Josh Gaines doesn't often wake up and hit the snooze button nowadays -- his daily regiment starts while the stars hang overhead.

So, for Gaines, 8 a.m. classes aren't a problem. After all, he prefers to get up around 5 or 6 a.m.

"I'd rather work out at 6, it gets you ready for school and everything -- I like it," he said.

Maybe it was his stepfather's military background or maybe it was his mother rustling him awake at 5 a.m. when he didn't do chores. Whatever the reason, Gaines is pretty used to walking out the door before the sun rises.

Although, his mother admitted, he did have to be woken up around 5 a.m. quite a bit when he was younger. Until he found a loophole.

"He didn't miss eating, but he did miss a chore," his mother Wilma Gaines-Holder said with a laugh. "He would bribe another brother or sister to do it. If it's a cookie or peanut butter, donuts, something he could buy them."

And with 10 other brothers and sisters, the middle child certainly had an array of siblings to choose from.

Gaines' mother adopted two children, aged five and seven, when Gaines was only 8 years old. When those two kids informed her they had more siblings, Gaines' mother couldn't split them up -- so she adopted another two. Then the other two had another brother.

All in all, Gaines' mom adopted seven children and has recently taken on three more foster children.

"To tell you the truth, I still don't know everybody's birthday," Gaines said. "I know what month it is, but I don't know what day it is. Sometimes I would look at one of them and call them another one's name. It's confusing, but you get used to it."

Of course, having such a big family sometimes didn't lead to the most comfortable of moments. The vehicle his mother picked him up from school in, a 15-seat school bus-type ride, wasn't exactly the most stylish form of transportation.

"He'd usually say pick me up and then he'd duck down and hide his head when he got in," Gaines' mother said. "He told me, 'You gotta get me some wheels.' "

One year later, as a sophomore, Gaines did get his own car. But that freshman year was awkward for another reason -- "baby fat."

Gaines' high school football coach, Matt Stinson, said Gaines was pretty big and was embarrassed to take his shirt off. He couldn't even do 200-pound benches.

Obviously, a lot's changed since then. Gaines sees a lot of time on the field as a redshirt sophomore for Penn State. He already has a few starts under his belt and has collected 15 tackles and one sack.

Fans might not even recognize Gaines. After all, it might be easy to overlook a guy when the defense boasts such stars as Paul Posluszny and Justin King. But Gaines seems to like it that way.

"He pulls people in with a smile and a laugh, but at the same time Josh is very shy," Stinson said. "My wife loves to tell a story how Josh wouldn't even talk to her and I think that's his sensitivity -- the word sensitive probably isn't going to go over real well -- but shy's a good way to describe him. He's like a little brother to me."

Stinson couldn't help but laugh about Gaines' goofy humor, offering one specific anecdote that stuck in his mind.

When he took the Northrop (Ind.) High School football seniors on a four-hour trip to the middle of a national forest in Michigan, Gaines' allergies immediately flared up and he quickly became the butt of jokes. A day later, the 6-foot-3, 275-pound defensive end drove over to Lake Michigan with his teammates -- and spontaneously repeated, "I'm digging a hole in Lake Michigan." Strangers that walked past shot some funny glances Gaines' way, but he didn't seem to mind.

"The guys that were on our team understood and thought it was funny. The rest of the world would probably think that's not funny," Stinson said. "For us, it was totally Josh. It was a perfect example of his goofiness, his sense of humor."

As a running gag, Gaines and his best friend and teammate Antonio Beasley would find a way to laugh uncontrollably at every football photo-op. During senior year, the squad wasn't sure what the two team captains would do.

But Gaines had an idea. He and his best friend ended up being the only players to show up without jerseys -- Stinson found them obscure-numbered, replacement jerseys for the photo instead.

"Every single shot, they have the biggest, cheesiest smile and full-out laugh. That just became the big running joke: What are they gonna find to laugh about this time?" Stinson said.

According to Stinson, Penn State wasn't always the defensive end's No. 1 choice. Both he and Gaines' mother persuaded him to make a visit to Happy Valley.

So, when Gaines returned to his hometown of Fort Wayne and told his coach he verbally committed to Joe Paterno's Nittany Lions, Stinson said he "about fell out of a chair."

"I said, 'Are you serious?' but he said that's what he wanted," Stinson added. "It's been an excellent choice."

Gaines' mother agreed, elaborating on her son's decision.

"I knew of Penn State, but I didn't know that deeply about it. He could tell you the players, the year, he could tell you everything," she said. "It was Coach Paterno; it was the winning, the coach himself, the character of the coach. He loved it -- that's all he talked about."

Gaines' mother said when her son visits home, she's not really alarmed if she wakes up at 5:30 a.m. and doesn't see the Lions' rising defensive player. She knows he's either out running or exercising at the local YMCA.

No snooze alarm needed.