Courtesy of the University of Virginia

Keith Payne ranks third in rushing yards for Virginia with 82, including a team-high 70 last weekend at Middle Tennessee.

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CHARLOTTESVILLE -- To watch 6-foot-3, 234-pound Keith Payne rumbling through Middle Tennessee's defense Saturday night, nobody could have guessed that Payne is sometimes at a loss for energy.

Maybe now, he won't be.

Payne, Virginia's leading rusher in a 23-21 victory in Murfreesboro, Tenn., said he has been diagnosed with sleep apnea and that a corrective device is on order.

"Every time I would come home, my dad would ask me why I was so sleepy," said Payne, a redshirt freshman from Fairfax County. "I'd hang out with him, then, five minutes later, I'd be sleeping.

"He was concerned about it. I told him that my schedule was busy, but I was always tired. When I came back to school, he noticed that I was oversleeping certain things, and that's when my father decided to call Coach [Anthony] Poindexter."

At the advice of Payne's father, Keith Sr., Poindexter -- the running backs coach -- started the process that resulted in Keith Jr. undergoing a sleep test.

Snoring might have been the first giveaway. Payne shares an apartment with classmate B.J. Cabbell, who has been known to bang on the wall when awakened by Payne's snoring.

"My whole family snores," said Payne, who indicated that his father does not do interviews. "When I got to college, that's when I realized that I snored a lot. When we travel, people on the team don't want to stay in my room."

Payne isn't alone. More than 50 million Americans are said to be afflicted with sleep apnea, a condition that restricts the flow of oxygen and interrupts breathing.

"I've never really had a night's rest because they said my brain's always awake to keep me from dying," Payne said. "I would stop breathing 80 times per hour."

Help is on the way in the form of Continuous Positive Airway Pressure, commonly known as CPAP, a process that opens up the airways either through a nasal mask or pillow.

"I haven't gotten it yet," Payne said, "but I slept with one during my sleep test and I felt like a different person and that was after only three hours. For now, I'm sleeping on my side. I try not to sleep on my back. That's when I lose most of my air."

Sleep apnea has been discussed as a possible cause in the death of Reggie White, an NFL Hall of Famer who was 43 when he died in his sleep in December 2004.

White was aware that he had sleep apnea but "was unable to wear the facemask because he was claustrophobic," his widow, Sara, the spokesperson for the Dental Organization for Sleep Apnea, said on a Web site.

Research has linked sleep apnea to Attention Deficit Disorder and that raises an interesting question about Payne, who took a leave of absence from the UVa program last summer to concentrate on academics.

"They think [the CPAP] will have a positive outcome," Payne said. "With that, I'll be well-rested and I'll be able to focus more."

Sluggishness was never one of Payne's traits athletically. He was the Group AAA player of the year in 2005, when he carried 273 times for 2,059 yards and 26 touchdowns, and played every down in Oakton High School's stunning upset of unbeaten Landstown High School in the state title game.

Before that, Payne was a member of state championship lacrosse teams for Oakton in 2004 and 2005, and he hasn't ruled out a return to that field.

"It's shocking a lot of people," said Payne of his pre-diagnosis accomplishments.

"But a lot of people don't know about [sleep apnea]. I'm just glad I found out about it when I did."