Buffalo Bills rookie defensive end Aaron Maybin asked a question of about 180 high school football players getting ready to practice at the team’s fieldhouse Tuesday evening.

“How many people want to do this for a living?” Maybin said.

About three fourths of the youngsters raised their hands.

“Who’s willing to go through what I went through to do it?” Maybin asked.

When about the same number again raised their hands, Maybin laughed and said, “Y’all don’t know what you just signed yourselves up for.”

Maybin proceeded to tell the players about the importance of taking their schoolwork just as seriously as their football.

“If you’re able to reach this stage, it’s not going to just happen on this field,” Maybin said. “It’s going to start in your classrooms. It’s going to start in your homes. It’s going to start in your communities.

“The NFL is not going to bring in just any guy. When the time comes for you to make it to this stage, they’re going to pull up everything, everything in your past. For all you running around being little knuckleheads, that stuff is going to come back on y’all.”

It’s a message Maybin himself heard in a very similar setting just five summers ago.

The weeklong camp is part of the NFL’s High School Player Development program, which funds 100 camps in 28 states. Students attend for free. In addition to on-field practice, they get advice on college requirements, standardized testing and life skills, such as time-management instruction, goal-setting, discipline and responsibility.

Maybin himself attended the camp program, which began in 2001, after his sophomore year of high school in the Baltimore area. Maybin remembers numerous college football players stressing the importance of school work at the camp he attended.

“By the time I came to this camp,” Maybin said after addressing the players, “everything they were saying was really reassuring for me. I always had a strong support system behind me that was going to push me in the classroom and on the field. It defiantly solidified all the things that I’d heard before.”

Maybin remained disciplined on and off the field through college.

Even though he left college a year early— after three years at Penn State and only two on the field for the Nittany Lions — he is close to graduating with a dual major in integrated arts and communications. Maybin stayed at Penn State year-round to take classes instead of going home in the summer.

“I’m still working on an independent study and, once I finish that I can take two online classes and have my degree in December or March,” he said.

Riverside coach Tony Truilizio has run the Buffalo camp for the past seven years. Kelly Cruttenden, University at Buffalo assistant athletic director for compliance, spoke to the players Monday about getting ready to meet college requirements. Erie Community College’s coaching staff helps run the four days of football drills.

“I was smiling like a little kid,” Maybin said of speaking to the players. “It’s almost like a certain segment of my life coming full circle. . . . I can walk onto that field and say, ‘Yes, I was able to take what I learned and apply it to my life and reach that goal I set for myself.’ ”