Backfield Boys

by John Feinstein

  “I hate to sound like a ghoul,” he said. “But you better be ready to play Friday. If DeMatha’s as good as the coaches claim, no way we win with Ronnie Thompson playing quarterback.”

  Before Billy Bob could respond, they heard the sound of Coach Johnson’s whistle. He was standing at midfield.

  “Everyone take a knee,” he said.

  “Franklin, up here,” he said.

  Kendall Franklin was a black kid from north Philadelphia, a sophomore with an infectious smile who liked to joke that he’d never met a white kid before he got to TGP. His smile was nowhere to be found now.

  “Franklin, would you like to explain to your teammates why our starting quarterback is on his way to the hospital right now?” Coach Johnson said.

  For a split second, Franklin didn’t seem to understand the question. Was he being asked for a diagnosis? Then he got it.

  “Because I missed a call,” he said quietly. “Coach, I’m sorry, no one told me to listen for an audible. I thought we were going with the play called on the sideline before we went back in.”

  “You thought, Franklin? You thought? Who ever told you to think? You listen and you do what you’re told to do. Next time you think about having a thought, go talk to your coach. Coach Reilly does the thinking for you. You got it? Now, what do you want to say to your teammates?”

  “I’m sorry Jamie got hurt,” Franklin said.

  “And whose fault was it?” Coach Johnson asked.

  “Mine.”

  “Mine what?”

  “Mine, sir.”

  “Okay,” Coach Johnson said, apparently satisfied that he had completely humiliated Franklin. “You stay behind to do some running, Franklin. Everyone else, that’s it for today. Hit the showers.”

  They did a halfhearted team cheer and began walking slowly in the direction of the locker room.

  Anthony was beside himself. “His fault?” he said. “Who kept us out here in the heat when everyone was tired? His fault?”

  “Easy, big guy,” Tom said.

  “I’m not right?” Anthony said.

  “Oh, no, you’re right,” Billy Bob said. “We just can’t do anything about it. At least not now.”

  * * *

  Word spread quickly that evening: Jamie Dixon had torn his ACL. He would need surgery. His season was over.

  The next morning word spread almost as quickly: Kendall Franklin was gone. He had texted a terse message to Tom:

  Enough. I’m done. Parents coming at 7 a.m. to get me. Good luck.

  By the time they got to breakfast, everyone knew Franklin was gone.

  “Don’t blame him,” Anthony said. “Bobo did everything but call him the n-word.”

  Practice that day was noticeably shorter than it had been on Wednesday. Coach Johnson gave them all a rah-rah speech about carrying on without Jamie Dixon and dedicated the season to him.

  “Did he die?” Jason muttered to Tom.

  Kendall Franklin’s name never came up.

  Friday was a long day. David Teel was also coming to the game, but on the phone he had informed the boys that he and Tom Robinson had agreed that the “what’s it like to be a TGP freshman” angle wouldn’t work.

  “We’re columnists,” Teel said. “The coaches know we don’t write those kinds of puffy features. They may not figure out why we’re talking to you right away, but they’ll know we’re not doing that sort of piece the minute you try to sell it to them.”

  So an alternative was needed. It was Billy Bob who had come up with it.

  “If any of us talks to the reporters after the game, there will be people everywhere,” he said. “Coaches, parents, girlfriends, fans—you name it. We need to get them here before the game. They’ll have press credentials, so that will get them past the gate and onto campus. We just tell them to meet us somewhere quiet.”

  “Which is where?” Jason said, impressed once again with his roommate’s resourcefulness.

  “What’s the emptiest place in the world three hours before a football game?” Billy Bob asked.

  Jason was stumped. So, apparently, was Anthony.

  “The locker room!” Tom said.

  “Bingo!” Billy Bob answered. “Kickoff is at seven, equipment guys get everything ready in the morning, and we’re told not to come in until five because they’re not back until then. We’ll have the place to ourselves for at least forty-five minutes.”

