What happens after the 'AIRBHG'?

I'm not going to bother explaining the whole "Angry Iowa Running Back Hating God" to you. You know it by heart. It was birthed, at least somewhat, by the Black Heart Gold Pants website.

It's a coping mechanism for Iowa fans who've watched Hawkeyes running backs run the Most Extreme Elimination Challenge gamut. It's fate, it's out of your control and, at some point, you don't know how to respond. So, the AIRBGH meme has cushioned the blow. Well, blows, really.

The latest came Wednesday, when sophomore Jordan Canzeri suffered a torn ACL during practice, the Hawkeyes' third practice this season.

What happens for the player after "AIRBHG"?

They fall off your radar and go into the world of rehab, which is a lone pursuit. Obviously, there aren't 70,000 fans cheering when you make a strength or flexibility gain. Instead of post-touchdown hugs, there's ice. Your audience is your trainer. Your opponents are physical and mental.

It's a test that goes unreported until the player re-emerges, hopefully, good as new and ready to go the next season.

Albert Young ran this race in 2003 when he suffered a broken right fibula during an August scrimmage. The next season, he went through it again.

He rushed for 87 yards and a TD in Iowa's '04 opener against Kent State. The next week against Iowa State, he had a TD, but midway through the second quarter ISU defenders Shawn Moorehead and Ellis Hobbs jumped on Young's back. His right knee locked and snapped. His season ended with a torn ACL.

As you can imagine, this can mess with your head.

"When he's come home, I've asked him how it's going, told him he's looking good," Russ Horton, Young's coach at Moorestown (N.J.) High School said for a 2005 story. "We haven't talked football really at all. You want to give him his space."

One minute, you're the No. 1 running back for the University of Iowa. You are invincible. You are a tank in pads. You are going to have the pleasure of running behind one of the best offensive lines in the Big Ten. And then you're not.

"Just going into that stadium, that's what hurt the most," Young said at the time. "It's one thing to get hurt in camp and never play a game, but after playing that first game, you know, I'm starting to like this. That was taken away. Now, I've got to get back out there."

Nearly a year passed before Young watched the ACL play on video. He saw it as fall camp began Aug. 6.

"I've thought about it before about what I should've done on that play," he said, "but it's football. Freak stuff happens. I put all that behind me. You don't have time to think about it out here. You're moving too fast."

The hard part, a relative term here, for Young wasn't surgery or the painful, grueling rehab.

The hard part was the "ghost factor" of a season-ending injury after just two games. The hard part was keeping a connection to the team -- the field, his friends -- from the training room.

He was a member of Iowa's sizable "ghost" squad, the unusually large group of players who suffered season-ending injuries during the 2004 season.

Fellow running backs Marcus Schnoor (knee), Jermelle Lewis (knee) and Champ Davis (knee) had positions on the "ghost" squad. Defensive tackle Ettore Ewen (knee), offensive lineman David Walker (triceps), linebacker Mike Humpal (back), defensive end Mike Follett (back) and wide receiver Calvin Davis (knee) also had spots.

"You do feel like a ghost," Schnoor said. "We came out to practice every day and tried to help the younger guys learn stuff and just tried to be a part of the team that way. We had people to go through it with, but I don't think that made anyone feel any better about it."

When your stadium is the weightroom and your fans begin and end with trainer (then it was Paul Federici, who's now the director of football operations) and strength coach Chris Doyle, football is a lonely life.

When you meet with Doyle, he has expectations. He is going to push. You are going to heal. It won't be on ESPN or the Big Ten Network.

"That's probably what bothers you the most out of everything," Young said. "Watching the team on TV, standing on the sidelines, just being a cheerleader, that gets old after a while."

Young sat in on meetings and stood on the sidelines at practice. But when time came for game preparation, it was off to the training room.

"That's a problem, keeping those guys close to you when they're injured and you're trying to get ready to play," said Carl Jackson, who was running backs coach in '04. That's when the Hawkeyes burned through four running backs (Young, Schnoor, Lewis and Marques Simmons, who played only six games after an ankle injury). Walk-on Sam Brownlee led the Hawkeyes in rushing with 227 yards, and Iowa still shared the Big Ten title with Michigan and finished 11-2.

Canzeri's situation isn't too far off what Young had in front of him in '04. The sophomore from Troy, N.Y., was the No. 1 running back for Iowa this spring. He would've been challenged by incoming freshmen Greg Garmon and Barkley Hill in the fall, but he had a chance to put a stamp on it this spring.

Young faced the same competition in '05, when coach Kirk Ferentz said Iowa looked at a "running back by committee."

"It's competition, but everybody is on the team," Young said. "We've got their backs and everybody's going to get out on the field. But also, you've got to want to be the man."

Young knew there would be skeptics. One season-ending injury, two season-ending injuries, he was injury prone, right?

"That's the thing, Albert's not injury prone," Horton said. "He gained more than 5,000 for us. He missed three games with a sprained knee, that was his only injury. He came back from that stronger than ever."

And there was an element of "wait and see" in '05.

"Even his freshman year, when he got well we still put him with the varsity guys and let him get reps even though we knew he wasn't going to play," Jackson said. "We felt that was more of an investment than anything else. We felt that this was a guy who was going to pay big dividends down the road.

"We're anxious for him to get on the field, take that first big hit and show us that he's going to be OK. I guess a guy with lesser determination would probably give up and say, why me? But Albert's never done that."

That first hit, that was a part of the question. For running backs, there's the "first hit" and then the million that come after.

"I'm not worrying about the hits," Young said. "Shoot, I've been out for two years. I've got nothing to lose right now. I'm going to be out there full-go. I'm not worrying about it. No hesitation."

Postscript: Young rushed for 1,334 yards in 2005. That's No. 6 on Iowa's single-season list.

Running backs make it back all the time. The journey is just beginning for Canzeri.