It's Pretty Hard Not to Like Aaron Curry

NEW YORK -- They gave Aaron Curry his line and he couldn't believe it -- couldn't wait to deliver it. Clutching a microphone in his hand, he looked into the camera and belted it out.

"This is Aaron Curry for EA Sports," he said. "It's in the game!"

Actually pumped his fist when it was done.

"I love that!" he said. "Always wanted to say that."

It was a swanky party Thursday night at Providence in midtown Manhattan -- the premiere event for EA Sports' NCAA Football 10 video game. The room was buzzing with questions and lights and cameras and an endless supply of free sushi, and nobody was having a better time than Curry. Nobody's making more of the days leading up to the NFL draft.

Bryson Merriweather wasn't with Curry at the party ("They wouldn't let him come," the vicious, man-eating linebacker said wistfully), but the two had just spent a pretty sweet day together. It's the first time in New York City for Curry, 23, and for Merriweather, 12, and they were getting the most out of it.

"We started off at the Empire State Building," Curry said. "They gave us a private tour. Went to the 86th floor and the 102nd floor. Then we went to the ESPN Zone for lunch, and he beat me in a few video games. Pretty much all of them. From there we went to Niketown for a little shopping spree and let him get whatever he wanted. The neat thing about him was he didn't want to get anything by himself. He wanted to get stuff for his mom, his brother and his sister. My kind of kid."

Curry has known Bryson Merriweather for all of 10 days, but this week is something they're both going to remember for the rest of their lives. Once he found out he'd been invited to the draft, Curry called St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis to find out if any of the kids there might like to accompany him to New York.

Curry got back a list of kids, and Bryson's story jumped out at him.

"Bryson was at football practice and was having a hard time catching his breath and having chest pains, so they took him to the hospital thinking it was asthma," Curry said. "And the doctor found that he actually had leukemia, and they wouldn't have known otherwise. Right then and there, his mom said that football saved his life."

The sentiment hit home with Curry, who said he grew up in a tough part of Fayetteville, N.C., and feels the same way about football.

"It kept me off the streets, allowed me to get a great education, and it always gave me a place to cope with all my frustrations," Curry said. "Without football, there was no way I was going to be able to manage some of the things I went through."

So it was a perfect match. They flew in Wednesday, spent Thursday hitting the town and had another big day planned Friday -- all before the big day, Saturday, when Curry's expected to be picked very early in the first round. He hasn't asked yet if he'll be allowed to bring Bryson up to the podium with him, but "if he's allowed, he'll be up there."


Yeah, it's pretty hard not to like Aaron Curry. If you watched him play football at Wake Forest, you already like him as a football player. And once you get to talking to him, you like him even more as a person.

But the pre-draft process is about tearing down, not building up. It's about NFL teams taking these elite college athletes and spending weeks and months trying to find out what's wrong with them. In Curry's case, the flaw is supposedly that he wasn't a pass rusher in college, and you don't spend first-pick money on a linebacker who's not going to sack quarterbacks.

Curry's heard it all.

"They know I have speed. They know I have power. They know I have agility," Curry said. "They've seen me be very disruptive on film as far as getting to the quarterback. They just don't see the 11 sacks (a year) on paper.

"It's not the film. It's the fact that over my career I only had nine and a half sacks. But I also had the most TFLs (that's "tackles for a loss") in school history. That's something. I had the record for the most interception return yards for a linebacker. Those are big plays. Those are plays that will win games. And they're not ignoring that."

He has a humble confidence about him. This is no time to not be tooting your own horn. Millions of dollars are at stake, after all. But Curry is a young man at peace. He knows it's going to be OK, because he feels good about the way this pre-draft process has gone for him. He believes he's presented himself well in personal interviews with teams, and it's hard not to believe him.

"They look into everything," Curry said. "And they're all checking with each other. They don't want your personality to change from how you interact with the scout to when you interact with the GM. They want the same person all the time. Fortunately, I'm always comfortable just being myself. I was brought up great by my mom and my entire family, and I learned that being a great person is the most important part of being a great player. Most great players are just great people, they know how to handle tough situations. So when the fourth quarter hits, it's nothing different for them. When crazy things go on in the locker room, they know how to handle it."

Curry's ready for Saturday and whatever comes with it. Whether the Lions take him No. 1 or he slips down into the middle of the first round. "Just being drafted at all," he said, "is amazing."

Whatever happens, he'll have had these days in New York, brightening the life of a 12-year-old leukemia patient. And less than a month ago, he got engaged to Jamila, his girlfriend of nearly two years and friend of nearly five. She got him a puppy (Layla) for his birthday, and he hid the ring in Layla's kennel and told Jamila it was her turn to clean it. That's how he proposed. The fact that Jamila thought that was cool likely means Curry has met his soulmate.

"My friends keep telling me, 'This is your year,'" Curry said. "Between the draft, the engagement, getting my mom a new house, the Butkus award ... it's just amazing. A lot of good stuff is happening."

He may not be the first player taken Saturday, but it sure does seem as if it's Aaron Curry's year. And once you meet him, it's hard not to be happy about that.