Alice Miles made the trip from New Jersey with her son, Paul, when he enrolled at Nebraska in the late summer of 1981. She spent a few days in Lincoln before returning.

When she left for the airport, she had Coach Tom Osborne’s assurance that her son was in good hands. Osborne made certain she had the essential phone numbers, including those of his home and office as well as the office of Dr. Ursula Walsh, the Cornhuskers’ academic counselor.

Osborne also had Alice Miles’ assurance that her son would do his part.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “You won’t have any problems with Paul.”

In case Osborne did, however, he could call, and she would be on the next flight to pick up her son and take him back to New Jersey, freeing his scholarship for someone more deserving.

On occasion, Osborne would bring up the subject, suggesting that he might have to make that call to New Jersey. But he was joking. The scholarship was never in jeopardy.

Alice Miles knew it wouldn’t be. By all indications, she raised her son right. “I was fortunate to have my mom,” says Miles, who earned three letters as a Cornhusker I-back.

(His father died in 1969, when Paul was only 6-years-old.)

Because his career overlapped those of Mike Rozier, Jeff Smith and Doug DuBose and because of injuries — including a season-ending shoulder injury in non-conference play as a junior — Miles was never the featured back at Nebraska. And he was never a “top student,” he says.

But he made the most of his ability on the field, always trying to control the things he could control, staying in shape, knowing the plays, running in the right lane on the kickoff team, and got the most out of the opportunities presented in the classroom, always with an eye to the future, when football would be finished. Going to class and getting an education also were things he could control.

Miles is president of Junior Achievement of New Jersey now, the latest step in a journey that has taken him through a brief career in the NFL as well as jobs as an international marketing director for Nike, sales representative for Bristol-Myers Squibb and vice president of the short-lived XFL.

He and wife Lisa have established a foundation for kids with cancer (Miles 2 Go 4 Kids), absorbed by Robert Wood Johnson’s Institute for Children with Cancer three years ago.

And the journey isn’t finished. Ultimately, he plans to be in sports administration at the collegiate or professional level.

That’s his “passion, to finish what I started,” he says.

An Achilles injury ended his playing career before it started. He went from Seattle, which drafted him in the seventh round in 1986, to Tampa Bay in 1987. Then he returned to Nebraska, where he worked with diversity issues in the chancellor’s office while completing a master’s degree.

He was speaking in Oregon on behalf of the University of Nebraska Alumni Association when he was introduced to Phil Knight, founder and chairman of Nike, Inc. — though Miles didn’t know.

Knight told him he looked as if he could still play football and wanted to know what his goals were. Miles said he would like to work in the front office of a sports organization someday.

The conversation turned to athletic shoes and Miles told the CEO of Nike he had preferred Adidas shoes as a player and liked Reebok because the company was a partner in a “Just Say No” poster for the Nebraska Alcohol and Drug Abuse Council, for which he was on the board of directors.

Not long after that, Miles got a phone call from Nike, the third shoe company on his list. Before he returned the call, he spent three hours in the library, researching the company. Returning the call, after learning who Knight was, was like facing “fourth-and-1 against Oklahoma,” Miles says.

Knight left a board meeting to take his call. Soon after, Miles was working for Nike. He spent four years traveling for the company, working with the world’s top track and field athletes.

And Knight never let him forget their first meeting.

The Nike job ended when he returned to New Jersey to be close to his mom. She died from lung cancer in 1995, at age 60. Her legacy was the Miles 2 Go 4 Kids Foundation.

Alice Miles instilled the personal values in her son, capitalizing on opportunities and always having a plan, that were developed during his time at Nebraska, playing for Osborne.

When he signed with the Seahawks following the 1986 draft, Miles’ initial reaction was that he needed to wire his mom $10,000. She declined the offer. There would come a time, she said, when he would have the wherewithal to help anyone he wanted to help. And she was right.

Ironically, his sports administration goal can be traced, in part, to elementary school, when he aspired to be a garbage collector. A Junior Achievement representative suggested if that were the case, he should consider building his own garbage hauling business, being the person in charge.

Another of his personality traits was shaped early on when Muhammad Ali made an unexpected visit to his neighborhood in East Orange, N.J. Ali had stopped to help one of the Miles family’s neighbors, whose car had broken down on the highway, and had driven her home.

Ali was quickly surrounded by neighborhood children and didn’t leave until he had given everyone an autograph, beginning with the smallest. Miles never forgot Ali’s kindness, just as he never forgot his mother’s words to Osborne before she returned home in the late summer of 1981.

“That will stay with me forever,” he said.