Backfield Boys

by John Feinstein

  Tom and Jason begged for a return trip to the Aberdeen Barn and got it—in part because the parents were staying at the Courtyard Marriott right next door. Their flight out of Richmond to go home was early the next morning. Tom, Jason, and Tom’s dad introduced Tom’s mom and the Roddins to Martha Washington, who actually remembered them.

  “How are things at TGP?” she asked. “I saw where you guys won a close one last night.”

  “Thanks to my buddy here,” Tom said. “He blocked the last field goal attempt.”

  Martha looked at Jason. “That was you?” she said. “I read in the paper you were hurt. You okay?”

  “Fine,” Jason said with a smile. “But very hungry.”

  “We can fix that,” Martha said, leading them to a table.

  A few minutes later, the manager came over to introduce himself. “Doug Newburg,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to have you back—Martha told me you stopped here on your way to school a couple weeks ago.” He turned to Jason. “Is this the heroic Mr. Roddin?” he asked.

  “Jason, yep,” the boy said.

  “Well, as it happens, my wife and I are longtime season-ticket holders over at Gatch,” he said. “UVA, too, although we’ve seen a lot more wins at Gatch than at Scott Stadium recently.”

  Tom knew that was accurate: Virginia had struggled in recent years in football, even at home.

  “So I’d like to buy you all dinner tonight as thanks for saving the day—or the night—yesterday.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Mr. Roddin said.

  “I know it’s not,” Mr. Newburg said. “But it would be my pleasure.”

  He shook hands all around again, turned, and walked away.

  “Wow,” Mr. Jefferson said. “That’s quite a gesture.”

  “Yeah,” Tom said. “Imagine if we ever get to really play. We can come in here and eat for free every night.”

  Jason was grinning. “The life of a star athlete, I guess,” he said. He patted Tom on the shoulder. “Someday, son, you’ll find out what it’s like.”

  Tom snorted. “Oh, White Lightning, I’m just happy to bask in your reflected light.”

  Everyone laughed. They’d come a long way in a few hours.

  15

  Reality set in again Sunday.

  Since neither Tom nor Jason had cracked a book on Saturday, they had plenty of homework to do. With the library closed, Tom came down to Jason’s room so they could hang out together while Billy Bob and Anthony were in church.

  Tom knew that Juan del Potro and Jimmy Gomez both went to church, so a trip to see Jimmy about the rooming list would have to wait until they got back. He was antsy, wanting to get moving. He was struggling to focus on trying to memorize a list of igneous rocks for a geology quiz he had to take the next day.

  Bored out of his mind, he walked over to Jason, who had claimed he was writing an essay analyzing Catcher in the Rye for his English class. But there was nothing about Holden Caulfield on his computer screen. Instead, Tom saw a newspaper headline: FRESHMAN SAVES THE DAY—AND TGP. It was the Charlottesville Daily Progress’s story on Friday night’s game.

  They had both gone online earlier to read Teel’s and Robinson’s stories from the Saturday lunchtime interviews. The stories were similar, but Robinson’s had one twist that caught Tom’s eye—a quote from Coach Johnson.

  “It was just a gut feeling,” the head coach had said. “Roddin ran a very fast forty in our preseason time trials, and I thought we might get lucky even though he hadn’t practiced much with special teams.”

  Jason had read the line and grunted. “Much? How about zero?”

  “And you weren’t just ‘very fast’ in the forty, you were the fastest in the forty,” Tom had added.

  That, though, wasn’t the most intriguing aspect of the quote. Tom remembered the sequence leading up to the kick pretty well. TGP had called time to try to freeze the kicker. Coach Gutekunst had come out of nowhere to grab Jason and send him into the game. Tom had no memory of seeing him anywhere near Coach Johnson. So whose idea was it to send Jason into the game? In his quote, Coach Johnson was making it clear to Robinson it had been his idea. In fact, that same quote had appeared in other newspaper coverage of the game, too. Teel had chosen to leave it out.

  “Reading your press clippings again?” Tom asked now, grinning.

