“White Hawk” is a converted walk-on safety, a tough-but-reserved sophomore who might be one of Nebraska’s fastest, most athletic defenders in recent memory.

“Knight Rider” is a chatty, smiling junior showing off his new $495 helmet, a player so well-versed in Bo Pelini’s defense that he’s almost like another coach on the field.

Matthew May and Blake Lawrence might be battling hard for the starting WILL linebacker job on Bo Pelini’s defense, but they’ve managed to forge a friendship and keep it light off the field.

“We figured you guys were going to talk to us about each other,” Lawrence said to reporters. “So we just made up nicknames.”

“Blake, why couldn’t you tell me that yesterday?” joked one scribe away from the interview.

“We made them right after, I swear,” Lawrence said.

Of course Lawrence is in good spirits, despite a grueling start to fall camp. That he’s allowed to practice is an improvement over last spring, when Lawrence suffered his third concussion in one year, and his football career was in jeopardy.

When the concussion occurred, “I didn’t think it was very serious,” Lawrence said.

“But the doctors and trainers said, ‘Whoa, Blake, this is a red flag. Three in one year. We’ve got to go through all these tests, and you really have to decide whether you want to play football again. Hearing that for the first time was kind of shocking.”

And tough when the 6-foot-3, 225-pounder had made so much progress, and even become a starter, toward the end of the 2008 campaign. After spot action through the first eight games, Lawrence got an extended opportunity in the Oklahoma, and made one of the better plays in that 62-28 loss, batting down a third-down pass from Sam Bradford and forcing OU’s first punt.

“Although the final score didn’t reflect too much success, I felt I succeeded on the field,” Lawrence said. “After that, the coaches kind of put me in a starting role based on packages for the rest of the year.”

He added five tackles in a win over Kansas State and three vs. Colorado. His best game was NU’s last, the 26-21 Gator Bowl win over Clemson. Lawrence had four tackles and intercepted a bubble screen pass that led to a Husker field goal. Nebraska held the Tigers to just 210 total yards.

“There was a point where I was on the field and I realized ‘this is nothing different, this is just playing football,’” Lawrence said. “Just getting that experience, being out on the field, it was great for me to accomplish what I came here to do, be a contributor as much as I can out there on the field.”

And then, concussion No. 3.

Lawrence missed the Red/White Spring Game, and had to pass a battery of medical tests in the following weeks. At the end of the summer, he took a neuro-pyschological exam and passed that, too. He was officially cleared to play football.

And then he got fitted with a Xenith Helmet, an-elaborate-but-expensive piece of headgear that uses shock absorbers to stabilize the head and minimize force. The absorbers look like a small hockey puck. They’re hollow inside, and each has a tiny hole to release air pressure. When they receive a blow, they instantly deflate, inflate again in a fraction of a second, and rebuff some of the energy to the shell of the helmet.

Developed by former Harvard quarterback Vin Ferrara, Xenith is still a bit of a boutique business, battling mainline manufacturers and a $1000 Riddell helmet called the Revolution, but they’ve got Lawrence as a pitchman. Figures. He’s got a 3.9 grade-point-average in marketing, and is on schedule to graduate with his bachelor’s degree in 2½ years.

Lawrence touted the airflow and the comfort, which helps him stay cool in hot practices. And hits do seem lighter now, he said, although fully-padded practices don’t begin until Wednesday.

“The other guys on the team are jealous,” Lawrence joked. “I said, ‘Just get three concussions and get a sweet helmet like this!’”

Don’t ask Lawrence’s position coach, Mike Ekeler, to laugh about it.

“I’m a superstitious guy, so I don’t even want to talk about it,” Ekeler said. Asked the same question a slightly different way, Ekeler said, “Apparently you didn’t hear what I just said.”

He’s smiling. But he’s not kidding.

Ekeler is just glad to have Lawrence back in the mix.

“Knows our system better than anybody,” Ekeler said. “He’s really become like a coach on the field. Bo can say ‘Hey Blake, make a correction here or there,’ or Carl or myself, and it’s done. The guy is sharp.

May, the 6-1, 216-pounder from Imperial, agreed. When Ekeler and head coach Bo Pelini shifted May from safety to the WILL spot, it was Lawrence who would help in those down moments of practice, or in between drives during games.

“Other than the coaches, he approaches me first when I come off the field and we make the corrections,” May said. “He’s more supportive than anyone I know. So it’s a competition between us, but we’re really supportive of each other.”

It’s been a whirlwind for May. From unknown walk-on, to linebacker, to the guy leaping through the air to cause a Josh Freeman fumble in the 2008 KSU game, to top of the depth chart in the spring.

Last year “seems a long ways away,” now, May said. He’s in the thick of position battle, and no longer a walk-on novelty brought in on blitz downs.

And May knows it, Ekeler said. He watches films, gets in the playbook, asks questions.

“He’s a guy who wants it so much,” Ekeler said.

Said Pelini: “He’s learning a lot. He’s still got a lot to learn. He’s nowhere near a finished product. The linebacker position right now, it’s up for grabs. At all three spots, we don’t really have any starters right now…everybody is in the mix.”

Including reporters, Pelini said, if they want to suit up.

Only if we can get a nickname, coach.

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