The Cost of These Dreams

by Wright Thompson

  Bud turned to face him, gaunt in the light. An oxygen tube ran to his nose. Twenty seconds passed, the silence uncomfortable. Thirty seconds.

  “Nah,” Bud said. “I like this shit the way it is. I don’t care who wins or loses.”

  His response couldn’t have been more out of character. Never before had Urban asked his dad for his opinion and not gotten direct, blunt advice: “I think you should . . .” In his father’s answer, there was a measure of absolution—maybe for both of them. Sometimes walking away isn’t quitting. Sometimes, when the fire burns too hot, walking away is the bravest thing a man can do. Bud offered the best mea culpa he could, in his own way. Maybe he knew this would be one of their last conversations. Ambivalence was his final gift. Whatever Urban chose to do with his future, he could walk through the world knowing he had his father’s blessing. They never discussed coaching again.

  Two weeks later, Bud Meyer died in his son’s arms.

  * * *

  —

  Meyer accepted the Ohio State job three days after his father’s funeral, five days after his family demanded promises. During his first news conference, he reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a contract written by Nicki, which he’d signed in exchange for his family’s blessing. These rules were supposed to govern his attempt at a new life, as his father’s example had governed his old one. So much was happening at once, and as he said goodbye to the man who molded him, he began undoing part of that molding.

  He went to work.

  Meyer unpacked his boxes, setting up little shrines on the blond-wood shelves of his Ohio State office. To the right, positioned in his most common line of sight, he placed a blue rock with a word etched into it: BALANCE. Behind the rock went a collage of photographs, the orange of a sunset from his lake house—his particular harbor—and of his old church in Gainesville. The shrine was a gift from his pastor in Florida, a prayer from people who love him that he won’t lose himself again.

  Framed above his desk hung the contract he signed with his kids, written on pink notebook paper.

  My family will always come first.

  I will take care of myself and maintain good health.

  I will go on a trip once a year with Nicki—MINIMUM.

  I will not go more than nine hours a day at the office.

  I will sleep with my cellphone on silent.

  I will continue to communicate daily with my kids.

  I will trust God’s plan and not be overanxious.

  I will keep the lake house.

  I will find a way to watch Nicki and Gigi play volleyball.

  I will eat three meals a day.

  III.

  Seven months later, Meyer drives through the outskirts of Cleveland, 60 miles from Ashtabula, past the refineries and smokestacks, his son Nate in the back seat. They’re almost at the Indians’ stadium, where Urban is scheduled to throw out the first pitch in a few hours. Meyer’s living his life, keeping the promises he made.

  “I’ve really been working on that,” he says. “I’m gonna do that in the fall. I’m gonna go home. I’m not gonna bring my work home with me and not be able to sleep at night. I’m not . . .

  “That’s easy to say now.”

  The season is still a few months away. He hasn’t lost a game yet. That’s what pushed him into the darkest corners of his own personality. He squeezes the steering wheel.

  “Can I change?” he asks.

  The question hangs in the air. In public he talks a good game, but he knows how hard the next year will be. Maybe, deep inside, he already knows the answer. The skies darken. Rain will soon land on the windshield with heavy thumps.

  “TBD,” he says. “To be determined.”

  * * *

  —

  Father and son play catch in the rain, standing in shallow left at Progressive Field, the bowl of seats empty around them. Urban smiles when Nate backhands a grounder, a schoolboy grin, the one that believed what the girls whispered in the hall back in the day. Meyer’s enthusiasm is as powerful as his rage. Halfway is for other people. When he took his girls to Rome and Israel for nine days, they begged to sleep in just once. Nope. “We attacked Rome as hard as you possibly can,” he says, and then mimics his own stern voice: “‘We are gonna have fun on this vacation!’”

  Urban throws one high into the air, watching as Nate settles underneath it, the scoreboard right on top of them, thunder clapping in the air, the drizzle coming and going.

  “I can’t believe they’re letting us do this,” he says.