  “I needed a break from Holden,” Jason said with a smile. “So…”

  “You’re wallowing in your newfound glory,” Tom said. “I get it.”

  He did get it, although he had to admit he was a tiny bit jealous. At breakfast that morning, even with the dining hall half empty, there had been a parade to the table of kids congratulating Jason and asking how he felt. A number of them had been girls. Tom and Jason had felt pretty invisible so far when it came to the girls at the school. Billy Bob called it “freshman syndrome.”

  “None of the girls, especially the really good-looking ones, are goin’ anywhere near a freshman,” Billy Bob had said. “We’re beneath them.”

  Jason hadn’t been beneath anyone that morning. Tom suspected the same would now be true of Billy Bob, who’d been absent from breakfast because he’d opted to sleep in prior to church.

  While Jason continued to revel in being a hero, Tom walked down the hallway to the bathroom. Naturally, he ran almost smack into Coach Ingelsby, making his weekly church-check rounds.

  “No worship again today for you, Jefferson?” the coach said, his voice as unpleasant as ever.

  Tom was over being told how to live his life and was emboldened by the fact that he knew the door to go back home was pretty much wide open. “No offense, Coach,” he answered. “But how or when I practice my religion, whatever it may be, is really my business alone.”

  He and Coach Ingelsby were now face-to-face in the hallway.

  “You’ve got quite a mouth on you, don’t you, Jefferson?” the coach said. “Too bad your parents didn’t use that time you weren’t in church to teach you manners.”

  Tom was sorely tempted to haul off and hit Ingelsby. But he suspected that was exactly what the smarmy coach wanted. And if he did something like that, he would no longer have the option to stay or go—he’d be gone.

  Instead, he shrugged and said, “It must be nice to have all of life’s answers, Coach.”

  “You aren’t apt to find many answers sitting in your room on Sunday morning, are you?” Coach Ingelsby said. “See you at practice tomorrow.” He maneuvered around Tom and kept walking.

  There was a bit of menace in his last sentence. Tom suspected this little encounter wasn’t over yet. He decided to swallow any further responses. He looked at his watch. It was almost noon. Juan and Jimmy should be back soon. That thought put a smile on his face.

  * * *

  Billy Bob and Anthony showed up in the room after church. They all went to lunch and then returned to Billy Bob and Jason’s room.

  There, they decided that Tom should go see Jimmy Gomez alone. He and Juan had been at lunch, but the dining hall was no place to open up the conversation about roommates and race.

  “If we all go, or even if two of us go, it makes it a bigger deal,” Billy Bob said.

  “What’s my excuse for wanting the list—if he asks?” Tom said.

  “Tell him you’re just checking a hunch about something,” Billy Bob said. “I doubt he’ll give you a hard time about it.”

  They agreed. They also agreed that Tom should just walk upstairs and knock on the door rather than calling Juan on his cell to see if his roomie was around.

  “The more casual this looks, the better,” Anthony said.

  Even though Juan and Jimmy were good guys—and probably would be allies if they knew what the four freshmen were up to—Tom was taking deep breaths as he climbed the steps to the fifth floor and knocked on the door marked GOMEZ/DEL POTRO.

  Juan opened the door almost right away. “Hey, Presidente, what’s up?” he asked.

  Tom could see Jimmy sitting at his computer.


  “Actually, I wanted to ask Jimmy something,” he said.

  “Come on in,” Juan said, holding the door open.

  Jimmy Gomez had struck Tom from the beginning as almost incurably polite—even formal. Now he stood up from his computer and crossed the room to shake hands with Tom—whom he’d seen at lunch twenty minutes earlier. He was very tall, about six foot five, and, according to Juan, was being heavily recruited by several big-time college basketball schools because he could shoot and had excellent grades.

  “Everything okay, Tom?” he asked.

  “Fine, fine,” Tom said, realizing he sounded nervous.

  Jimmy pointed at an extra chair, sitting near the window. “Have a seat. Tell me what’s up.”

  Tom sat, as did Jimmy and Juan—both at their desks.

