Michael Stone will tell you he’s proud of what his son can do on a football field. And he’ll talk to you about completion percentages. He’ll remind you of his son’s 5-1 record as a starting quarterback. He’ll tell you he thinks N.C. State is going to be a winner this season. Yes, Michael Stone is proud of his 6-foot-4-inch, 236-pound quarterback of a son.

But you’ll never hear Michael Stone say football inspired him to love his kid.

Because he sees more than plays. He sees more than a 48.7 completion percentage. He sees more than a 5-1 record. He sees more than what fans see on TV. He sees more than what they print in the newspaper.

Michael Stone doesn’t have problems telling you there’s a lot more to his son than what gets telecast and printed to the masses. And he’ll tell you that’s why he loves Marcus Stone.

“I’m proud of the fact that he’s a leader and not a follower. I’m proud of the fact he’s getting a college education. I’m proud of the fact that he’s a gentleman,” the elder Stone said. “I’m proud of the fact that he conducts himself as a man and as a Christian. And I’m proud of the fact that he doesn’t quit.”

And while fans and critics will always evaluate him, at least in part, on his performance on the field, Marcus Stone is more than just a quarterback.

Marcus Stone: the quarterback

When Stone took over as the starting quarterback midway through the 2005 campaign, he struggled in the first half of games, completing only 29 percent of 44 passes, and turned it around in the second half, completing 59 percent of 78 passes. He ended the season with modest stats, completing 48.7 percent of his passes for 1,015 yards, eight touchdowns and six interceptions.

But he won games.

He went 5-1 in his first six games as a starting quarterback in the ACC, including a 20-15 win over then-No. 9 Florida State in Tallahassee.

But, as his dad said, criticism of the first-year starter never stopped. Marcus said he expects it.

“It comes with the territory of being a quarterback for so long,” Stone said. “In high school, I got ripped because I started as a freshman, and I wasn’t perfect. I was still learning. You’re always going to have critics. I just learned that coaches will get me where I need to be – if [critics] could get me where I needed to be, then they’d be somewhere now and not just criticizing me.”

He added his ability to brush off criticism comes from a talk he, his father and his coach had when he was still in high school.

“My high school coach told me growing up that I’d hear a lot of things from a lot of people and that I should just listen to my coaches,” he said. “The only other person I take criticism from is my father. I just don’t worry about what other people say about my game.”

Michael Stone, who won’t say what he told his son that day, said he always wants his kid to know he has a family to go to when the going gets tough.

“There is a lot of pressure and expectations regarding Division I football, and Marcus eats, sleeps and breathes football 24/7,” the elder Stone said. “But there’s a comfort level with your family where you can say, ‘Hold up, I’ve had enough football. Let’s talk about something else.'”

Marcus Stone: the teammate

Stone is adamant about supporting his teammates. He’s one of their leaders, he admits, and he said his team can make a BCS bowl game within the next two years.

“I believe it. I have no doubt in my mind,” he said. “A lot of people say we’re going to be last in the ACC, and that’s OK. I’m glad people think we’re going to have a bad season. We’re going to shock a lot of people.

“I like the underdog role. I like that people are just going to write us off automatically. That’s drive for a lot of players. We’re going to go out and prove we are something good.”

And while team chemistry on the whole is important to the redshirt junior, he’s always had a special relationship with the other quarterbacks on the roster – especially former starter Jay Davis.

“We were there to help each other,” Davis said. “He told me things he saw, and I told him things I saw. It was a friendly situation.”

But both Davis and Stone added they are friends away from football. Whether it was playing Xbox or going to Key West, Fla., together for spring break, the duo always tried to have moments regular friends enjoy.

“It was something we didn’t have to do,” Davis said. “You know, I don’t think Joe Montana ever talked to Steve Young while he was [in San Francisco]. But our personalities just clicked, and we decided to become friends. And we went that way.”

Stone said he wants to continue his extra-football friendships with the other quarterbacks on the roster.

“It’s good to have guys like [Daniel] Evans and [Justin] Burke,” he said. “Having a guy like Jay for so long, you just get used to having a guy there to push you and make you better. It’s different. But Evans and Burke are good guys, and I try to help them the same way Jay helped me.”

And Burke, a true freshman, said Stone has been one of his biggest assets in his brief time on campus.

“He knows this offense better than anyone on this team right now,” he said. “I can pick his brain in a different sense than coach Trestman – it’s a different relationship there. It’s a little bit more casual.”

Marcus Stone: the 21-year-old college student

Stone said he tries, whenever he can escape football, to hang out with his friends and just be a normal college student.

Jessica Symm, a junior in business management, remembers when he showed up for her 20th birthday party on Nov. 19, 2005.

“We all knew who he was, but he didn’t make a big deal about it,” she said. “He was a nice guy.”

Symm, who said she wore a white T-shirt that night, which all her friends signed, added Stone didn’t sign it, but only came up and said “Happy Birthday.”

“It’s a great feeling when you’re out in public and you have someone recognize who you are,” Stone said. “It’s a great feeling to know you have people out there supporting you. It makes you come out on the field a lot more comfortable.”

And, like most college students, music is a means of escape for Stone. He offered a story about how he came to an interest in country music.

“I really listen mostly to hip-hop and R&B,” Stone said. “And I used to not like country music when I first came here, but my roommate Pat Lowery and William Lee, they are big country boys, and it’s funny because now I like country. I mean, I wouldn’t go buy it, but I can sit and listen to it and enjoy it.”

Lowery, who said if he could choose a profession outside of football that he’d be a monster truck driver, said he remembers the day he first got his roommate to listen to country music.

“We had our iPods out and just switching back and forth one Friday during the spring,” Lowery said. “I’ve got a lot of country music, and he heard some of it, liked it, and now he’s slowly but surely adding to his collection.”

Marcus Stone: the barber

The starting quarterback at State doubles as a barber.

“It started out as just buzz cuts,” Stone said. “But I think it was John Ritcher who said his hair was so long he didn’t care, and he told me I could try to a fade to whatever style he was going to have. He said if I messed up, he would just buzz it. So, I just practiced a couple of times and started getting really good at it. I started cutting a few heads here and there, but it’s nothing real serious.”

Now, he said he cuts his teammates’ hair at no charge whenever they want. And they seem to trust him.

“Yeah, yeah, I trust him,” Lowery said with a smile. “No problems at all.”

Amato even said he would let his quarterback cut his hair.

“Yeah, of course I’d let him,” Amato said. “And sure, I’d cut his hair – with a knife.”

Marcus Stone: the son, brother

When 16-year-old Ryan Mohn, a longtime friend of the Stone family, died Feb. 7, 2004, it triggered something in Michael Stone.

“I realized life is short. And more importantly, I realized I wanted to be closer to my son,” he said. “It pushed me over the edge to make me want to move down here.”

So he and his 26-year-old son David moved to Clayton, N.C., from Pennsylvania a year ago.

And Marcus added having his family so close offers him an escape that he missed his first two years in college.

“It’s great being around my family. When you’ve got football day-in-and-day-out, sometimes you just need to get away. It’s really nice now that my dad and my brother moved down to Clayton,” Stone said. “Whenever I need to, it’s a 30 minute trip east, and I can get away to relax.”

But family has always been important to Stone. It’s always served as an escape for him – even long before his prominence as an ACC starting quarterback. He remembers, with some level of affection, taking ski trips with his dad to the western United States.

“I haven’t done it in a while, but my dad used to take me [on] snow skiing trips,” Stone said. “We would go out to Utah or Colorado and just go skiing. That was always amazing. Being on those slopes – you don’t think about anything. It’s beautiful up there.”