Former basketball star trying hand at football

EAST LANSING, MICH. - Michigan State's weight room was filled with football players pushing themselves to the point of exhaustion.

Then, there was Antonio Smith.

The 6-8, 260-pounder looked like the rest of the green-clad athletes.

But he's not.

More than a decade ago, Smith was the building block upon which Tom Izzo built one of the nation's best basketball teams. Smith helped the team reach the first of four Final Fours under the coach in 1999.

After playing professional basketball in Michigan and Italy, Smith -- the brother of a current NFL player, Robaire, and a retired one, Fernando -- finally is doing what Izzo and Nick Saban wanted him to do a long time ago.

Smith is trying to make football a career despite not playing the sport since the eighth grade. He turns 32 a week before the NFL draft in April.

"Doing this has always been in the back of my mind, but I was focusing on basketball until I was in Las Vegas last summer working out for a Korean basketball team," Smith said. "The coaches kept saying I was too short, then I ran into Julian Peterson and that changed everything."

Peterson, who played football at Michigan State when Smith was on the basketball team, helped Smith get a workout with his current team, the Seahawks.

"I ran some routes and did some cone drills for about an hour," Smith said. "Then, I didn't hear anything from them."

Smith's better-late-than-never attempt to follow his brother's footsteps into the league is taking shape.

He has been catching passes, running routes, blocking sleds, lifting weights and going through drills in preparation for Michigan State's pro day March 12. That's when more than 20 NFL scouts will evaluate him alongside traditional prospects such as receiver Devin Thomas.

Gil Brandt, the NFL's scouting consultant and longtime personnel director of the Dallas Cowboys, said a team might invite Smith for a nothing-to-lose workout after the draft.

"If he makes it, it would be a heck of a story because it would be like the eighth wonder of the world," Brandt said Monday. "Outside of the guy they made a movie out of with the Philadelphia Eagles, I can't think of anybody that has done what he's trying to do."

That guy was Vince Papale.

Papale tried out for the Eagles in 1976 and made the team at age 30 after not playing college football and working as a substitute teacher and bartender. He became the inspiration for "Invincible," starring Mark Wahlberg.

Whenever his career ends, he wants to open an after-school program in his hometown of Flint. He plans to dedicate it to the late Frances Cleaves, who raised her son, Mateen, and others such as Smith as if he was her own.

"I really want to make it in football so that I can make some money and give back, like she used to always tell us to do," said Smith, whose daughter was born a year ago as he was trying to complete his college degree in family and community services. "There are a lot of kids in Flint that need some help."