  “I was just wondering something,” Tom said. He paused.

  Jimmy and Juan waited.

  “I was wondering, being a floor monitor and all, if you had rooming lists.”

  “Of course I do,” Jimmy said, a puzzled look crossing his handsome features.

  Tom didn’t feel like he was an expert on what made most guys good-looking or not, but he knew Jimmy was movie-star handsome. His girlfriend, Maria Ramos, was captain of the volleyball team—six feet tall and drop-dead gorgeous.

  “You mean for the floor?” Juan said.

  “Actually, I meant for the whole dorm,” Tom said.

  Another puzzled look from Jimmy. “I don’t have them right here, right now, but I certainly have access to them,” he said. “When the other monitors get back later today, all I have to do is ask for their lists and they’ll give them to me. Why do you need them?”

  “Just a hunch about something, no big deal,” Tom said. “I guess I figured you’d have them since you’re in charge this weekend.”

  Jimmy smiled. “I should, actually,” he said. “But it’s my first weekend in charge. I have a list of everyone’s cell numbers but didn’t even think about the rooming list.”

  Juan leaned forward in his chair. “What’s your hunch, Presidente?”

  Tom wasn’t really ready for that one, but he came up with an answer pretty quickly. “Can I wait to tell you till after I know whether I’m right?” he said, hoping that would suffice.

  The two roommates looked at each other and seemed to shrug at the same moment.

  “Fair enough,” Jimmy said, “if you promise to tell us then. You’ve got me curious.”

  Tom breathed a mental sigh of relief. “Yeah, that’s fine,” he said. “Promise.”

  “I should have ’em for you tonight,” Jimmy said.

  “Perfect,” Tom said. He stood up to leave, figuring he shouldn’t push his luck. They all shook hands as if an important meeting had just ended. Which, Tom figured, was true.

  “You’re full of surprises aren’t you, Presidente?” Juan said as they walked to the door.

  “Time will tell,” Tom said, managing a smile. “Time will tell.”

  * * *

  Jimmy Gomez was as good as his word.

  Everyone in the school was required to be back on campus for dinner—at six o’clock sharp—on Sundays. At eight o’clock, Jimmy knocked on Tom and Anthony’s door.

  “I printed them by floor,” he said, holding out a stack of paper to Tom. “Not sure what you’re looking for, but it may take some time. It’s not broken down by class or anything, just a list of each guy’s age, sport, and room assignment.”

  “All I need,” Tom said. “Thanks.”

  “Remember your promise,” Jimmy said with a smile.

  “Count on it,” Tom said.

  He waved the list at Anthony and sent a text to Jason and Billy Bob. Two minutes later, the four of them were gathered around Tom’s desk.

  “Eight pages in all,” Tom said. “Let’s take two pages each. Football players only. Mark who’s of color, who’s not.”

  “That’s fine,” Billy Bob said. “But there are goin’ to be some guys we don’t know, so we won’t know if they are black, brown, white, or blue.”

  “So we just mark what we know and put in a question mark if we aren’t sure,” Tom said.

  “Won’t be hard to figure it out,” Anthony said. “In case you haven’t noticed, most of the white guys sit together in the dining hall, and most of the black guys do, too.”

  Jason nodded. “Yeah, we’re kind of the exception at our table—Jewish American, African American, Hispanic American.”

  “You forgot redneck American,” Billy Bob said.

  “And redneck American,” Jason added. “You know something else I noticed at practice the other day? There’s not one Asian or Hispanic dude on the whole football team.”

  “True,” Billy Bob said.

  “Bobo may have ideas about that, too,” Tom said.

  The boys got busy. Every once in a while someone would call out a name to see if the other three knew who he was and whether he was black or white. Some they knew, some they didn’t.

  When they were finished, they added up the numbers. Of the original eighty-two players on the TGP team, they had been able to identify, with confidence, sixty on the list by race (including themselves, of course). That left them with twenty-two question marks.

  Six of the players (all seniors) had single rooms. That left seventy-six players who were divided into thirty-eight double rooms. Five of the six guys in the singles were white; the sixth—Tony Jones—was a question mark.

