everyone thinks he’s a big shot, but he’s very humble,” said Jock Sanders, another budding star running back out of Florida.

As for Devine, he’s just waiting for more snaps, more chances to show what he’s got. It’s expected today that Rodriguez may debut him and Slaton in the same backfield.

“That’s pretty fast,” he said, smiling. “Kind of scary.”

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.