After earning ACC Player of the Year in 2014, James was poised to break multiple records in his Junior season. He’d taken a handoff and spun out of a tackle on Sept. 5 in the first half of Pitt’s season opener against Youngstown State. He knew something was wrong, but he got up and jogged off the field. He was held out the rest of the game as a precaution but figured he’d be back the following week. His thinking changed the next morning after an MRI exam.

“When it came back and you could see it off the bone, I just started crying like a little baby, because I had worked so hard,” Conner says. “I wanted to enter the draft that year.” He’d never been in better shape, he says, coming off a season in which he rushed for 1,765 yards and 26 touchdowns, and was poised for even more success.

Finally, Conner visited an ear, nose and throat specialist, who ruled out any issues with Conner's sinuses and then ordered an X-ray on his chest, which eventually led to a positron emissions tomography (PET) scan — and the discovery of a large tumor. Conner believes the knee injury saved his life.