  These are the things he lost in Florida and the things he’s found in Ohio. He’s missed only one or two of Nate’s baseball games since taking the job, an astonishing change. Nicki is entering her final year at Georgia Tech, and her coach scheduled Senior Night on the Saturday of the Buckeyes’ bye week. Urban will walk onto the court with Nicki, a walk he’s made with other people’s children but never with his own. He’s eating, working out, sleeping well, waking early without an alarm clock. On the night before the 2012 Buckeyes gather for the first time, he’s playing catch with his son in Cleveland.

  “Bucket list,” Urban says.

  The Indians arrange for Nate to throw out the first pitch with Urban, and in the dugout, the team gives Nate a full uniform, No. 15, with MEYER on the back. Urban pulls out his phone and takes a picture, sending it to Shelley. He follows his son into the clubhouse, calling out in his best announcer voice, “Leading off for the Cleveland Indians, Nate Meyer.”

  Two hours fly past, and they’re led back onto the field. Now the bleachers are full. The speakers echo their names. Urban loops it a bit, but Nate throws a bullet for a strike.

  “What a night, Nate!” Urban says, turning to the Indians guy following them with a camera. “Get me those pictures. I’m gonna blow them up. My man brought it!”

  They find their seats. Nate holds a slice of pizza. Urban pours a cold Labatt’s and digs into a bowl of popcorn. The sun sets over the Cleveland skyline, and the lights shine on the grass. Urban’s mind and body are in the same place. Urban and Nate recite favorite movie lines and list the ballparks they’ve visited. “I’m melting inside,” Meyer says finally. “You can’t get this back. Remember That Guy? I’m not That Guy right now.”

  * * *

  —

  The next morning begins back in Columbus with heavy-metal music grinding out of the weight room. Shouts and whistles filter in from the practice field. No other place in the world sounds like a football facility, and the effect is seductive, pulling anyone who’s ever loved it back in, like a whiff of an ex-girlfriend’s perfume. Outside, hundreds of youth football campers run around like wild men. This week, Meyer’s constant nervous pacing—“I’m so ADD,” he says—includes laps around the camp, taking pictures with parents, urging moms to make their meanest faces for the camera. He spots Godfrey Lewis, one of his former running backs at Bowling Green, who’s now a high school coach.

  “What’s up?” Meyer asks, beaming.

  “You,” Lewis says. “That’s what’s up, Coach.”

  “You look good,” Meyer says. “You got kids?”

  “My son is over there,” Lewis says.

  “Make sure I meet your son. Where’s he at?”

  “Alex!” Lewis yells.

  A boy at the water station turns his head, finding his dad standing with Urban Meyer.

  “Alex!” Meyer yells. “Hurry up. Let’s go. Let’s go.”

  Alex Lewis runs over.

  “Your dad played for me,” Meyer says. “He was a great player. Good father, good guy, right? How old are you?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Can you run?”

  “Yes,” Alex says.

  A cocky, curious kid comes over, too, poking his head into the conversation, popping
off about how he’s faster than Alex. A look flashes across Meyer’s face, his eyes bright. He cannot help himself.

  “Right now!” he barks.

  Meyer calls to Lewis. “Godfrey,” he yells, “this guy says he’s faster than your boy! We’re gonna find out right now.”

  Godfrey is wired too.

  “Right now!” he says.

  “Right now!” Urban yells. “Right now! You ready?”

  He calls go, and the kids break, Alex Lewis smoking the opposition. Urban and Godfrey stand together, elated, a messy world shrunk to a 10-yard race. Someone wins and someone loses, and there’s no ambiguity, no gray. The heat makes the air smokehouse thick. The morning smells like sweat and rings with whistles and coach chatter, the game always the same no matter how much the men who love it change, a simplicity that waits day after day, beautiful and addictive.

