A minute after Alvin Bowen finished a TV interview about being a role model, a reporter asked his brother, Jamar Summers, when he could be interviewed.

The 12-year-old said he’d be at the ISU football practice the next day.

A day after that, Jamar would start at quarterback for the Gilbert seventh-grade football team, and another reporter asked if he could have a photographer come to take pictures.

“You know about my game?” Jamar said.

He smiled and laughed. His big brother made an observation.

“It’s not like this in the hood, huh?” Bowen said.

Jamar laughed and agreed.

After he moved from Montclair, N.J., to be with Bowen in mid-June, Jamar spent most of his summer on the practice fields with the ISU football team – watching, playing catch, or running around with some of the coaches’ children.

Now, most of his time is spent five miles north in Gilbert, going to practice for his seventh-grade football team, then meeting up with Bowen afterwards to hang out in the ISU locker room.

Head coach Gene Chizik welcomed Jamar to all team functions.

“I got his cell phone number,” said senior receiver Todd Blythe. “I’ll call him up from time to time, you know, because that’s everybody’s little brother on the team.”

Alvin Bowen is a 6-foot-2-inch, 225-pound physical specimen.

Shoulder-length dreadlocks poke out of the bottom of his helmet, the skin on his biceps is pulled so tight that it took seven tries for skin calipers to find he had only four percent body fat.

On the field, he is a heat-seeking missile that seeks and destroys from the weak-side linebacker position. With relentless, sideline-to-sideline pursuit, Bowen led the nation in solo tackles (95) and tackles per game (12.92) in 2006, his first season as a starter.

His value as a player is multi-dimensional. Bowen again leads the team in tackles this season (45.5), anchoring a developing defense with his ability. He is unquestionably the leader of the defense according to players, and the “emotional leader of the whole team,” Blythe said.

Bowen’s skill, athleticism and work ethic give him a chance to “make some money” in the NFL, according to defensive coordinator Wayne Bolt – who coached Dallas Cowboys star DeMarcus Ware at Troy State.

But what separates Bowen from other college football players isn’t just his talent.

“He just has this tremendous heart,” former ISU head coach Dan McCarney said. “And he’s just – it doesn’t take very long when you’re around Ace to figure out that there is a lot more substance to Alvin Bowen. There is a lot more to him than this Greek god body and his ability to play football. There is a lot more there.”

Bowen transferred from Garden City Community College in Kansas to play for Iowa State in 2005. Now a senior, he has only two classes left before he graduates with a liberal arts degree and one more season to continue to prove himself a worthy selection in next April’s NFL draft.

But when he saw the need, Bowen willingly took on the responsibility of being a parent.

“Jamar was getting out of hand a little bit and wasn’t paying much attention to me,” said his mother, Angela Robinson. “Jamar has two other brothers, and every one of them moved out of the house one-by-one, and there was not really a male in the house to, you know, direct Jamar, so he was like the man of the house.

“And he could do anything he want to do whenever he want to do it, and regardless of what mom said; he wasn’t listening.”

Robinson works days and nights as a home health nurse, and had to have Jamar stay with a babysitter when she was away. She said she complained to Bowen about Jamar’s behavior and didn’t know what else to do.

Bowen then offered to have Jamar come to Ames, but Robinson was skeptical.

“College kids, they want their freedom, they want to do what they want to do and have their privilege,” Robinson said. “And I feel like giving Jamar to Ace, I would be ducking my motherly responsibility. So I said let’s try it, and if it doesn’t work, well, he’d come back home. So I am very proud of him to be stepping up to the plate to be a father figure for Jamar.”

Jamar’s father is deceased.

After Robinson, who was pregnant with Alvin, moved to America from the Cayman Islands, she raised him and his two brothers by herself in an urban area of East Orange, N.J. Bowen’s father was only around for “bits and pieces” of his childhood.

Bowen said his mom is “my biggest role model, my biggest hero, my biggest everything.” Now he gets a chance to have an impact of his own.

“I want [Jamar] to not do what I did. Not take school so lightly. Not look at things like I did,” Bowen said. “And of course, I preach that to him. And I tell him that in a cool way, not talking down, like, ‘You know what, don’t do that like me.'”

