Dude can surf.

Dude also is half-crazy.

The BYU safety spent 10 years of his life on a board, every single day. On Saturdays, Francisco was in the water at a place called V-Land, not far from his home near the North Shore's Sunset Beach, as he puts it, "from sun up until sun down."

"That was my favorite sport - until I found football," he says. "It's such a relaxing feeling. Being in the ocean, getting the waves . . . You never get bored. It's a powerful thing."

It's a dangerous thing.

The surf that pounds Oahu's northern beaches over the winter months, at times, replicates the choppy churn of the drum of a giant Maytag. Francisco, at times, was bleached and battered by the fury of his passion.

A four-inch scar near the base of the back of his neck stands as proof. It is the leftover of surgery performed to cut out a golf-ball-sized glob of infection that pulsed through his body after he sliced his foot in the rolling rinse cycle on a protruding reef. Francisco, then 13, ignored the resulting sore - until the staph in his blood caused so much ache in his neck, where it settled, he could no longer tolerate the pain.

"I was almost paralyzed," he says. "I couldn't move my neck for two weeks."

That was then.

His head's on a swivel now.

The 6-foot-2, 215-pound "Cougarback" is the centerpiece of BYU defensive coordinator Bronco Mendenhall's ridiculously ravenous scheme. Much of the action of the opponent's offense funnels toward Francisco, and when it doesn't, he goes hunting for the ball on his own.

"I'm supposed to be the playmaker," he says, flashing a no-duh look. "That's my job."

Over the past two seasons, he's nailed down 215 tackles.

Fine, whatever.

That's not what he lives and breathes and plays for.

He does all of that for the violence.

"I like to hit people," he says. "It's legal to hit in football. That's why I love the game. It's a big adrenaline rush. It's what everyone loves to see, and what I love to do. It's exciting."

For him, maybe.

Receivers and running backs have a dissenting view. After three years as a starter, entering his fourth, the senior has a bad reputation for causing graphic pile-ups. A notable victim, two seasons back, was J.R. Tolver of San Diego State. On a third-and-12 route run toward the Aztec sideline, a pass arrived in Tolver's hands at the exact moment Francisco converged, blowing up the receiver and knocking him out before he hit the ground. Tolver suffered a concussion. Ooohs and aaahs erupted, all around.

"Nicest hit I've seen at BYU," says Jeff Reynolds, an athletic department official. "It was huge."

In the Neanderthal world of football, no greater badge can a defensive player wear.

If you're a big hitter, you're a god.

All hail.

"There's a physical presence about Aaron, even in practice," says BYU coach Gary Crowton. "He hustles and he hits. It's impressive. He may be quiet with his words, but his hits are anything but quiet."

There's that, too.

The laid back surfer from Laie, who caught all those tasty waves before buckling down on his football at Kahuku High School, is, indeed, an almost silent man. He does not talk. Doesn't participate much in nonsensical blab sessions, or meaningful ones, either. Some of his teammates have no clue what he thinks about anything or what he's about, outside of so much aggression demonstrated on the field.

And, yet, along with motor-mouth Brady Poppinga, who, when revved and red-lined, talks like Hulk Hogan - Believe me, brrruuuuuutthhheeerrr, there's gonna be some redemption this season, brrruuuuuutthhheeerrr - he is the unquestioned leader of the Cougar defense. Fellow defenders follow him because of the aforementioned badge.

Because collisions speak louder than words.

His teammates even cheered him on during a team party at Seven Peaks water park in Provo on Friday night, when he launched himself in the air while sailing down a slide, slamming his forehead into the top of the slide's tube, necessitating 13 stitches to close the wound. When he emerged at the bottom of the slide, blood gushing from the cut above his eyebrow, he laughed as his 'mates applauded.

"The first thing he wanted to know was whether the look of the cut matched the other scars on his forehead," Reynolds said. "Funny thing was, it was a Y-shaped wound."

At Monday's practice, Francisco cut out a small hole in the pads inside the front of his helmet to accommodate his stitched flesh. The trainers initially abided his eagerness, but told him, "No hitting."

When he ignored their orders, he was pulled off the field, defiant to the end.

That is the role, he says, of a leader.

"And," he adds, with another no-duh expression, "I am a leader on this team."

A master and commander who says the Cougars will be better this season, his last opportunity, unless the NFL comes calling, to legally embrace what he calls his "addiction" to a violent game.

"I'm confident," he says. "The offense looks good and athletic. On defense, it's the same. We'll be better. We want a league championship and a bowl game. We just want to go out and dominate. Nobody has to say much. We all know what has to be done this season."

They have to whole-heartedly follow their half-crazed leader.

No duh.