  * * *

  —

  Meyer grimaces and wipes a streak of sweat off his face with his shirt. Lunchtime racquetball is war. The football ops guys know to ask Meyer any difficult questions before the game, because losses blacken his mood and rewire a day. It’s a running joke: Did Coach win or lose? Today Meyer’s playing Marotti, his friend and strength coach. Best of three, tied at one game apiece. Meyer works the angles, lofting brutal kill shots that just die off the wall. Marotti smacks the bejesus out of the ball. Muffled curses echo through the glass door. Meyer chases after a ball and doesn’t get there. He cocks back his racket, about to smash it into the wall, but he pulls back. Be calm. The end is close, a few points away. Shoes squeak, and the ball pops off the strings, laid over the backbeat of Marotti bellowing, “Fuck!” Meyer loses another point, then another. About to lose the match, he grimaces, flexing his racket to slam the ball off the floor in disgust, then checks his rage. Be calm.

  * * *

  —

  The football facility pulses with the rush of building, and through a series of decisions and coincidences, Meyer has somehow managed to go back in time. He feels like he felt in the beginning: unproven, energized by the challenge. Beneath the surface is the idea that maybe this time, with his father’s absolution and the lessons he’s learned about himself, he could return to 1986 and not make the mistakes that led him to 2009. There’s joy in starting a climb, for a 48-year-old coach and for the newly arrived freshmen sitting in the team meeting room, waiting for Meyer to welcome them to Ohio State. The recruiting class, Meyer’s first, is nervous, unsure what to expect. He senses their fear and stands at the podium relaxed and calm. All their dreams are right there, waiting to be grabbed.

  “I’ve seen life-changing stuff happen,” he tells them.

  He describes walking across a graduation stage, your family in the crowd crying, and when you reach out to shake the president’s hand, there’s a fist of diamonds: championship rings. Meyer bangs his fist on the podium, asking if they’ve ever heard how much noise five rings make when they hit something.

  “I’ll do it for you sometime,” he says. “It’s loud as shit. Some guys get to do that. I’ve seen it.”

  Eager faces stare back. He does not tell the story about his dad threatening to disown him for quitting. Reflect, he says. Look around this room.

  “These guys will be in your wedding,” he says.

  They will come back to Columbus as grown men, bringing their sons and daughters to this building, walking the halls. They will point at old photographs, smile at out-of-style haircuts, telling stories about 2012.

  But even in his new world, nostalgia must be earned. Contentment must be bought with work, with sacrifice, and, since competition is still black-and-white, with wins.

  “That team that goes 4-and-7, how many reunions do they have?” Meyer says. “How many times does that senior class come back? You never see ’em.”

  This is the difficult calculus of Meyer’s future, of any type A extremist who longs for balance. They want the old results without paying the old costs, and while they’ll feel guilty about not changing, they’ll feel empty without the success. He wants peace and wins, which is a short walk from thinking they are the same.

  “How about that 2002 national championship team?” Meyer says, his voice rising, the players leaning in. “All the time. When they hit their hands on the table, what happens? It makes a lot of noise. It makes a lot of noise. Let’s go make some noise.”

  * * *

  —

  Another coach is on the phone, asking for advice about a player who got into trouble. Meyer gives his honest answer, a window into the murky, shifting world of big-time athletics, into how nobody emerges from the highest level of anything with every part of himself intact.

  The first year at Bowling Green, Meyer tells him, he’d have cut his losses. His fifth year at Florida, when he needed to win every game, he’d have kept him on the team.

  The caller asks about the Buckeyes. “I like it,” Meyer says. “I don’t know how good we’re gonna be, but I like it. We’ve got one more week, and then we get on the ship to the beaches of Normandy.”

  On the northwest side of town, Shelley Meyer sits in their new house, praying, literally, that this time will be different.

  He’s made promises before.

  She believed his first news conference at Florida in 2004 when he said his priorities were his children, his wife, and football—in that order. She believed in 2007 when she told a reporter, “Absolutely there’s a change in him. There’s definitely an exhale.”

  She wants to believe today. His willingness to admit the possibility of failure is oddly comforting. He knows he could end up back in 2009, which is worth the chance to reclaim 1986. “There’s a risk,” he says. “What’s the reward? The reward is going back to the real reason I wanted to coach.”

