KANSAS CITY --- A sharp wit, scholarly perspective and affable nature have drawn regular Colorado football writers and readers to defensive tackle George Hypolite the past three years for insight on the inner workings of the team and just about anything else.

The rest of the conference discovered the joy of covering a unique young man from Los Angeles this week at Big 12 football media days.

Outside one of the ballrooms in the downtown Marriott hotel here Tuesday one Big 12 radio announcer was heard telling another, "If you don t get anyone else while you're here, make sure you get George Hypolite from Colorado. He is the best guy I've ever had on."

Hypolite is a rare breed. He graduated in three years with two degrees -- in women's studies and ethnic studies -- while simultaneously becoming one of the best defensive linemen in the country. He is a first-team member of the All-Big 12 team and a candidate for just about every major award for defensive players and linemen.

He is working on his honors 200-page thesis in "An Interrogation in African-American Masculinity Through a Social Constructionist Decolonial and Feminist Gaze." Hypolite hopes to be an attorney one day and has spent the past twosummers as an intern in the CU marketing office where he sold season tickets among other responsibilities.

He will be one of four Big 12 players and 21 total players from around the country writing a column for The Sporting News this season. The columns will feature player perspectives concerning football and the other parts of college life.

Missouri quarterback Chase Daniel, Texas quarterback Colt McCoy and Nebraska wide receiver Todd Peterson also are writing columns.

"He's a very smart kid," CU coach Dan Hawkins said. "He's very intelligent and he's always got some great things to say," Hawkins said. "In this day and age, and you guys know this, everybody is all about reality TV, and they want to tape a camera to everybody's head and have them walk around for two weeks and get it all on tape.

"But he is a very bright kid a very mature kid and I think he'll do a good job with it."

Hypolite, who was raised by a single mother, Mary, a librarian at Southern Cal, said the primary influences in his life have been female. Those influences, including his third grade teacher, Barbara Chambers, and his eighth grade teacher, the late Mrs. Watson, inspired him to want to help people and be the best he can be.

Here is a sampling of some of the questions Hypolite was asked Tuesday and his perspectives:

Q. Are defenses getting any closer to figuring out the spread offense.

GH: The spread, what's unique about it is they put you in a lot of compromising positions because there are a lot of one-on-one tackles. It's really hard to gang tackle the spread, which gets the ball out in 2.2 seconds. So a receiver is one-on-one with the corner and if he breaks a tackle, that's 15 extra yards. So I think that running the spread puts the defense on an island.

Q. Given your team's schedule this year, how much improvement has to be made in order for an improved record to result?

GH: It's funny. Teams change year to year. Every team is different. I don't care if you won a national championship or you were the 119th team in the NCAA. And you have to respect that and understand that, 'Hey, I may be watching film from last year, but this team is going to be entirely different because you never know those guys are going to gel together. There is always going to be somebody who nobody ever thought about and nobody could predict who is going to come out and just start knocking people off. ... As a football team, we just have to rely on the process and make sure that every day we come in and put quality work in and get done what our coaches want us to get done. And off the field we need to get it done like out coaches want us to get it done. If we can do that, we'll be fine."

Q: How much have you thought about playing Texas given what happened last time you played the Longhorns (2005 Big 12 championship game)?

GH: 70 to 3, it's going to stick, and I think there was a nasty, nasty glow hanging over our program for about two years because of the 70-3 loss. You still have to take it every game at a time. I can't worry about Texas right now because I have to beat CSU, and if I don't beat CSU, what does it matter if I beat Texas or not? I think it hurt a lot, but, hey, we've got to go play football.

Q. How did season-ticket sales go?

GH: You know, I didn't do as well as I did last year. Last year I sold a lot of tickets. This year I was kind of somewhere in the middle. Maybe I just didn't have my magical touch this year. I think it was beginners luck last year. That's a really difficult process. As a student-athlete, you get a lot more respect for the people who do this job on a day-to-day basis because it's hard making cold calls, going on business meetings and not knowing what this person's interest level is and then selling them on something that is not Texas or Oklahoma or Miami or USC football. That everyone knows about. You know, selling to them, 'Hey, this is Boulder, Colorado. We're going to put a great product on the field and you might want to get your tickets before we run off 12 straight victories and go to a national championship and then there are not tickets available.'

Q. Talk about your chance to be in the news media as a writer.

GH: I thought it was the coolest thing I've ever heard of because I get to somehow write a column that everyone is going to read every week. I don't know exactly what I'm going to write about from week to week, but hopefully I can voice some issues that student-athletes are going through on a week-to-week basis, write some fun columns and talk about some community service initiatives that I'm doing.

Q. You got a degree in three years. Do you think some student-athletes don't set the bar high enough and think five years and may not even get it in five years?

GH: I think that comes down to student-athlete visibility. A lot of people go, 'Well, you set the bar at five years.' Well there are a lot of students who don't get a degree in five years. There are a lot of regular students, most regular students want to stick around in college for five years. For me, I was just driven to do that. I wanted to get my degrees in three years so I could play my senior year without having that looming over me. It was a big push from the moment I stepped on campus and I pushed it that way. I think that's all just me and it's not saying anything about there was something special about me. That was just my goal. I think if student-athletes come to college with goals on what to do academically as well as athletically, they will have a better shot at it.