COLLEGE PARK - It's 20 minutes before Maryland football practice, and Brian Hickson's fingers clack away at the computer keys and his feet tap the floor in a burst of nervous energy.

"It's a race," says Hickson, a graduate assistant coach for the Terps. "My whole day is a sprint, to get everything together and get everything together correctly. It always seems to work out."

One of the full-time coaches on the football staff had set off the latest minor panic. He'd handed Hickson a list of plays or defensive schemes used by Tennessee, the Terps' opponent in the Peach Bowl on Dec. 31. Maryland's scout team needed to run those plays in that day's practice. So, all Hickson had to do was locate video of the plays on a computer, then neatly diagram them on 8-by-10 cards. And finish in less than a half-hour.

Hickson's assignment was just one of the tasks that Maryland's coaches count on from him and the Terps' other graduate assistant, Greg Sesny. In addition, Hickson and Sesny are working on master's degrees in education and leadership, and secondary education, respectively. To have a decent shot at admission to Maryland graduate school, applicants usually have a Graduate Record Examination score above the 65th percentile.

"A guy who has that GRE score is usually smart enough not to be a football coach," Maryland head coach Ralph Friedgen says.

But the smart guys are here in the Gossett Team House anyway, in a room where the most luxurious items are staff-issue office chairs that say "Terps." Around their laptops, the world of Hickson and Sesny consists of a portable stereo, a printer, a box of pens and pencils and a cutting board. Stacks of letter-sized paper stand knee-high underneath a counter holding a container of instant oatmeal.

Yet, this feels like home for the pair, and with 100-hour weeks a part of their existence during the season - like most of the coaching staff - it better be.

"When I'm not coming here, I don't feel right," says Sesny, who works with the defensive backs and is in his second year with Maryland's staff. He came here after a year at Division III Catholic, which is where Hickson - who works with the offensive line - also got his start, last year.

The efforts of graduate assistants is often the beginning groundwork en route to victory or defeat. For the pair, that same work also represents the lowest rung of the coaching ladder. Football's version of Jeeves, graduate assistants join the secretaries in making sure the figurative trains run on time - their duties ranging from performing the first breakdown of an opponent to taking a coach's car to get washed.

"Cars, laundry, drop coaches off at the airport - that's what you do, to make the full-time coaches' jobs easy, whatever it takes," running backs coach Mike Locksley says. "It's kind of a rite of passage."

Says Hickson: "If something happens, you have to be ready. Coach Friedgen is demanding and he's passionate. He wants things done correctly, and it behooves you to make sure that it's so."

This is where most coaches began their coaching careers, including Friedgen, who worked in that position at Maryland from 1969 to 1972.

The hope is that the work will eventually lead to full-time jobs. Hickson joined the Maryland staff after Brian Flinn left over the summer to become a receivers coach at Division I-AA Eastern Illinois. Another of the ex-GAs is John Donavan, who is now Maryland's assistant recruiting coordinator.

Sesny lives at the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity, paying for his room and board by serving as the house's manager, while Hickson lives with his parents. To stretch the $1,000 monthly stipend that goes along with tuition, Sesny says he's also worked odd jobs, including as a doorman at a club.

"What's normal anymore?" says Sesny, who spent a year teaching trigonometry at a high school in Prince George's County while coaching at Catholic. "My friends, they come to me and say, 'You stuck to what you wanted to do. ... You've persevered and you're accomplishing what you want. We don't see you, but it makes you happy.' "

Hickson's father, Dan, was a high school football coach in the Washington area for the better part of three decades and currently serves as Georgetown's offensive line coach. Brian got his degree in English with the aim of following in his father's footsteps at the high school level after playing four years at Towson.

But he figured he should maximize his opportunities in coaching if they were available, and there wasn't a better time to be a graduate assistant.

"This is something you want to do when you're young," says Hickson, who normally works continuously from early Sunday until late Monday evening. "I figured if it doesn't work out, I can go back [to the high school level], but this would be a lot of work for this not to work out."

Some work is drudgery. Sometimes on weekends there are endless runs to the airport to pick up recruits. Weekday chores might include scanning the Internet for information on opponents, such as injury reports or comments that may turn into bulletin-board material. The level of detail extends to laminating the plays players may use on their wristbands, so they don't rip in games. A typical day ends around 10:30 p.m.

But most of their more instrumental work comes from spending hours watching tape, which leads to detailed reports they make for the coaches. "You're immersed in it," offensive line coach Tom Brattan says. "You're a jack of all trades, trying to become masters."

For each regular-season contest, Hickson and Sesny watch the opponent's past games - identifying each play in every way possible in a process that takes three hours per game - before compiling a scouting report ready before Monday morning of the coming Saturday.

If Hickson and Sesny are wrong, so are Friedgen and the rest of the Maryland coaching staff.

"You're basically the eyes of the coordinators before he gets the chance to see a tape," Locksley says. "Because they've broken down the tape, they know the opponent better than we do on Sunday and Monday. Then we catch up because of the work we do."

That leads to the GAs' other major task, coaching a group of freshmen and walk-ons that make up the scout team, which isn't as simple as it sounds.

First of all, they must properly execute the opponent's strategy, and they must do their best to mimic individual players. By kickoff against Tennessee, a relative novice on the Terps' roster will have spent three weeks imitating a veteran starter such as the Volunteers' Casey Clausen. And to do this, Hickson and Sesny must motivate players who won't play on game day.

"[They're] teaching them from week to week, making sure that the different techniques and subtleties are adapted by the scout team to give us the best look to be ready," defensive coordinator Gary Blackney says. "That's what teaching is about, the ability to impart knowledge, to get a young player to a place he can't get by himself."

But beyond the Xs and Os, the tutorials in motivation and the detail in helping a football program run smoothly, Friedgen says the grad assistants learn something important about themselves.

"The biggest thing," he says, "is that they get to learn whether they want to be a football coach."

Next for Terps

Matchup: No. 20 Maryland (10-3) vs. Tennessee (8-4) in Peach Bowl

Site: Georgia Dome, Atlanta

When: Dec. 31, 7:30 p.m.

TV/Radio: ESPN/WBAL (1090 AM)

Line: Maryland by 1