  There’s confidence in his voice. She’s heard it, seen how calmly he handled the arrest of two players or his starting running back getting a freak cut on his foot.

  “Man, I just feel great,” he’ll say.

  “But you haven’t played a game yet,” she’ll remind him.

  Shelley moves to the bright sunroom overlooking the golf course, with pictures of the girls when they were little, grinning with Cam the Ram, the Colorado State mascot. There’s a Gator on the table and Ohio State pictures on the walls. Another room contains a helmet from every school where Urban has coached and all the memories, good and bad, evoked by each. Once they sat in a gross apartment with a possum over the television, young and in love, wondering where their journey would lead. It’s led here, to this dividing line. All the things they want are in front of them. So are all the things they fear.

  “I’ve seen enough change already,” Shelley says. “I’m convinced. We still have to play a game, though.”

  She bites her fingernail and sighs.

  “The work he’s done,” she says, “the books he’s read, people he’s talked to. He’s gonna be different.”

  She stops between sentences, little gulfs of anxiety.

  “He’s gonna be different. I totally believe it. I’ll just kick his butt if he’s not.”

  One more hopeful pause.

  “But he will be.”

  * * *

  —

  The door shuts, and his last meeting of the day begins. For the first time, the freshmen and veterans gather, the 2012 Buckeyes in full. Meyer sits calmly at the front of the room, as composed as the crisp lines on his shirt. A quote on the wall is from Matthew, 16th chapter: “What good is a man that gains the world yet loses his soul?” Behind him in his office, there’s a blue rock and a pink piece of paper. He’s been at the facility almost 12 hours. Breaking No. 4—working no more than nine hours a day—couldn’t be helped. Meyer lived up to all but one of his promises today.

  His calm lasts until a player giggles.

  From the back of the room, it’s not clear who laughed, or why exactly, only that the players we
re making fun of a teammate while an assistant coach gave a speech. Meyer listens, waiting for the coach to finish, stewing, simmering, slowly beginning to burn. If he were transparent, like one of those med school teaching dummies, maybe you could see exactly where his rage lives and how it spreads. In imagination, it’s a tiny, burning dot, surrounded by his humor and love for teaching, by the warm memories of 1986, by his desire to grow old and gray with Shelley, and the dot spreads and spreads until there’s nothing but fire.

  Meyer rises and interrupts the flow of the meeting, looking out at his team. His voice holds steady, but he says he’s struggling not to climb into the seats and find the offending giggler. The fire is growing. He paces, back and forth, back and forth, waving his finger toward the center of the room. The air feels tense. Nobody makes a sound. There is one voice.

  “Giggle-fucks,” he says.

  He slips, his language rough and mean, giving himself over to his rage: f-bombs, a flurry of curses, pounding on the soft and the weak, the unworthy who’d rather giggle than chase something bigger than themselves.

  In 43 days, he says, Marotti will hand him a piece of paper with a list of names. “Grown-ass men,” he says. That’s who belongs on his team. No “giggle-fucks,” he promises, pointing toward the big pictures of Ohio Stadium to his right.

  “We’re talking about our season,” he roars. “We’re going to that place.”

  His mind is there already.

  The players will gather in the tunnel, walking out in scarlet, sunlight blinking off their silver helmets. He’ll raise his fist and call the first-team defense. He can see it, a personification of his hopes and fears, of his contradictions: first the grown-ass men moving as one, then the giggle-fucks who can destroy what he spent months building. The sun will shine on silver helmets. The crowd will roar. The band will play. Maybe he’ll slip off his headset for a moment, feeling the hot rain. Nothing else will matter. The helmets will sparkle, and the Buckeyes will advance, an army of gray. Standing before his players in the meeting room, he can smell it, hear it—feel it even, in places he doesn’t understand and can’t control. Nobody makes a sound. Meyer’s shirt is wrinkled, untucked a bit. Thick veins rise on both sides of his neck. He squints out at the team, his eyes dark, hiding everything and nothing at all.