"I had to get rid of the party aspect and being a college student and not realizing I had to be a football player," said the fullback who begins his redshirt sophomore year with Saturday's season opener for No. 25 WVU against visiting Coastal Carolina.

Sometimes life has a recipe that has to be followed and it takes time for all the flavors to marry and for the person to learn and mature. And sometimes life throws you in the microwave and things have to happen in a hurry.

An abrupt arrival altered Clarke's outlook earlier this year.

"She's about to be 7 months old," he said.

From the moment he welcomed his daughter, Ryleigh, into the world in February, Clarke has had to look at all the things he once did and accept he could no longer do some things and would have to do others differently.

It's not a complete separation from the past, but it is significant.

"I'm still me," he said. "I'm going to have fun. I'm the same person when I'm around my friends, but as far as knowing when it's time to work and be serious, that's what I know matters most now."

Clarke struggled with some of those things in the past. He showed up in 2008, a time when WVU absolutely needed a mean, rugged fullback to replace Owen Schmitt, weighing 260 pounds - not because Clarke had spoken with his coaches and decided that was a good idea, but because Clarke knew Schmitt played at that weight and thought he could, too.

That was frowned upon, and Coach Bill Stewart said Clarke was carrying "an extra suitcase" around the field. Then came a hamstring issue and pink eye and Clarke was redshirted for his first season.

To say he was attuned to his surroundings would be inaccurate.

"I'm not going to lie," Clarke said. "I was redshirting and I didn't know we had a short-yardage problem until the spring when I came in and they said, 'We had short-yardage problems and we're going to work on this.' "

He was a difference-maker last season, averaging 4.2 yards over 60 carries and scoring eight touchdowns, in addition to blocking assistance that helped Noel Devine gain 1,465 yards.

The once-suspicious coaching staff named Clarke the team's rookie of the year.

The spring, though, was interrupted by discipline dilemmas and early on there were times he was seen running up and down the stadium steps for matters Stewart would only discuss briefly and brusquely.

"I had to change my ways and everything I was doing," Clarke said. "From last year, where I was just out there playing, to this year, now I have a daughter. I have to mature more as a person and also know I'm not doing this for just myself now. I'm doing it for my daughter, too."

Despite the numbers in the backfield last season, Clarke wasn't a very good blocker. His position coach, Chris Beatty, says as much and Devine was usually at his best when he was alone in the backfield.

Making the 6-foot, 247-pound Clarke a better blocker - and thus getting another of the best players on the field more consistently - could only help the offense.

"I couldn't be happier with the way he's performed so far," Beatty said. "His whole focus has changed. You can tell he's matured a lot."

Beatty can tell not from a game or even from serious scrimmage situations, but from how Clarke conducts himself outside of his helmet and shoulder pads. He's early to meetings, as opposed to on time, and he sits up straight and makes note of things he finds valuable.

He asks the coaches questions and answers questions asked by his teammates. Sometimes he even initiates conversations with newcomers and younger teammates, conversations not necessarily with running backs and fullbacks or even about football, but conversations that still matter to everyone involved.

"I know what it's like to be in that position, how awkward it is to come into this big (Puskar Center football building) and not know anybody," Clarke said. "It's real hard and it can cause you to feel left out or to do things you shouldn't be doing."

Clarke knows what skeptics will think. He's aware others have had the same experience and said the same things. He even admits it all sounds "a little cliche," but he insists it's real because "when you're going through it, it makes a lot more sense."

How, he reasons, can he take control of raising a little girl when he can't take charge of raising himself?

"You have to adjust," he said. "It makes you realize there are certain things you have to do."

Clarke's advancement has been one where stadium steps and behavior blips that used to be common now seem abnormal. In WVU's final preseason scrimmage, Clarke ran into the middle of the line in the middle of a drill that was going nowhere for the offense. Frustrated with the results, Clarke stood up and flipped the ball a foot or so in the air.

The official could have let it go, and he might have had he not just warned Clarke about the same thing.

He threw the yellow flag and handed out and a 15-yard penalty, which was followed by a quick and one-sided lecture from Stewart to Clarke - then 15 trips up and down the stadium steps.

"You can't do anything that draws attention to yourself," Clarke said. "High-stepping, holding the ball in the air, anything that has people looking at you as an individual you can't do. I let my emotions get the better of me and I shouldn't have."

Clarke was eventually put back into the scrimmage. On his first carry back, he rumbled through a gauntlet of teammates into the end zone before he handed the ball to the nearest official.

It was proof again how Clarke's responses reflect the actions preceding them.

Contact sportswriter Mike Casazza at mi...@dailymail.com or 304-319-1142. His blog is at blogs.dailymail.com/wvu.