In sixth grade, Bowen found out he could miss class and still get by.

“That was the biggest discovery for me in sixth grade, that you cut class and not get in trouble,” Bowen said. “I mean they shouldn’t of told me that. I was cutting and skipping – I was all over the place.”

By the time high school rolled around, Bowen would take Monday off to give himself a three-day weekend and shorten the school week.

But while he was living for the weekend, Bowen’s future was fast approaching. It wasn’t until the last couple months at Montclair High School, Bowen said, that the idea dawned on him that his football career would be over without college. By that point, his GPA was too low to go to a Div. I program and his test scores couldn’t compensate, necessitating junior college.

Bowen said he had a learning disability and struggled to read in junior high. He said that helped sour his attitude toward school.

“Like Spanish, I got better as Spanish. I’m still not that good, but, like, I only went to Spanish class because there was a pretty girl in Spanish class,” Bowen said. “So I went there, and of course tried to speak Spanish to her every day. But outside of that, I didn’t like it at all. I think it was more of the fact that it was difficult and I didn’t want to feel stupid. That messed me up a lot, just being in a situation where, OK, rather than look stupid if you say something wrong, you know, I shied away from that. I didn’t go to class.”

Bowen’s football exploits in high school were far more extraordinary.

After transferring to Montclair High for his senior season, Bowen became the team’s No. 1 running back eight games into the season after the team’s starter was found to be academically ineligible.

Bowen rushed for 708 yards in the last five games of the season, but had to be held out of the second-to-last game after an opponent twisted his ankle at the bottom of a pile. But two weeks after the injury, he returned to play in the sectional championship game.

A snowstorm coated the field and the weather was frigid, but Bowen took 40 carries for 213 yards and a touchdown in the 12-7 win over heavily favored Morristown.

Bowen said his ankle was still sore, so he couldn’t make cuts running the ball, so, according to the Montclair Times, he instead ran over most of the Morristown defense.

The paper deemed the performance “immortal.” He accounted for both of the team’s touchdowns, including an impromptu lateral to the quarterback for the game’s winning touchdown.

“It was my quarterback’s birthday. if you see it, I could have run the safety over, because I’d had been running him over all day,” Bowen said.

He finished the season with 225 rushes for 1,364 yards and 13 touchdowns, along with 85 tackles on defense – 16 for a loss – with four sacks, and was the Newark Star-Ledger’s Player of the Year.

Bowen developed physically and academically at Garden City Community College, redshirting a season before leading the team in tackles (77) and tackles for a loss. He chose Iowa State over Kansas in the recruitment process, and came off the bench during his sophomore year.

At junior college, Bowen said he buckled down in school for the first time, and his success in the classroom finally started to match up with his success on the field.

“Like I’ve said so many times when I’ve been asked, I didn’t think about college until I was damn near in college. I didn’t think about being in college, I didn’t know what D-I was,” Bowen said. “D-I was foreign language to me, what is D-I? I remember my junior year askin’ this guy like ‘What the heck does D-I mean?’ He explained it to me, but I really didn’t understand what it meant.”

Now he is on the verge of graduating from college.

“It means everything to me,” his mother said. “Last season, Alvin didn’t want to come back to this school because they changed the whole coaching staff. So he was a little bit nervous. We had a big discussion about it, and you know we say you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket, just in case the football didn’t work out. You have to graduate so that you can have your degree that you can fall back on something. So with a little bit of perspiration, he listened and the coach called a couple of times and inspired him to come back.”

Bowen doesn’t often watch NFL games, but although he tries not to think about it, thoughts of playing at the next level are hard to keep out of his mind.

“I’m not even going to lie, it is in my head, but I’m trying so hard not to focus on it,” Bowen said. “I’m trying so hard not to think about it, because if I’m blessed enough to make it, I’ll make it. That’s how I look at it.”

Someone told Bowen that he could only worry about what he can control – words he has taken to heart. But in the immediate future, Bowen will need to add weight onto an already solid frame.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the approximate average weight of an NFL linebacker is 242 pounds. At 225 pounds, Bowen relies on his speed, agility and technique.

