MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – His knee's just fine, thank you very much. Doubts anyone might have had about the health and well-being of Kenny Bigelow Jr.'s right knee can be put to rest after seeing him blow past Tennessee center Brandon Kennedy to haul down quarterback Jarrett Guarantano behind the line of scrimmage on the very first play of the season last weekend.
 
It was originally recorded as a tackle for a loss, but through the persistence of director of football communications Mike Montoro, it has since been changed to a sack.
 
"Oh yeah?" Bigelow Jr. said Tuesday afternoon. "Well, that makes me a little happy."
 
Actually, Bigelow Jr. has a lot to be happy about these days.
 
Last spring, after spending half the year on his mother's couch back home in Wilmington, Delaware, Bigelow was close to putting his USC degree to good use by getting a job when he got the call that he had been waiting for – his NCAA waiver for a sixth season of eligibility was finally approved.
 
One last chance to prove to people that he is as good as they once said he was. Six years ago, Bigelow was as big as his surname suggests.
 
He blew up during his junior season at Red Lion Christian Academy, which is not too far from his hometown, and a senior season spent at Eastern Christian Academy in 2012 helped him become the nation's No. 2-rated defensive tackle and the No. 9-rated overall player in his class, making him one of the most coveted defensive players in the country.
 
Despite playing with several guys who ended up coming to West Virginia, Bigelow set his sights on Hollywood by committing to play at USC.
 
"I really didn't know much about USC, to be honest," he admitted. "I didn't start watching college football until I started getting recruited. It didn't start happening until I went out to a the five-star camp they had out there and just being on the West Coast for the first time was only something I had seen in the movies. I fell in love with it – the coaching staff, the area and everything."
 
But instead of a thriller, the movie Bigelow ended up acting out in LA turned out to be a drama, to say the least.
 
After redshirting in 2013, Bigelow Jr. suffered his first serious knee injury during training camp in 2014 and was sidelined for the entire season. That meant basically two years down the drain.
 
But after successfully rehabbing his knee, Bigelow Jr. returned to the field in 2015 and played in all 13 games for the Trojans as a backup defensive tackle, logging 10 tackles, three sacks and a pass deflection.
 
Then came his second serious knee injury in 2016 during spring football practice and another year of inactivity.
 
His final season at USC in 2017 was relegated to just 58 snaps as a spot player before finally "retiring" from football prior to the Notre Dame game.
 
After five years at USC and just a handful of tackles to show for it, it looked like Kenny Bigelow Jr.'s name was going to join the long list of five-star high school sensations who ended up being college busts.
 
"I got pretty low, I won't lie," he said. "Once I realized playing at USC was pretty much done, I was a little discouraged. But then I talked to the compliance people, and they said my waiver had actually gone through so I found some new life, and if I got another chance I was going to go out and dominate and attack it with everything that I have."
 
That's about the time when Bigelow Jr. discovered Almost Heaven, West Virginia – a place where many players are now coming to see their once-promising college careers get revived. It must be the mountain water here.
 
It happened to Florida State's Clint Trickett. It happened to Pitt's Rushel Shell, Michigan's Kyle Bosch and Iowa's Maurice Fleming.
 


And, of course, it's happening right now for Florida's Will Grier, Alabama's T.J. Simmons, Miami's Jovani Haskins, Bigelow Jr. and Clemson defensive end Jabril Robinson. Bigelow Jr. and Robinson give WVU a couple of top-shelf defensive linemen at a position that has not seen many NFL-caliber players over the last 20 years or so.

There was Will Clarke, drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals in 2014, and nose tackle Chris Neild, picked in the final round of the 2011 NFL Draft by the Washington Redskins.
 
Before that, you have to go all the way back to 1999 when West Virginia produced a pair of drafted defensive linemen in John Thornton and Kevin Landolt.
 
That's four draft picks in 19 years, which makes it easier to see why the Mountaineers switched to the 3-3 stack in the early 2000s, and have been playing it ever since.
 
Yet with veteran, talented guys such as Bigelow Jr. and Robinson playing this year, along with an outstanding crop of young players coming along behind them, it made sense for veteran defensive coordinator Tony Gibson to start messing around with some four-down fronts.
 
If his objective is to get his best 11 football players on the field at the same time, then playing four down guys more often together this year is probably the best way to go about it.
 
Which brings us back to Mr. Bigelow. 
 
In reality, the only real scar on his college football career is that great big one resting above his right knee cap. It's one thing to be a five-star player and stink, it's another thing entirely when matters are completely out of your hands because you can't stay healthy.
 
"My thing is, it wasn't because there was so much talent around me that I couldn't get on the field," Bigelow Jr. explained. "My thing was injuries. My body didn't allow me to get out there, but I'm healthy now. That was a great motivation for me coming here to not be another one of those five-star guys who never panned out or was on those 'greatest that never was' lists.
 
"I never wanted to be one of those guys, and I never wanted to hear my name in those conversations," he added.
 
Bringing up the labels associated with being a five-star recruit is another subject entirely, which usually gets players and coaches rolling their eyes whenever these things come up at all.
 
Bigelow Jr. lived that label for five years at USC.
 
"I've seen it on both sides," he explained. "I've been around some tremendously talented guys that were unranked, and I've been around some five-star guys and you're like, 'You got that manystars?' You find out real quickly when you get to college that stars do not matter. It's about who wants it more? Who works the hardest and who is just going out there and be a dog?"
 
Or a dawg, in Tony Gibson's vernacular.
 
"Any next experience, you have to attack it with great energy and great enthusiasm so, yeah, I would call this a new beginning for me," Bigelow explained. "I started all over and left everything in the past. I didn't even bring any USC gear down here with me.
 
"I just wanted to focus in and buy in when I got here, and to see what this school means to this state and how these guys jell and bond with each other, it was impossible for me to think otherwise."
 
It's been a long road back for Bigelow, one filled with potholes and hazards. So why not spend your final year in a place that doesn't exactly have the smoothest of roads – West Virginia?
 
"It's year six for me so I've kind of seen it all," Bigelow said. "I've been through the 30-day training camp and the two-week training camp, so I understand what it is to go out there and play and win games. 
 
"It's an extremely fine line (between success and failure)," he added. "I was telling guys there was a moment when I didn't even know if I would get back to school. There was a seven-month period when I was back home sleeping on my mom's couch. I was contemplating getting a job, so the real world was right at the cusp. 
 
"I had my degree, but I didn't plan on using it this early."
 
Thankfully, Kenny Bigelow Jr. can postpone using that fine USC degree for at least another year, and, now, perhaps even longer.