They both stand on the cusp of their futures, excited and nervous.

Matt Schmitt and Joe Iorio played together as offensive linemen on the Penn State football team for four years, but now their paths diverge.

With the 2003 NFL Draft looming just two weeks away, Schmitt will ignore the urge to play professional football and instead will take a job with IBM, while his linemate Iorio fights to make his way onto an NFL roster.

You can hear the anticipation in both their voices. Over the phone, you can hear Schmitt bounding upstairs to find his official job title -- Materials Logistics Professional with IBM. It's a position that will take him all over the United States, requiring him to move every few months until it becomes a permanent job after two years.

Maybe if it weren't for the diabetes, Schmitt would be going to the NFL instead. After he was diagnosed with the disease in August 1991, his life changed dramatically.

By the end of each 12 or 13-game college season, Schmitt said he became very fatigued and run-down. Although he said he was in his best shape after this season, Schmitt worried that a 16-game NFL regular season, four or five preseason games, and playoffs beyond that would be too much for his body to withstand.

"The way my body was feeling, I didn't know how long I'd last in the pros, maybe a year or two," Schmitt said. "No matter how much work or conditioning I did in the offseason, I'd always get run down." Although Schmitt said he would "never close the door" on a return to football, he says it's highly unlikely. Matt's father, Thomas Schmitt, and his coach, Penn State offensive line coach Bill Kenney, said that once Matt makes a decision, he stands by it.

"He's not the kind of person who looks back," Kenney said, "he's a forward-moving guy."

Iorio has been meeting with his potential employers and eagerly eyeing the future as well. Although the NCAA awarded him a post-graduate scholarship, Iorio said the opportunity to play in the NFL was just too enticing and too fleeting to walk away now. He says he has talked with about 20 interested teams, including Green Bay, Tampa Bay and Pittsburgh. After speaking with the Packers at the Hula Bowl in late January, Iorio said they were "really serious about drafting [him]." But the long road between the end of the college season and the beginning of NFL training camp for him has been long and uncertain. While Iorio and his father Tim have been told he could be drafted as high as the fourth round, many of the draft experts say the center will go in the seventh round or sign as an undrafted free agent. The common knocks on Iorio are that he lacks lateral quickness and the strength necessary to play center at the next level. When asked about his weaknesses and what the draft experts say, Iorio paused for a few seconds before answering.

"A lot of those pre-draft sites are going off speculation," Iorio said. "You go on these web-sites and ... you hear all the criticisms about you and you start wondering if it's true."

Tim Iorio said his son was able to silence some of those critics at the Lions' pro day on March 20. After bench-pressing 225 pounds 27 times -- numbers that surpass the several of the top centers in the draft -- and reportedly beating Penn State defensive linemen Michael Haynes and Jimmy Kennedy in several agility drills, Tim said his son opened several scouts' eyes.

"They just went, 'wow,' " Tim Iorio said. "He's definitely on their radar screen now."

While Joe Iorio said his ability to long-snap will put him on an NFL roster, Penn State offensive line coach Dick Anderson said the former freshman walk-on has a good chance at success on the next level as a center. Anderson also said Iorio compares well with several former Penn State offensive linemen in the pros, and that Iorio's durability will give him a future in the NFL.

That future is almost here, and both Schmitt and Iorio say they are eagerly awaiting it.