He has struggled to add weight, especially during the season.

“It’s real hard because I can’t eat peanut butter and I can’t eat fish because I’m allergic to both,” he said. “The two things with the most protein in ’em, I’m allergic to.”

Bowen said that from what he has heard, his size could be a problem, but that NFL teams feel they can put weight on him, so he’s not worried.

“[Baltimore Ravens linebacker] Ray Lewis got drafted at 215-220, and that’s who I look up to heavily,” Bowen said. “So it’s happened before. I’m going to take a chance, but if it doesn’t happen, I’ve had a great run.”

McCarney was much more confident. He said he has already talked to scouts from the NFL that have called him, and told them the same thing he said about Ellis Hobbs in 2005 and Tim Dobbins before the 2006 draft: “There is no question in my mind that they’ll play in the NFL, and you’ll love having them on your football team.”

“Both those teams, the New England Patriots and the San Diego Chargers, are thrilled with those guys, and somebody is going to be thrilled to have Alvin Bowen on their football team at the next level, too,” McCarney said. “I have no doubts in my mind that he’ll play in the NFL. None.”

The qualities NFL teams look for – character, work ethic, academics, durability, coachability, ability to adjust, talent, productivity and consistency – are all there, McCarney said. He said Bowen has the ability to become a good cover linebacker as well.

“There is nothing wrong with dreams and goals and aspirations, but all of that stuff will take care of itself if you go out to practice and you play. As we’ve always told our players, there isn’t one play, there isn’t one game they are going to evaluate everything about you,” McCarney said.

Defensive coordinator Wayne Bolt said that if Bowen lives in the present, and plays as well as he can, the rest will take care of itself.

“He’s got to make sure he gets a degree, take every day now, make sure he gets a degree, and if the NFL presents itself, you know, go for it,” Bolt said.

“If it dudn’t, you know, that is the real world. One percent of the players make it to the NFL. Go on and get a great job and have a great life. The NFL is gravy, but the degree is the most important thing.”

Bowen makes plans for where Jamar will stay when his on road trips. He always has offers from Jamar’s teammates’ parents, not an entire football team that would be available upon request.

“If Ace wasn’t around, he wouldn’t have to go far to find somebody,” said quarterback Bret Meyer.

Alvin is selective in who he lets take care of Jamar [“Me as a parent, I won’t just let anyone take care of him”] but often Jamar talks him into letting him stay with who he wants.

“Just to save face for the whole argument – no, you can’t go there, why can’t I go there, this and that, this and that – I just say OK, you know what, as long as you behave yourself,” Bowen said.

Jamar is mature for his age – “12 going on 22,” Bowen said, but he still has to be in bed by 9:30 p.m. on school nights.

School has been easy for Jamar, he said, except for a technology class where he is learning to type.

Jamar said he was scared ofat first he was scared, but he got comfortable quickly. Alvin is known as “Ace” to most of the team. Bolt quickly branded Jamar as “Deuce.”

Jamar has mixed feeling about the nickname.

“Yeah, it’s OK,” he said. “It’s funny. His defensive coordinator coach, like every time he meets somebody, he can’t like really remember their names. So he makes up a name for them, so everyone just got used to calling me Deuce.”

There is a soft spot on the team for Jamar. Bowen’s roommate, Michael Bibbs, said he will probably get emotional when Jamar leaves.

“He’s just funny. First day he’s coming in he’s talking to everybody, and the first day he came in he’s playing football out there, you know, and he had his pads on and everything,” Meyer said.

“It’s kind of funny. But he’s fun to be around, and he never really gets in the way of anything. He understands what we’re trying to do.”

Bowen said he is planning on starting a new life with Jamar and his mother sometime after graduation. After football is over – whenever that is, he wants to become a social worker.

“I want to talk to kids, I want to be able to show kids in the community I came from, and other communities like mine there is a way out,” Bowen said. “There is a way out, I mean, granted you may have to use a sport, but if that can be your ticket, use it . I want to be able to help a younger generation of kids change the way they think.”