Centers are usually regarded as among the smartest people on a football team. Still, it's just football, not brain surgery.

If anyone would know the difference, it's Syracuse center Jim McKenzie. He has a 3.9 GPA in biochemistry and hopes to become a doctor someday. Possibly even a brain surgeon.

"We'll see if these hands will be able to hold up after a couple of years in the trenches," he joked.

	Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images
	Center Jim McKenzie has started the last 22 games for the Orange.

The term "student-athlete" can cause snickers when it comes to big-time college football. But McKenzie makes you want to believe in the concept.

His father, Steve, is a doctor in Philadelphia, while his mother, Linda, works as a nurse. So it was natural that Jim would want to follow them into the medical profession.

That's why McKenzie -- who's a redshirt junior on the football team and a senior in the classroom -- has eschewed the typical jock classes in favor of subjects like organic chemistry, and advanced physics. One of his recent favorite courses examined the biology of cancer, including brain tumors.

"I could definitely see myself working in that type of oncology situation because it's so interesting," he said. "And the way treatments are going, I think we're heading toward a very bright future."

Dr. Thomas Fondy taught that class on the biology of cancer this spring. There were 120 students who took the course, and he said McKenzie finished No. 12 in the class.

"He got an A, and I don't give out that many A's," Fondy said. "He was there every class. He's an outstanding student."

Instead of taking classes this summer, McKenzie landed an internship at a local hospital. There he observes emergency medical practices and assists with clinical trials. Forget relaxing summer vacations. McKenzie wakes up before dawn for 6 a.m. football workouts, then goes to the hospital. After work, he reports back to the practice fields for an afternoon group conditioning session.

He's grown accustomed to juggling his demanding academic work with the equally rigorous requirements of Division I football. It's not uncommon for conflicts to arise between, say, a film session and a chemistry lab.

"The academic staff has been great to work with here and has allowed me to kind of have a flexible schedule," he said. "If I'm 15-to-20 minutes late for a lab or 10-to-15 minutes late for a football meeting, both sides give a little bit. I might get an extra day or two on an assignment if I need it, especially if we're traveling for football.

"There are some parallels between the two. You have to prepare hard, perform well and take what you do and learn how to get better."

McKenzie might be the only guy on the team charter reading books about neurology, and his teammates sometimes rib him about it.

"They joke around with me," he said. "But I take it in stride. I think it helps, because being a center you need to think on your feet and think fast. I think that because they know what I'm doing in the academic sphere, it helps them trust me on the football field. They know I can identify fronts."

He has started the last 22 games for the Orange and was recently named to the preseason watch list for the Rimington Trophy, which is awarded to the nation's best center. He was the leader of a line that paved the way for Curtis Brinkley to rack up six 100-yard games and a 1,000-yard season in 2008.

Syracuse's offensive line had its fair share of struggles during the spring, especially in the spring game when penalties and mistakes piled up. But the line is going from last year's power-run blocking scheme to a multiple attack with spread elements under new coach Doug Marrone.

"For some of the offensive linemen, this is our third offense in three years," McKenzie said. "It's definitely been a hodgepodge around here. But we've really bought into this offense. It's much more high-tempo, and I think it represents the types of offenses that are more successful in college football today."

He said it helps having a head coach who played offensive line in college, as Marrone did for Syracuse in the 1980s. There's a higher level of trust among the linemen for what Marrone says, knowing that he experienced the same things on the same field.

It's now up to the linemen to learn the new offensive system and build chemistry this summer. For a team that hasn't won many games or scored a lot of points in the past few years, that's a tall order.

But it ain't exactly brain surgery.