Colorado linebacker Jordon Dizon is destined to be a Big 12 legend for the way he patrols football fields from sideline to sideline and scrimmage line to goal line.

Dizon (say it DYE-zonn), a senior defensive captain from Waimea High on Kaua'i, leads NCAA Division I in unassisted tackles this season.

"He seems to be in on every play all over the field," reporter/blogger Kyle Ringo marveled in the Boulder Daily Camera.

Colorado defensive back Terrence Wheatley, after breaking up a pass far downfield against Miami of Ohio, said he looked up and "there was Jordon. What are you doing here?" Wheatley exclaimed. "You're supposed to be playing linebacker."

Dizon loves the challenge of covering the field. "You can make the play in front of you, but can you make the play when it's 20 yards away?" he says.

Dizon's sack of Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford, the nation's highest-rated passer, in the fourth quarter Saturday helped turn the game's momentum as Colorado rallied to upset the No. 3 Sooners, 27-24, on a field goal as time expired.

"It was a huge third-down stop. If they convert, they get in field-goal range," Dizon said in a rare acceptance of personal credit.

Otherwise, the closest he came to self-congratulations was, "I've got to give it to our defense. We played our butts off." The Sooners had averaged 61 points in their previous four games.

Dizon is among 48 linebackers on the Football Writers' All-America checklist and one magazine rated him as the ninth best inside linebacker in the nation, but he is having none of it.

"Until we win that Big 12 championship, no stats, no honors, nothing else matters," he said.

Inside linebacker coach Brian Cabral, a 1974 Saint Louis School graduate who recruited all the Hawai'i players at Colorado, is less reticent in his praise of Dizon.

"Jordon is the heart and soul of our defense," Cabral said. "He makes a lot of plays in the game, and practices every day like he is playing the game."

In fact, Cabral said, Dizon has not missed a practice or a game in four years at Colorado.

"He is as tough as I've had. He has played with his arm taped to his side.

"In the opening game this season against Colorado State," Cabral said, "Jordon was dragging his arm around, but he ended up making almost every tackle in the fourth quarter and overtime" as Colorado won, 31-28.

Dizon had 20 tackles, most by a Buff in a single game since 1999.

Cabral noted that in his 19 years coaching at Colorado, "I have had some great players, and Jordon is the only player I have coached who started all four years."

Dizon has 345 career tackles, which ranks in the top four of active NCAA Division I defenders.

Like his other personal achievements, Dizon is unimpressed. "Defense is easy; you just run up and tackle the offense," he said after the Oklahoma game. "I just go out and try to make as many plays as I can."

Until informed by reporters this year, Dizon said he didn't know national tackle statistics were kept.

"It never crossed my mind," he said. "I know there are a lot of guys out there who are just as athletic, bigger and stronger." After some prodding, he allowed that, "yeah, to be up there is a real honor."

What Dizon is proud of, is winning a scholarship, earning Big 12 academic honors in his economics major, and "learning to be a man."

Dizon said he did not point toward a football career. "I was just a typical Hawai'i kid growing up," he said.

His mother, a Kaua'i police detective, enrolled him in football camps at Colorado during his annual summer trips to visit relatives in New York.

Cabral, a nine-year NFL veteran, runs the camps. "He called me the day after I left in 2003 and offered me a scholarship," Dizon said.

"I wasn't recruited. I went to camp on my own, and got a scholarship on my own," Dizon said.

As for traveling so far from little, laid-back Waimea for college, Dizon said,

"Any time you move out of your comfort zone, you question your decision, but if you stick with it you come out with a lot of benefits."

"I learned to be a man, everything about being a man, and what it meant to become a man. Responsibilities and doing the right things at the right times are integral parts of that."

And helping to put Colorado football "a little bit on the map" is a side benefit.