  Just to be safe, they had asked Teel and Robinson to get there at 3:30. Their last class was over at 3:15. Seniors were allowed to have cars, and those who didn’t have a game or a match or a meet were allowed to leave campus for the weekend, so Jason and Tom watched them head for the parking lot.

  The four of them split into pairs and decided to walk to the stadium at five-minute intervals in case anyone was watching. Jason and Billy Bob went first. They found Teel and Robinson sitting on a bench outside the door to the locker room.

  They all briefly introduced themselves. Both were, Jason guessed, about fifty. He had done enough research to know that each had been with his paper for a long time. Teel was tall and thin, looked like a guy who ran on a regular basis, wore glasses, and had a wispy mustache with hints of gray in it. Robinson was a little bigger and also had the look of someone who had been an athlete and still worked out. Both had easy smiles that made Jason feel comfortable. Probably, he figured, a good thing to have if you were trying to get people to confide in you.

  “Let’s go inside,” Billy Bob said after the introductions. “Tom and Anthony are about five minutes behind. We figured it couldn’t hurt to split up.”

  “Good thought,” Teel said. “There tend to be a lot of eyes on alert around here.”

  The door was unlocked. The thinking, Jason guessed, was that the campus itself was secure—no one came in without going through the guard gate, so there was no reason to lock the locker room. The lockers themselves all had locks on them.

  They walked through the locker room to the lounge area in the back. Here, there were two flat-screen televisions, several couches, and tables set up for guys who wanted to play video games or cards. There was a bar—but of course all the drinks in the refrigerator were protein shakes and Gatorade and bottled water.

  “Pretty nice digs for a high school football team,” Robinson said.

  “The place does have some money,” Teel added.

  Jason was a little surprised. He figured Teel and Robinson had been here enough that they would know their way around the locker room. Teel seemed to guess his thoughts.

  “They don’t let the media in here,” he said. “You’ll see tonight after the game. We have to wait outside and grab guys as they come out.”

  “Unless someone is off-limits,” Robinson added.

  “Why would someone be off-limits?” Billy Bob asked.

  “Seniors, usually,” Robinson said. “If they’re highly recruited, sometimes they’ll keep them from the media because they don’t want them ‘distracted’ by questions about where they’re going to college.”

  “Occasionally they’ll bring a guy who has a big game into the interview room with Bobo,” Teel added. “Of course, that’s usually worthless because the kid isn’t going to say much interesting with the coach sitting right next to him.”

  “Lot of talk about stepping up, giving a hundred and ten percent, and giving all the credit to teammates, I’m guessing,” Billy Bob said.

  The reporters both laughed.

  “There’s also a lot of giving all the glory to God,” Teel said. “You’ll find that’s big at TGP.”

  “We already have,” Jason said.

  Tom and Anthony arrived. Introductions were made, and they all sat down on the couches. They walked through the story that Teel and Robinson already knew, adding some details about the meeting Jason and Tom had been subjected to with the coaches before they’d been benched for the scrimmage.

  “I guess the question,” Tom finally said, “is whether we are jumping at shadows here. If not, wha
t can we prove?”

  “Second question is the hard one,” Teel said. “We both agree you are not jumping at shadows. There’s always been kind of an undertone with Bobo on this subject. Like I told you the other day, Jason, he’s never had an African American quarterback. Heck, he’s never had a backup African American quarterback.”

  “He’s also never had an African American coordinator,” Robinson added. “Even if he has a few black coaches.”

  “Which proves what, exactly?” Anthony said in a tone that surprised Jason a little bit.

  Anthony was the classic gentle giant. He didn’t talk that often, and when he did, he spoke softly. Wednesday, after Kendall Franklin’s humiliation, had been an exception to that rule. But now, even in four words, there was a clear edge in his voice.

  “Proves nothing,” Robinson said. “You can report those facts, and Bobo will say something like ‘I never noticed, I just do what’s best for the football team.’ He may be a racist, but he’s no dummy.”

  “So what do we do?” Billy Bob asked.

  “Well, we’ve got an idea,” Teel said. “It’s a little bit complicated on our end, and it’s risky on yours. It could get you thrown out of school.”

