Hun was seething.
Cobb slid into the huddle on one knee. He had received the next play from the coach through a substitute. “Gentlemen, neither I nor the bench is satisfied that we are establishing our running game. So we’ll try again. Slot! Right! Forty-six! Think you can take the ’backer this time, Hun?” Rhetorical sarcasm. “On three! Break!”
Hunsinger assumed the three-point stance, his mind once again centered on the strong-side linebacker, the same player who had just humiliated him. It would be different this time: His opponent would pay for his small victory.
But first, Hunsinger had to be certain that there would be no unexpected defensive formation that would force Cobb to call an audible-changing the play at the line of scrimmage.
“Set!” Cobb shouted to the right. “Three-forty-six!”
It was the agreed snap count. The play would be the one called in the huddle. Now that bastard would pay.
Hunsinger was not sure in just what manner payment would be exacted. He would rely on his vast experience in foul tactics to improvise something appropriate.
“Three-forty-six!” Cobb shouted to the left. “Hut! Hut! Hut!”
The ball was slammed into Cobb’s hands. He pivoted and pitched it out to his halfback. Twenty-two very large men again moved from a tableau into violent action, one team endeavoring to tackle the ball carrier, the other trying to block that effort and advance the carrier. In the end, that was what this game was all about, blocking and tackling.
Again, Hunsinger sprang from his stationary position and headed for the strong-side linebacker, not head-on this time, but slightly to one side. As he had hoped, the linebacker attempted to “swim” by the block. Swinging his right arm in a wide, over-the-head arc, he tried to brush past Hunsinger, pushing the tight end’s right shoulder back, much as a swimmer cuts through the water.
Perfect. Hunsinger had maneuvered himself and his opponent so that no game official would have an unobstructed view of his actions.
The linebacker’s upraised right arm left his entire right side exposed and unprotected. Even with all the padding players wear, ordinarily there is no protection for the chest area.
Hunsinger planted his right foot and drove his fist into the linebacker’s upper diaphragm. The punch didn’t travel far. It didn’t need to. Indeed, it could not have, else the officials likely would have spotted the foul. But Hunsinger was a powerful man; as his punch buried itself in the linebacker, the Hun thought he felt the man’s rib snap. He clearly heard the sharp expulsion of air as the linebacker collapsed and rolled over in agony.
Whistles sounded. The play was over.
Hunsinger looked around. There was a pileup some fifteen yards upfield. The play had worked. He checked for penalty markers. Apparently no foul had been detected. The field markers were being moved upfield. The men carrying the sticks wouldn’t be moving them if the head linesman hadn’t beckoned them. And he wouldn’t have signaled them if there’d been a foul called.
Perfect. Hunsinger moved to join his teammates.
By now players, coaches, and fans were aware that only twenty-one players were up and about. The injured linebacker had curled into a fetal position. Several teammates hurried to his side, peered at him, but didn’t touch him. The trainer and an assistant ran across the field. They managed to move him onto his back. He could be seen now by the fans and TV viewers only from the waist down. He was not moving his legs to and fro in pain. He was not moving at all.
The fans were hushed. Many relished the violence of this game, but most shrank from the sight of serious injury.
Even the TV commentators had missed Hunsinger’s blow. Nor had any isolated camera recorded the action. The TV people spent this official timeout running and rerunning the play as it was recorded on instant replay. Each time the halfback carrying the ball passed the point of the collision in question, one of them would call out excitedly, “There. . there, see? You can see the linebacker go down, but the camera got there too late to catch the block that flattened him.” Then the film would be played backward and the linebacker would miraculously rise from the turf.
No one on either team had seen what happened. The Cougars simply assumed that it had been one of those unfortunate accidents that happen when two strong people run into each other. Not that some of Hunsinger’s teammates did not harbor some suspicions, given his well-deserved reputation.
The Chicago team, on the other hand, took it for granted that there had been a deliberate foul. Most of the Towers loudly cursed Hunsinger.
Few fans could hear the curses. By now, the linebacker had been taken from the field on a stretcher, to the fans’ sympathetic and commendatory cheers. And the band was blasting over the superloud public-address system.
For his part, Hunsinger noticed that one of his shoelaces was twisted. He bent down to straighten it. He was oblivious to the threats and curses being hurled at him from across the scrimmage line.
“Hun, you bastard, you’re gonna pay for that!” The Towers’ middle linebacker was a formidable specimen.
Hunsinger did not hear him. Nor did he notice that several of the linebacker’s teammates were physically restraining him from instant delivery on that threat.
The referee’s whistle sounded. The Cougars had thirty seconds in which to get a play under way.
“Huddah!”
Bobby Cobb slid into the huddle. “It seems that everyone is convinced that our ground game is at least good enough so’s we can risk a pass. Red! Left! Seventy-three! Hun, give me a sharp post pattern. On three! Break!”
Hunsinger lined up on the left side of the five interior linemen. The plan was for him to delay a few moments at the scrimmage line, blocking as Cobb retreated to set up for the pass. Then, after the two wide receivers, X and Z, had begun their patterns, designed to clear the middle zone, the tight end, Y, would cut sharply across the middle into the clear.
“Set! Three-seventy-three! Three-seventy-three! Hut! Hut! Hut!”
Hunsinger retreated the prescribed couple of yards, both legs pumping to give him balance as he helped his neighbor, the left tackle, block. Suddenly, he slid off the block and charged several yards upfield. Then, he broke sharply and diagonally across the center.
Cobb, under considerable pressure from charging Chicago linemen, at the last possible second caught sight of Hunsinger’s maneuver and fired the ball at a spot where he hoped Hunsinger would be in another second. Cobb was then slammed to the turf by one of the Towers who finally broke through the block.
Under his breath, Hunsinger cursed. The ball would be high and away from him. Instinctively, he tried for it. A pass receiver was paid for catching the ball, not for missing it, and certainly not for refusing to try. Hunsinger liked being paid. A lot.
He leaped as far and as high as he could. He was able just to tip the tightly spiraled pass and somehow bring it under control with the fingers of his left hand. Quickly, he gathered the ball into both hands, and tucked it tightly to his chest.
He knew there was no way he could land on his feet. Nor was he surprised when he was bent like a bow by a brutal tackle from the rear. He was, though, surprised and not a little shocked to suffer sharp, repeated blows to the small of his back after landing on the turf.
“You goddamn Hun!” The Towers’ middle linebacker repeated the imprecation over and over as he made a punching bag of Hunsinger.
Whistles came from every corner of the field. Yellow penalty flags fluttered to earth. The deafening cheers that had greeted Hunsinger’s remarkable reception were transformed into choruses of boos directed at the Chicago player.
Officials pulled the linebacker away. The referee escorted him to the sidelines, where his coach was informed of his official ejection from the game.
With assistance from the trainer and a couple of teammates, Hunsinger slowly got to his feet. As he was assisted from the field, the volume of cheers exceeded that which had greeted his catch.
“Look at that! Did you see that? That bastard oughta be thrown out of football. The commissioner is going to
