First he heard the voices. Father and brother -- the murmurs, so familiar, echoed into his semi-conscious head.

He felt someone cut the athletic tape off his feet. Then nothing.

Eric Ravotti woke up later that afternoon in a hospital bed. He saw his family, his fianc. He had no idea why he was there.

"I had 100 questions," he recalled.

A short time before, the outside linebacker had walked off the field and collapsed in a heap on the Beaver Stadium sidelines during Penn State's game with Indiana last Saturday. That was the last thing he remembered.

He was told that he had a grand mal seizure, probably a side effect from a flu virus that he was carrying, combined with a low blood-sugar count.

But in his return to consciousness, Ravotti had more important things on his mind than medical terms and diagnoses.

"I had them giving me updated scores the whole time when I was conscious," Ravotti said.

That made his father cringe. Guido Ravotti had seen his son go down in a heap, and now he was asking about the score?

"Half of me was mad, and half of me was, well, that's Eric," his father said.

They told Eric it was 31-17, Penn State. Then they told him the final: Penn State 38, Indiana 31.

They never told him that Indiana tied the score at 31.

"Thank God," Eric joked. "I don't think I could have handled that in my weakened state."

Eric Ravotti, in his first contact with the media since the seizure, was upbeat and in good spirits yesterday morning. Perhaps it was because he remembered very little. His teammates recalled the unbridled fear of the whole incident.

"I was standing right there when it happened, and it took me like a half-hour to get over it," linebacker Brian Monaghan said. "That shook me up pretty much, because he was my roommate my freshman year."

It was a violent sight. Ravotti was being pinned down, consciously trying to push people off of him. There was blood -- he had bitten through his tongue. His teammates had endured battle after battle on the football field, but they had never seen anything like this.

"They thought I was dying," Ravotti said. "I think it shook them up a lot more than it shook anyone else up."

Except his family.

Guido Ravotti knew his son had been ill since the Ohio State game. When he saw the trainers and players and coaches crowd around someone on the sidelines, he got that sick feeling in his gut -- that "parent feeling."

He ran to the railing behind the sidelines, and safety Lee Rubin called him over.

"I don't know how to tell you how afraid I was," Guido Ravotti said.

As a precaution, Eric was given Dilantin, an anti-convulsant medication. The chances of a seizure recurring are very slim. He will work out today, and get back into the full routine on Monday.

He said he is ready to go this weekend against Illinois. It is a special day for the fifth-year senior -- it is his last home game. He wants to be in uniform more than anything in the world.

His doctors disagree.

"I wanted to play this weekend. It'll be frustrating, because it's the last game I'd be able to play and I'll have to sit out," he said.

But it will still be his day. They couldn't drag him away from this if he was confined to a hospital bed.

"I'm going to go out there no matter what," Ravotti confirmed.