  Of the other twenty-one question marks, eleven were in rooms where the boys had been able to identify the other occupant. Ten more question marks were divided into five rooms, with two question marks apiece.

  That meant they knew with certainty the racial identity of the occupants in the remaining twenty-two rooms: twelve rooms had two white guys in them, and ten had two African Americans—if they included the double room that was now occupied solely by Jameis Almonte, the onetime roommate of the player who had left the school, Kendall Franklin.

  “So far, not a single mixed room,” Tom said when they had finished. “But we can’t be sure of anything until we figure out the last sixteen rooms. That’s still a lot.”

  “Yeah, but if I put the over/under number at one room with a black guy and a white guy, would you take the over or the under?” Anthony asked.

  They all looked at one another.

  And then they nodded, reading one another’s thoughts.

  The under was clearly the better bet.

  16

  To no one’s surprise, it turned out that the under was the right call.

  It took a few days to pin down the IDs on the remaining players. Not wanting to raise any eyebrows, they spread out their research. Some of the work of putting faces to names was easy—walking casually through the locker room before and after practice and taking note of guys standing in front of their lockers.

  In other cases, they had to ask specific questions. Most of the players they didn’t know were upperclassmen, since most of their classes were with the other freshmen. So there were times when they’d just say to someone they knew: “Who’s that?” pointing at a player in the hallway between classes or on line in the dining room.

  “Ted Harvey,” would come the answer. And another name would be checked off the list.

  The most awkward moment came when Billy Bob asked a kid he knew from Alabama, a junior wide receiver named Robert Alonzo, to point out his roommate to him.

  “He points in the direction of a locker where there’s an African American guy standing who I don’t know,” Billy Bob recounted, “and he says ‘It’s Joey Allen.’ For a split second I thought we finally had a black-and-white room. So I nod where I thought he was pointing and, since the guy was huge, I said, ‘Oh, so you room with a lineman, huh?’ He looked at me like I was insane and said, ‘You mean Willie White? No, dummy, I was pointin’ at Joey—right there.’”

  Billy Bob then explained that Allen had been walking past White when Tommy pointed. “I just said, ‘Oh, yeah sorry, easy
mistake to make, I guess.’ He gave me a look and said, ‘Not if your IQ’s over a hundred. You see any black guys and white guys rooming together around this place?’ He walked off laughing like that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.”

  “Probably was,” Anthony said.

  * * *

  By Wednesday night they’d gathered back in Tom and Anthony’s room to go over the list. They now had all eighty-one remaining players sorted. Of the thirty-eight double rooms, there were nineteen rooms with two white guys and nineteen with two black guys (still including Jameis Almonte and Kendall Franklin, since that was the original room assignment).

  And it turned out that the one question mark among the players in single rooms, Tony Jones, was black; he was a star linebacker who was being recruited by every top program in the country.

  “Some of the guys told me he was talking about transferring for his senior year,” Anthony said when Jones’s name came up. “All of a sudden, the school found him one of the singles.”

  “That’s interesting,” Tom said. “But more important, we found what we thought we’d find: every double room has either two black or two white players in it. Our case is still just circumstantial, but it’s a lot stronger.”

  It was Jason who played devil’s advocate. “We’ve only proved what Robert Alonzo and everybody else already knows. It’s not like we can march into Coach Johnson’s office and say, ‘Hey, Bobo, we know you haven’t got a single biracial double room among the players on your team, and this proves you are a racist SOB.’ Coach Johnson is just going to smile and say, ‘Is that true? I had no idea. The admissions people handle the room assignments. We just give them the names of our players and ask that they all be allowed to room together because we like our players to become close away from the field. How they handle those assignments is up to them.’”

  Billy Bob nodded. “They can come up with some kind of explanation for every individual thing. They can say that the white quarterback thing is coincidence, that they didn’t know about rooming assignments, and that Coach Johnson knowing Tom wasn’t Jason’s roommate was because he’d heard they’d complained about not being put together.”