The Front Row with Tim Dahlberg August 2, 2011

The hardest time for Julian Paksi comes during the day, when he's working. Mowing lawns gives you too much time to think, too much time to worry about a future that's suddenly very uncertain.

It's at night when he's lifting weights and running that his head begins to clear. Then there's a goal, and some new totals to jot down in the journal that helps him prepare for the last football season of his life.

He gets comfort from the routine because he's been doing it most of his life. Talent wasn't going to get him anywhere, so he became the classic overachiever.

"Football has always been my life," Paksi said. "I don't know what my life would be like without it."

His plan had always been to anchor the defensive line this season for tiny Albion College in one final year of glory on the field. But life isn't just about football anymore.

Paksi found out just after the first of the year that he has a cancer so rare it took doctors weeks to figure out what was wrong with him. With no known cure, the only treatment is to get a new liver.

If there is any good news it's that the cancer is slow growing and so far hasn't spread beyond the liver. Paksi was scheduled have another MRI on Saturday just to make sure.

His name should be on a liver transplant waiting list by now, but it's not. Paksi will take his chances for a few more months, determined not to let cancer rob him of a season that means so much.

To Paksi it's simple. He's a football player.

"I'm getting so excited for the season," he said. "I don't want to be down, I want to be up high."

Paksi didn't have to look far for inspiration when he was diagnosed with Epithelioid hemangioendothelioma, a cancer diagnosed in only a few hundred people each year in the United States. The day he found out he went to a Relay for Life cancer meeting on campus, where he met a woman who was a liver cancer survivor.

Not long after he learned about Mark Herzlich, the Boston College linebacker who missed a season to bone cancer and is now trying to make the New York Giants as a rookie free agent. He's got an article on Herzlich's battle pasted in his journal, and he reads it during times that he's down.

I wrote about Herzlich a few days ago, which is how Paksi and I ended up connecting on the phone. His girlfriend, Samantha Cornish, wrote to let me know how important Herzlich's fight was to Paksi.

Their stories are similar, their determination much the same. Both love the game so much that they refuse to let cancer take it away.

But while Herzlich was a star at a big school, a prospect so good that he was once considered a lock to be picked in the first round of the NFL draft, Paksi plays Division III football for a school of just 1,650 in south central Michigan.

The 21-year-old pays his own way just like the other players at Albion. He's undersized at 5-foot-11, 240 pounds and he understands there is no career on the field once his senior season is over.

He has only one year left to play. The new liver will have to wait.

"It brings me down sometimes. I start thinking that I'm healthy, I'm a healthy kid and what did I do to deserve this," Paksi said. "But this summer I've been focusing and trying not to think about it. I'm trying to live my life like it was before I knew about it."

Paksi hasn't told many people about his condition. His fraternity brothers know, and so do a few teammates.

"It's my life, not just my football life, and that's what makes it such a bummer," Paksi said. "I mean, I'm only 21 and I haven't even graduated college."

The only comfort for Paksi is he'll have his final season. He'll play football one last time.

He's not about to let cancer take that away.

Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at [email protected] or http://twitter.com/timdahlberg