Price Is Rising

MOST WIDE RECEIVERS DRAFTED SINCE 1988
MIAMI	15
TENNESSEE	12
FLORIDA	11
FLORIDA STATE	10
PENN STATE	8
SAN DIEGO STATE	8
USC	8
WASHINGTON	8

The long, bloody day was nearly done. "Just make the play," Tennessee's junior quarterback, Tee Martin, said in the huddle to Peerless Price, the senior receiver who so often this season had seized victory for the Volunteers. "I've been getting hit all night, so I'm throwing it to you early."

This most harrowing and humbling of Saturdays had begun with UCLA, No. 2 in the Bowl Championship Series rankings, losing 49-45 in Miami. Then No. 3 Kansas State had gone down in overtime of the Big 12 Championship Game against Texas A&M. Now, in what would have been the biggest upset of the day, No. 23 Mississippi State had scored on a 70-yard interception return and a fourth-quarter 83-yard punt return for a 14-10 lead over No. 1 Tennessee, the last of the unbeaten, untied contenders for the national championship.

Tennessee's problems revolved around Martin. He had been unable to solve the Bulldogs' varied jack-in-the-box defensive packages. As time wound down, Vols offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe was running out of patience. With 6½ minutes remaining, he called for Price to run his simplest route, a straight streak toward the left corner of the Mississippi State end zone.

Against the cloudy white Georgia Dome ceiling, the ball seemed to be dropping out of the heavens. Price gathered it in, fending off Bulldogs cornerback Adesola Badon, and landed on his right foot just inside the end zone. "I didn't know the defender was there until I looked up at the replay," Price said. "I was so tuned in to the ball."

With that 41-yard touchdown, Price arrested the momentum of the day. This is how you do it, he seemed to be saying, and his teammates followed his example. On the next play from scrimmage the Volunteers forced and recovered a fumble by Bulldogs quarterback Wayne Madkin. Martin took the next snap and hit sophomore Cedrick Wilson for the 26-yard score that capped Tennessee's 24-14 victory. It was not just a touchdown that Price had snatched out of the air. It was deliverance.

"Peerless was always a really good receiver," says Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer, "but this year he's made more big plays than anybody we've had here in some time." The six-foot Price is not the biggest receiver in the country, nor the fastest, nor—with 61 catches for 920 yards and 10 touchdowns this season—the most prolific. He should be chosen in the first two rounds of the NFL draft next spring, but he might not be the first receiver taken. If he isn't, it will only be because the scouts don't recognize the truth of his first name.

When Price rescued Tennessee—for at least the fourth time this season—he was merely triumphing over his surroundings. He has been doing as much all his life, and it all comes down to his name and to the mother who blessed him with it. Were he a Price by any other name, he says, "I probably wouldn't be in college. I'd probably be just another guy in the neighborhood, standing on the corner, selling drugs or whatever I could just to get by. Just doing anything not to die."

"It was the name of a moving company I'd seen ads for," his mother, Vinder Burress, says. "I liked the name, so I looked it up in the dictionary. It means without equal"

The neighborhood of West Dayton, Ohio, into which Peerless LeCross Price was born in 1976 was deteriorating fast. His mother was worried about the growing violence and drug use. "I believed there was something special about him," she says of her second son, and by chance she discovered the handle that would see him through. At eight months he was walking. "See, he's already living up to his name," she said at the time. When he was two, she taught him his name, cutting the letters out of construction paper and asking him to hand them over—"Give me a P"—like a gentle cheerleader.

They didn't stay in any one house or apartment for long. "Sometimes my mother couldn't afford to pay the rent, and we would be evicted," Price says.