GEORGETOWN, Ky. -- When her little boy was only nine years old and begging to be permitted to play for the Burgess peewee league football team, Lillie Spikes cut a bargain with her son Takeo, and it went something like this: He could pound the other kids on the field but only after pounding the keys on the piano three times a week.

A little refinement, Lillie Spikes obviously surmised, can never hurt a kid at any age.

	Takeo Spikes, left, and Brian Simmons, right, form one of the NFL's best linebacking corps.

So while Takeo Spikes was more drawn to chop blocks than Chopsticks, he allowed himself to be dragged to piano lessons at Woodard Academy in Atlanta, where he went through the motions to fulfill his part of the deal he had made with his mom.

Then one day, as Takeo was killing time and casually channel-surfing, he caught part of a clip from the old Liberace show. For a guy whose first name translates from Japanese into "great warrior," came the realization that he might become known in the 'hood as a "great wuss" if he continued plunking the keyboard.

And his days as a budding Van Cliburn abruptly ended. Fortunately, his football career didn't, thanks to the intercession of his father.

Just don't expect to see Spikes adorned anytime soon in a rhinestone-studded cape. Beyond the raw emotionalism with which the Cincinnati Bengals star linebacker performs on Sunday afternoons, there is little ostentatious in his game, and one of his most outstanding traits is his economy of purpose and of motion. See the ball, get to it, make the tackle.

It is a quiet work ethic, a whispered mantra, a credo indelibly stenciled into his soul.

He plays a painful tune now on opposition ball carriers, posting an average of 129.5 tackles per season since coming to the Bengals as a first-round draft choice in 1998. The problem is he plays for a team whose reprise has been the same tone-deaf ditty since 1990, the last time that Cincinnati qualified for the playoffs, and so the tune floats away into oblivion.

The most celebrated athletes in this area, just outside of Lexington and about 75 miles from downtown Cincinnati, run around on four legs.

Turn off Man O' War Boulevard, the road which leads from the Blue Grass Airport, and you are almost immediately confronted by the breathtaking beauty of the championship breeding grounds such as Keeneland and Calumet Farms. And, of course, by those sleek steeds who cavort for seemingly endless acres across the lush fields.

Ask someone in downtown Lexington who captured this spring's Kentucky Derby, and he is more apt to recite the names of the winners for the past century than to recognize Takeo Spikes' name. The man Pittsburgh Steelers tailback Jerome Bettis likened to Ray Lewis a year ago might well be a thoroughbred, but he is also thoroughly anonymous outside Paul Brown Stadium, or the meeting rooms around the NFL where offensive coordinators plot game plans designed to avoid him.

"Just because the fans might not know him," said Baltimore Ravens coordinator Matt Cavanaugh, "doesn't mean the league isn't aware of him. You can't ignore the guy. He's a player, for sure, and we're aware of that."

Still, is he the best linebacker who has never been to a Pro Bowl and who is an invisible man, in essence, when it comes to garnering the credit he deserves? Spikes merely smiles when the query is posed. Behind that toothy smile, though, is a hurt that isn't likely to dissipate until Spikes becomes a household name and a wealthy young man.

"This is what you live for, what you play for, why it's so important to win," said Spikes, a former Auburn star. "At some point, if you do everything you're supposed to do, then the game, the adulation, the accolades, all that stuff should come with it. The people who say, 'Oh, that (stuff) doesn't matter to me,' man, they're lying. It matters to everyone playing this game. There's always some ego involved. Being as good as I feel I am, and still being an unknown after four years, yeah, that's a hard pill to swallow."

Of course, Spikes is but one of the anonymous performers on a Cincinnati defense that is far better than people realize, and which statistically ranked No. 9 last season, even with the continuing absence of a true shut-down cornerback. Fans giggle when you mention the Bengals as a team with a solid roster. Opponents usually are not in a laughing mood, however, after going against the defense designed by head coach Dick LeBeau, the father of the once-popular "zone blitz" scheme, and current coordinator Mark Duffner.

The linebacker corps, with Spikes joined by Brian Simmons and Steve Foley, is one of the best units in the NFL. Second-year defensive end Justin Smith, the Bengals' top pick a year ago and a player who had 8½ sacks in 2001 despite not signing until the eve of the regular-season opener, is a future Pro Bowl performer. Free agent acquisition Jeff Burris is an underrated cornerback. Rookie safety Lamont Thompson, a second-round selection, is a big-hitting physical specimen with range.

So there is a remote possibility, and a few team officials will acknowledge this during rare moments of candor, that Spikes might not be the most physically gifted player on the defense. Even if that is the case, however, he is certainly the conscience of unit, the man who has attempted to publicly prod teammates into fulfilling their potential.

He went semi-ballistic earlier this spring when some Bengals veterans missed offseason conditioning sessions. There was a touch of irony when Spikes, stuck in Brazil during a vacation there, was forced to skip a few workouts. But for the most part, his teammates respond well to his rants, and he never blinks when staring a teammate in the eye.

That is, in part, because Spikes is that rarest of animals: A guy who began his NFL career in Cincinnati, considered by many veterans to be the equivalent of Siberia, and who wants to end it there as well. So sold is Spikes on Cincinnati, the local convention and visitors' bureau might consider signing him to a contract, and letting him pump the town's plusses.

In the final season of the original five-year contract he signed as a rookie, Spikes doesn't dwell on the possibility escaping oblivion when he becomes eligible for unrestricted free agency next spring, but rather of figuring out how to land an extension that prolongs his Bengals tenure. There have been discussions between club vice president Katie Blackburn and agent Todd France, but a deal isn't imminent.

And after the events of Thursday morning, chances are good that Spikes' price tag rose a bit. Just after he completed his scheduled 7:30 a.m. weightlifting session, Spikes for a call from France apprising him of the new seven-year, $50 million contract Ray Lewis signed with the Ravens. The sound you just heard was Bengals management swallowing hard.

"I'm not saying I'm worth that money, but I know this: That deal certainly didn't hurt me any," Spikes said.

New deal or not, it appears Spikes will be with the club through 2003, at least. The plan seems to be to try to get Simmons, also in the last year of his deal, signed to an extension. And then if ownership had to, it would either apply a "transition" designation (current cost: $4.573 million) or "franchise" tag ($5.515 million) to Spikes to assure his return.

Spikes, only 25 years old despite having four seasons of starter's experience, prefers to arrive amicably at a long-term agreement. His father, Jimmie, who died last October after a long and gut-wrenching battle with brain cancer, raised Takeo to finish what he started, to never quit until the task was completed, and completed well.

During the quiet times this spring, virtually every time he looked at his mother, Spikes recalled the lesson his father hammered home to him. And so he turned back the clock about 16 years, and began taking private piano lessons again, because he knew that it would be a challenge for him to conquer the keyboard and his own mental image of the Liberace show.

He still can't get his pinky and his "trigger finger," as he calls it, to work in concert, but Spikes is plodding and plinking ahead. Spikes will, he vowed on Thursday, reach at least a level of competence of which he and his family can be proud. As for football, well, he desperately wants to be around when the Bengals reach a level of competence, too.

"Really, wouldn't it be a great story, tell the truth?" he said. "There's enough talent here to do it, too, believe me. But it's got to be this year, because we have so many players who can leave after this season, me included. I've planted the seed that I want to stay, and part of that is up to (ownership), and part is up to how we do. There are guys, even some still with this team, who can't wait to get out of here. Guys who say, 'My contract is up, I'm gone, man.'

"Not me. I want to make this work. I want to finish the job here. If I can do that, everyone will know who I am."

Len Pasquarelli is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.