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Yet in the span of a few minutes at Big East media day, the quarterback made some startling comments to me that have since thrust White, who is African-American, and Van Zant, who is white, into the national spotlight.

As an explanation for why he chose not to play for the West Virginia baseball team this year even though football coach Bill Stewart encouraged him to do so, White, a talented outfielder whose rights are owned by the Cincinnati Reds, said this to me:

"In my knowledge of West Virginia baseball, there's not been many players of my race on his team. He's not too high on it."

One West Virginia newspaper has since mentioned that of the 34 players on the West Virginia baseball team this past season, all were white, and 11 were from West Virginia. In the Big East, only 10 of the 315 baseball players on scholarship last season were African-American -- three percent, according to the NCAA's most recent Graduation Success Rate statistics. The African-American population in West Virginia was only 3.3 percent (or 60,000 people) in 2006, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

White paused before using the word "race" -- you could almost see the wheels turning as he considered how to phrase his thoughts -- doubtless aware of the heavy implications associated with the word.

W.E.B. Dubois once wrote that, "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line," and "the color line" is still an issue fraught with complexity here in the early part of the 21st century.

Race is a hot-button issue in American society; it always has been and likely always will be. Perhaps it gets more attention now that we might be on the brink of electing the first African-American president.

Who knows? Perhaps the strength of Barack Obama's personality and the significance of what he has accomplished -- and still could accomplish in November -- will embolden other young African-American men and women to speak more frankly on a variety of issues -- including race.

I'm not suggesting that Obama was on White's mind when we had this discussion in a noisy conference room at the Viking Hotel. He was just talking about football, about West Virginia's prospects for the season, when I asked him why he had opted not to play baseball.

Mountaineers coach Bill Stewart, whose team was picked to win the Big East championship, had spent part of an earlier session with reporters talking about what a tremendous multi-sport athlete White was. Stewart called White the "second coming of Major Harris" and said that the "people in West Virginia are blessed" to have White as their quarterback.

"The guy can play on the next level. Somewhere in the pro attack, this guy would be a great asset," Stewart said. "Pat White has the intangibles that could make an NFL team very excited."

He then went on to talk about how he had offered White the opportunity to play with the school's baseball team the way he had allowed his players to pursue other sports. White's backup, Jarrett Brown, played for the West Virginia basketball team during the winter and punter-kicker Pat McAfee practiced briefly with the school's soccer team.

"This guy's a playmaker," Stewart said. "If you can play pro baseball someday, you must be pretty skilled. You must be pretty skilled. I wanted him to play baseball this spring. [But] he said, 'Coach, I don't know if I can hit the curve.'"

That, of course, let to a round of laughter from the reporting gallery, and the story appeared to have a neat little ending, complete with a bowtie.

But I was curious. If White were so good at baseball as to be drafted multiple times by Major League teams, and if Stewart had given him the green light to play, why not go for it?

So when White and the players became available for interviews, I asked him if the baseball coach was "excited" about White potentially joining the team.

"He wasn't," White said stoically. "He wasn't interested."

"Every player I've talked to doesn't like him," he added. "He's not a well-liked coach, but I guess he has tenure, so they never got rid of him. They're not successful at all."

Then I asked if he might have played baseball if there were a different coach at West Virginia.

"Maybe," he said.

I later called Van Zant's office and left a message seeking comment, but he has yet to return the call.

Everyone who follows sports knows by now that African-American participation in baseball has declined at virtually every level over the years, with more and more city kids choosing to pursue basketball and football instead.

I grew up rooting for a Yankees team that featured many black players, Willie Randolph, Mickey Rivers, Chris Chambliss and Reggie Jackson among them. Last year the only African-American player listed on the Yankees' opening day roster was Derek Jeter.

The numbers don't lie. In Major League Baseball, the number of African-American players has steadily declined from a high of 27 percent in 1975 to 8.4 percent by 2006. At the same time, the number of Latino players has progressively increased. In 2006, 29.4 percent of big leaguers were Latino.

A report by Richard Lapchick, director of the University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports, showed that among Division I baseball players, 5.7 percent were African-American in the 2005-06 academic year, down from 6.5 percent in 2004-05.

"For the most part, we haven't had very many African-American players," Rutgers baseball coach Fred Hill Sr., told me a couple of years ago. "You don't see a whole lot. Many of them might play on their high school teams. Once that's over, they seem to migrate toward their basketball teams in the summer. They don't seem to play baseball all summer long."

So the lack of African-American players on the West Virginia baseball team may well be understandable in a general sense. UConn, Louisville, Notre Dame, St. John's and Seton Hall also had no African-American players on scholarship last year, according to the Charleston Daily Mail.

But White's comments clearly took direct aim at a coach who has won 413 games in 15 seasons and led West Virginia to the NCAA tournament in 1996.

"If [Van Zant] discouraged White from going out for the team, especially after football coach Bill Stewart gave the athlete the green light, that's reason for questions," Mitch Vingle, sports editor of the Charleston Gazette, wrote in today's editions. "Why wouldn't he welcome White? The guy was a fourth-round pick of the then-Anaheim Angels in 2004. He's been drafted in the last two seasons. Also, he would be a terrific draw. White would draw fans. He'd draw media coverage. If I'm Van Zant, I'm begging the guy to join my team."

West Virginia officials have issued various statements indicating that they hope to talk with White about his comments.

"The university is committed to diversity as evidenced by the development of the OneWVU program," Ed Pastilong, WVU's veteran athletic director, said in a statement. "Our coaches and staff also are committed to an atmosphere of community for our student-athletes. I look forward to speaking with Pat more about his thoughts."

That's all fine and dandy. If White is as frank and open with school officials as he was with me, maybe some progress can be made. Maybe something positive will come out of this.

But is anyone down there going to speak to Van Zant?