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Jeremiah Lovato (right, setting to hit UTEP quarterback Trevor Vittatoe) doesn't have the traditional size of a nose tackle. But the Rio Grande High product is a warrior in the weight room and has worked overtime to improve since walking on at UNM. "If you're not a football player, not a lot else matters," defensive line coach Everett Todd said. "Jeremiah works hard at being a good football player by developing everything he has."

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Jeremiah Lovato's magic, if you must call it that, emanates from a simple certainty.

There is no magic.

No hocus-pocus. No miracle cure. No sleight-of-hand. No hippy-hippy shake.

He worked his way into Division-I football by simply willing himself to get there - come hell, high water or low expectations.

Others were bigger, stronger, faster, had scholarships. Lovato's antidote to all of the above? Waves of work ethic, never-ending squalls of sweat equity.

"I've always had the mindset to bust my butt," assesses Lovato, "because I wanted to accomplish so much."

From deep in Albuquerque's South Valley comes the latest Lobos feel-good story: Lovato, the kid who didn't arrive with a scholarship or much of a chance, has established himself as a starter on the University of New Mexico's defensive line.

And get this: He's doing it at a position - nose tackle - that does to the human body what a meat grinder inflicts upon a New York strip.

So, yes, from the outside, it may come as a surprise to see a 6-foot-1, 253-pound kid from Rio Grande High School setting the point on UNM's defensive line.

But from the inside, it just completes the picture of what many people know about Lovato.

"Hands down," says his high school coach, Kelly Wilson, "the best leader I've ever coached."

Lovato, a junior who leads 4-2 New Mexico against 2-4 San Diego State tonight at Qualcomm Stadium, doesn't have complex answers about his football career. By most standards, he acknowledges he's a longshot.

He wasn't highly recruited after his senior season in 2003. Walked on to a college program that already had plenty of undersized linemen. Never popped coaches' eyeballs with God-given gifts of speed or size.

But Lovato, as he'd done throughout his career, persevered by knowing he would labor as hard as humanly possible to make himself a player. Most often, that would manifest itself in the weight room, where he established himself with lifts more commonly performed by hydraulic-powered machinery.

Still, it was his commitment - his passion for even the tiniest detail on the field - that set him apart.

"Lots of guys are weight-room warriors but can't play a lick of football," notes UNM defensive line coach Everett Todd.

"If you're not a football player, not a lot else matters," Todd continues. "Jeremiah works hard at being a good football player by developing everything he has."

What Lovato knew he possessed, even from an early age, was drive - and likability. His coaches at Rio Grande could sense it, describing him as a Ferris Bueller with shoulders: admired by many, respected by all.

"He could've thumped all the gangsters there, but he was never rough to anyone," says Wilson, an ex-Lobo who left Rio Grande a few years ago and now lives in Carlsbad. "He was cool to everybody. All the punks liked him, all the nerds liked him. All the time, he was the guy who knew there was a better way than the stupid way."

Lovato grew up on Bonito Road in the South Valley, and in a lot of ways, he's still there. Despite living in a society that tells us it's not hip to be square, he constantly advises youngsters from the South Valley that there are only two trails that kids can follow - the right way or the wrong way.

"I tell them," says Lovato, "that everything's possible if you set your mind to it."

Lovato set his mind to making Wyoming miserable last week, and as often happens, his gray matter and muscle memory carried the day. In his first start of the season, he logged five tackles, including one for a loss. Modest stats, perhaps, but remember, the Lobos' defense is based on the share-and-share-alike principle: Everybody gets a chance to make a hit.

"A lot of people see a nose guard and look at the NFL with all those big ol' humongous guys," says Todd, noting that Lovato is in his office almost every day, trying to study the position. "But our defensive linemen don't fill gaps so linebackers can make plays - they're not on scholarship so someone else can be all-conference. They're there to make tackles as well."

Either way, Lovato's not complaining.

"I love the game of football," he says. "I love to be out there starting and showing what I can do."

But the kid from Bonito Road knows there are others who'd like to follow. And at the age of 21, he's already grasped an essential tenet of life: true success comes when you help others climb the mountain you've already scaled.

That's why, in the summer, Lovato takes time out from his job as a laborer on a construction crew and reaches out to young football players around the valley.

"I basically tell them work ethic is the key to everything," he says. "If you put your mind to what you want to do, you can accomplish anything. That's how I see it. I set my mind to the highest goal I can. Even if I don't accomplish it, I still strive so I can accomplish it."

As he talks, Lovato is holding a plastic bag bursting with new Lobos sweats - team-issued gear given only to players who travel the right road. He grasps it gingerly, as if the contents contained magic dust.

There's nothing mystical inside the bag, of course. But inside the human heart?

That's another matter.