Geno Smith didn’t need a TV to watch the big games at Sun Life Stadium when he was growing up. All he did was walk outside, sit on top of his mom’s car and look up.

When Peyton Manning led the Colts to the Super Bowl and Tim Tebow led the Gators to the national title, Smith, a budding teenage star quarterback at Miramar High at the time, saw it all unfold on the stadium’s Jumbotron screen from his family’s home near Fairway Elementary School in Miramar.

“The way my mom’s house is angled,” Smith said Monday morning, “I had a good view.”

Now the conductor of West Virginia’s vaunted aerial attack, Smith won’t be sitting and watching the next big game at Sun Life Stadium. The hometown hero will serve as the main attraction for the Discover Orange Bowl on Wednesday night, supported by arguably the loudest personal cheering section at the game when the 23rd-ranked Mountaineers (9-3) take on 14th-ranked Clemson (10-3).

Smith’s mother, Tracey Sellers, said she has lost count of the number of family members and friends coming to see Smith play. Some are coming from as far as New York, South Carolina and the Bahamas. Miramar coach Damon Cogdell, a West Virginia grad, is bringing the state runner-up team to support the four former Patriots on West Virginia’s roster, including receivers Ivan McCartney and Stedman Bailey (Smith’s roommate).

Family support

But no supporter among the crowd Wednesday might mean more to Smith than his 60-year old grandmother, Mosetta Bratton (aunt of former University of Miami star tailback Melvin Bratton). She was on her deathbed battling kidney failure last year at this time when Smith came home for the holidays. But Bratton since has made a miraculous recovery and will be at Sun Life Stadium on Wednesday to see her grandson, who she affectionately refers to as Sonny Boy, play for just the second time since he left for college.

“My mom went from in being a wheelchair, not being able to walk to cooking and washing the dishes for me on New Year’s Day,” Sellers said. “When she was sick she couldn’t remember my name, called me Norma. The one thing that was steady was her grandson. She would ask me, ‘What time is the game?’ What time does Geno play?’

“For us, God couldn’t have done anything better than to bring this game home to his grandma so she can go and sit in those stands.”

Smith said he has enjoyed his return home to South Florida. He has spent most of his free time in the lobby of the Miami Beach Fontainebleau (the team hotel) star-gazing with his teammates where Paris Hilton, Rhianna and a collection of rappers have hung out this week.

But the journey to glitz and glamour and the Orange Bowl for Smith (6-3, 214) began long before he earned All-Big East First-Team honors and rallied the Mountaineers to three consecutive, heart-stopping late-season wins over Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and USF by a total of seven points. Sellers said her son’s love for football started when he used to run up and down the hallway of their old Opa Locka apartment complex with an Emmitt Smith jersey on and a football tucked underneath his right arm.

“I still remember the day my mom bought him a swing at her house and put it in the yard,” Sellers said. “Other kids from the neighborhood would come by and get on it and swing. Geno would stand there with the football in his hands watching.”