  “Let’s hear it,” Tom said. “At this point, getting thrown out of school is the least of my worries.”

  “Same here,” Jason said quickly.

  “I’m in,” Anthony said.

  They all looked at Billy Bob.

  He smiled. “My daddy will kill me if I get thrown out of TGP,” he said. “And if it gets around my hometown that I got thrown out trying to prove that Bobo Johnson’s a racist, I’ll be a pariah.”

  Jason looked at his roomie. “What the heck is a pariah?”

  Teel laughed. “I suspect you may be about to find out.”

  There were footsteps in the hallway. They froze. It was only 4:15. The footsteps grew louder.

  Billy Bob nodded in the direction of the shower room, which was on the far side of the lounge. There was an open doorway leading to it—normally used by players coming out because the steam room was a few yards away.

  They all got up as quietly and as quickly as they could and ducked into the shower room. They waited there, trying not to breathe. Someone walked into the lounge.

  Jason, his heart pounding, peeked around the wall, then quickly pulled his head back. It was Coach Johnson.

  What he was doing in the locker room at that hour they didn’t know. What he was looking for in the lounge they absolutely didn’t know. Jason was closest to the door. He peeked again. Coach Johnson was standing in the middle of the room, hands on hips as if looking for something. Jason ducked back.

  A moment later they heard him walk out. They waited awhile, peeked again, and he was gone.

  “Now what?” Jason whispered.

  “We get out of here,” Teel whispered. “Let’s hope he went back to his office.”

  “Hope might not be enough,” Billy Bob said very softly. “We might need to say a prayer.”

  “All the glory to God,” Tom whispered back, grinning.

  Then, slowly, cautiously, they walked out of the shower room.

  PART 2

  10

  Once they had made their way through the locker room and out the door, the four players and two reporters quickly separated. There was no one else around—which was a relief—but Tom understood they had already pushed the envelope far enough and had been lucky that Coach Johnson had apparently gone back to his office after leaving the lounge.

  “We’ll talk more tomorrow,” David Teel said once they were outside.

  Everyone nodded and the two reporters headed in the direction of the entrance to the stadium. The four players, with thirty minutes to kill before they were supposed to report to the locker room, walked in the direction of the campus coffee shop.

  It was close to empty, with most TGP students either relaxing in their dorm rooms, bolting campus, or getting ready for games that weekend. Both soccer teams were playing the next morning, and the tennis and golf teams were on their way to early-season tournaments that would be held over the weekend.

  Tom’s stomach finally began to loosen up when they went to the counter to order drinks and something to eat. He had been surprised that there was no formal pregame meal for the team. He’d read plenty of stories about different coaches and their pregame philosophies when it came to eating: when to eat, what to eat, how much to eat.

  He knew that once upon a time, football and basketball players had always been served steak at pregame meals. That had changed when the theory of carbo-loading had come into vogue in the 1980s. That often meant pasta and pancakes, usually served about four hours before a game began. Bob Knight, the Hall of Fame basketball coach, believed pancakes tended to sit heavily in the stomach, so his teams ate pasta only—even when playing a noon game and eating a pregame meal at eight in the morning. Every time Tom thought about trying to eat pasta at that hour he felt slightly sick.

  His favorite line about pregame meals had come from Rick Barnes, the Tennessee basketball coach. “We talk to nutritionists and trainers and worry about serving them exactly the right thing,” he’d said once. “Fact is, they probably play their best ball in the summer when all they’re eating is fast food. I should probably just take them all to McDonald’s.”

  Coach Johnson’s philosophy was different from that. Some of the older guys had told Tom and Jason that when the team traveled, the pregame meal, served exactly four hours before kickoff, had both pasta and steak on the menu.

  “He thinks real men eat steak, but he’s made a big concession by serving pasta, too,” Jimmy Matthews, a huge offensive tackle, had said one day in the weight room. “I just eat whatever they got.”

