HOUSTON — Ed Oliver, the most disruptive defensive player in college football, a young man who is deeply aware of how gifted he is, fidgets in a chair that can barely hold his 290-pound frame. It is June 29, 57 days before Hurricane Harvey will make landfall along the Texas coast, blanket Houston with nearly four feet of rain and leave much of the state in turmoil.
Here, inside the University of Houston Athletics/Alumni Center, Oliver's right foot taps the floor repeatedly, pushing his white Nikes up and down in a jackhammer cadence. His iPad, resting on his midsection that has no visible excess mass, bounces up and down.