When you want information from David Ligon, it's apparently on a need-to-know basis.

For instance, when Ligon got the first start of his Tennessee career at Notre Dame on Saturday after five years of injuries dating back to high school, he conveniently forgot to forewarn his parents.

Yet when they showed up at Notre Dame and big 'ol No. 66 lumbered on the field for the first Vols' offensive series as the center, they weren't surprised he didn't utter a pregame peep.

"I'm a low-key guy," said Ligon, a 6-foot-5, 300-pound, fourth-year junior who'll probably make his second straight start on Saturday against Memphis. "I know it was big deal, me being Catholic and getting my first start at Notre Dame. But I didn't want my family getting nervous or freaking out over it."

When Ligon's dad, also named David, heard his son's explanation, he just laughed. David, who has been a coach at Christian Brothers High School for 23 years, whose had coached in more games than he'd like to remember, doesn't get jittery and neither does his wife.

Why? Because season after seasons of this injury and that injury, and after one step forward and two steps back, the Ligons, like many parents of college players, just learn to take things as they come.

In the scripted, perfect world, a high school football star signs a major college scholarship. He stays mostly injury-free, starts some games by the time he's a sophomore and starts getting noticed by NFL scouts as a junior.

The reality is many players are like Ligon, who do all the right things on and off the field, and have all the bad luck. He fractured his fibula and dislocated an ankle in the second game of his senior season at CBHS, then underwent arthroscopic knee surgery in January 2003, then sustained a severe ankle sprain on the first play of the first scrimmage this preseason.

A college athletic career is a physical and emotional endurance test for athletes and parents. Forrtunately for Ligon, he said he's learned a lot about himself the last few years of trying to get his college career on track.

"I love to play and I like to compete," Ligon said. "But football isn't my true identity, it doesn't define me. You have to know that one day, football is going to end and you go on to the next phase of your life.

"You understand that football is fun, but there's more to life than football. I go off to practice every day, but there are guys my age in the war overseas who don't know when they go to bed every night if they're going to be dead or alive the next morning."

That's some stunning perspective from a 21-year-old. But Ligon, who will graduate in May and play his senior season as a graduate student, credits his father, who coached him in high school, for his balanced outlook.

"Some parents force their kids to play sports, and that can be tough," Ligon said. "My parents were never that way. My dad played football in college (starting at Tennessee and finishing at Memphis in the early 70s). He's never tried to re-live the game through me. He let me make the decision whether I wanted to play. He let me have fun."

And that had to be hard for David the daddy, especially as a coach. But it was because he was a coach, and had observed sometimes overzealous parents, that he knew how to handle his son with just the right touch.

"David grew up around my teams as a waterboy, so he had a pretty good idea about football," David Sr. said. "But I let him ask me about joining a team in the GYAA. The only thing I regret that I missed a lot of time that I could have watched him play, because I was too busy coaching. I've changed my schedule so that doesn't happen anymore."

At the start of this season, after being named co-winner of the Vols' most improved offensive player award last spring, Ligon figured to start in the season opener. Returning starting center Richie Gandy was rehabbing a torn anterior cruciate knee ligament sustained playing pick-up basketball last winter.

But on that first snap in that opening preseason scrimmage ...

"I felt like I did when I broke my fibula in high school," Ligon said. "Except this time when I looked at my ankle, it was in place."

Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer was as sick over Ligon's injury as Ligon, but couldn't be happier the way Ligon has bounced back.

"I'm real proud of him, because David really matured in the off-season and in the spring," Fulmer said. "He's been very patient here, working through injuries and going through a couple of position switches (Ligon was recruited as a defensive end). But he's smart, he's tough, he works hard every day and he physically has made himself into a good player."

Fulmer was pleased with Ligon's play against Notre Dame. With Gandy dealing with re-occuring knee problems, Ligon has been getting all the snaps this week in practice on the first and second units. He's preparing for some of Memphis defensive coordinator Joe Lee Dunn's creative defensive alignments, such as a two-man front.

"Notre Dame kept us on our toes, it did a lot more twisting with their defenive linemen and linebackers," Ligon said. "But Memphis is a little different. They come at you from different places at different times. They're like minnows in a bucket."