  When the team played an evening game at home, anyone on the team could go into the dining hall, where a buffet was set up until four o’clock. It wasn’t mandatory, and Tom, Jason, Anthony, and Billy Bob had passed on their chance to eat in order to meet with the reporters. So they had to grab something now. Tom ordered a hamburger but skipped the fries. Jason ordered a cheeseburger, fries, a side order of garlic toast, and a milkshake.

  “Aren’t you afraid that’s going to sit in your stomach?” Billy Bob said as he ordered.

  “What difference does it make?” Jason asked. “I have as much chance of getting in the game as David Teel and Tom Robinson do.”

  “I don’t know,” Anthony said. “Teel looks like he’s in pretty good shape. They might sneak him in as a wideout.”

  Anthony ordered three hamburgers but no fries. Tom figured Anthony could eat six hamburgers and still have room for dessert.

  They sat down after glancing around to make sure no one was sitting nearby.

  On the other side of the room there was one table occupied by six girls and another by a lone guy who was reading a book and had earbuds in.

  “Here’s the problem we have right now,” Billy Bob said. “We never got to hear the reporters’ plan because Coach Johnson showed up the way he did.”

  Tom nodded. “I just got a text from Robinson about that,” he said, looking at his phone. “He says he and Teel have an idea for how we can meet Sunday morning.”

  “Here?” Jason asked.

  “I think so,” Tom said. “He said he’d call me tomorrow morning to explain.”

  “Sunday morning Billy Bob and I go to church,” Anthony said. “If we no-show, people will ask why.”

  “Not to mention my parents will find out somehow, someway, and want to kill me,” Billy Bob added.

  “How could they possibly find out?” Jason asked.

  “Great question,” Billy Bob said. “They seem to know everything I do. Sometimes I think I’m living in The Truman Show.”

  Tom remembered the movie in which a character unknowingly had his entire life secretly broadcast twenty-four hours a day as a reality TV show. Judging by the looks on their faces, Anthony and Jason knew the movie, too.

  “Well, I guess we wait un
til tomorrow morning to find out what the plan is,” Tom said.

  “So the plan is to find out tomorrow how they plan for us to sit down and make a plan, right?” Jason said.

  Tom thought a second. “Right,” he said. “I think.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Billy Bob said with a grin.

  * * *

  The game that night was a huge struggle—although it probably should not have been.

  DeMatha was a national power, a team perennially ranked in the USA Today high school Top 25. In fact, the Stags were eighth in the preseason rankings, just two spots behind TGP.

  But their star quarterback, Joey Wootten, didn’t play that night. He had twisted a knee in practice that week—at least that’s what Tom read online the next day in reports about the game. Tough week, it seemed, for star quarterbacks and their knees.

  Without Wootten, who had already committed to play for Jim Harbaugh at Michigan the following fall, DeMatha wasn’t the same team. One person who apparently hadn’t gotten the word on Wootten’s injury was Harbaugh. Tom spotted him sitting in the stands midway through the first quarter, with the Patriots already leading 7–0.

  “Looks like Harbaugh made the trip for nothing,” Tom pointed out to Jason. They were both standing languidly on the sidelines.

  “Billy Bob spotted him right away,” Jason said. “He’s sitting two rows behind Nick Saban. Billy Bob noticed him, too.”

  “What’s Saban doing here?” Tom asked.

  “Well, according to the various scouting services, we’ve got eleven seniors who are big-time prospects and are still uncommitted, not to mention a bunch of juniors.”

  “None of them play quarterback,” a voice said behind them.

  It was Anthony, who hadn’t yet gotten into the game either but had been told he would get in for at least one series in the second quarter.

  Ronnie Thompson had, not surprisingly, been given the starting nod at quarterback over Billy Bob. He hadn’t exactly been lighting up the night with his play. TGP had scored on a twelve-yard drive after a DeMatha fumble and was now on the DeMatha 21 after Wootten’s backup quarterback, Donny Ferry, had thrown an interception into the arms of Alan Inwood—who was one of the big-time prospects Jason had been referring to a moment earlier.