On a campus with All-Americans and All-Region performers, conference championships and national championship contenders, one player has stood out in my mind over the past two years.

He doesn't wear a jersey. Heck, he might not be able to bench press half his own weight. He is quiet, almost to the point of being timid, and frankly he looks rather bookish.

It is unlikely you've ever heard of him.

But boy, is Jared Verner a great team player.

Verner, the graduate assistant in Northwest Missouri State's sports information department, is the type of talent that doesn't come along very often.

Verner took his last final exam Tuesday en route to a Master of Science degree in Health & Physical Education with an emphasis in Athletic Administration. He'll have an advanced degree while barely able to legally imbibe in one of Maryville's popular student hangouts.

But Verner always seemed too busy for the college kegger scene. If his head wasn't in a textbook, it was in a record book or stat sheet. And he excelled with the records and statistics.

On any given Saturday in the Bearcat Stadium press box, Jared would pipe up with some of the most interesting -- and sometimes obscure -- facts that would eventually make their way into my game notes that appeared in the Sunday News-Press.

"That was the first time since Nov. 13, 1999 that a Northwest opponent wearing a purple jersey has scored first in the third quarter of a conference game while trailing by more than 14 points," Jared would exclaim as he looked up from the records on his laptop computer.

All the reporters would laugh, but you would always see them scurrying to write down that latest tidbit of information.

That was just one of his many contributions that made the life of both reporters and Sports Information Director Bryan Boettcher easier. Have you football and basketball fanatics enjoyed the "MIAA Scoreboard" that brought real-time, play-by-play updates to your computer for each conference team's game this past season? Jared Verner, the computer whiz, was the mastermind of that project.

I've even seen Jared scale a fence to free us after we got locked in at Fort Hays State's football stadium at the end of a long day of reporting and post-game story writing.

Good times, to be sure. But those good times had to come to an end eventually. Verner learned Monday that he has been named the new sports information director at Western (Colo.) State. He'll start on July 1 as a staff of one, handling 11 NCAA varsity sports.

It's unlikely Jared even mentioned in his job interview that he singlehandedly freed an entire contingent of reporters from a deserted football stadium.

Western State probably doesn't even realize yet how lucky it is going to be.