There was nothing remarkable about Saturday morning.

Jordy Nelson woke up in a hotel bed, just like he does before every football game.

He ate the same breakfast as everyone else on the team.

Nothing exotic, just the usual breakfast staples.

"Our team meal consists of eggs, French toast, hash browns and milk," Nelson said. "Sometimes we'll have pancakes instead of French toast."

The milk was 2-percent, in case you were wondering.

There was nothing remarkable or different about Nelson's pregame routine, nothing to hint at the historic night to come. Well, maybe one thing.

"Maybe it was because we did the Wildcat Walk on the other side of the stadium," Nelson said, tongue planted firmly in cheek. "We'll give it to that one."

A mundane day turned into an unforgettable evening for Nelson. Since Knute Rockne popularized the forward pass nearly a century ago, no Wildcat has caught more of them in a single game than Nelson did Saturday night.

The senior from Riley, Kan., did everything against Missouri State. He caught 15 passes, a school record. He tallied 209 receiving yards, also a school record. No one would have been surprised to see Nelson wearing Willie's cat-head at halftime or directing traffic in the parking lot.

"Personally, you don't go into a game thinking that you might do something like that," Nelson said. (We'll assume he meant the records, not the cat-head.) "But you just get into a flow."

You got the feeling Nelson could have caught 25 passes if the circumstances allowed it.

After his historic night, there was no way Nelson could avoid the spotlight. Reporters clustered around him, firing questions from all directions about his records, his receptions, his breakfast.

It was the kind of thing that used to make him uncomfortable, the kind of thing that prompted his self-imposed media ban last season. At the time, Nelson's silence was dissected and analyzed and misconstrued almost every way possible.

But to understand Nelson, you have to understand that every now and then, people from rural America will stop and wonder why everyone else feels the need to talk so much.

In rural America, you can sit on your porch for hours with nothing but the hum of the radio in the background. Meals and long car trips are filled with silence, punctuated by short bursts of conversation.

So it's not that he is unfriendly. It is just that sometimes, you are tired of talking. After weeks of questions about his ailing knee and K-State's offensive woes, Nelson was ready to be quiet for a while.

But now he's talking again, smiling, looking more comfortable in the spotlight than ever. He stayed in the interview room longer than anyone else Saturday, answering every question as best he could.

He even humored reporters and went through his game-day routine, searching for something out of the ordinary. In the end, though, there was only one thing he could say.

"Today," he said, "was a good day."

Austin Meek is a senior in print journalism. Please send comments to sports@spub.ksu.edu.