Defensive backs and wide receivers were next. This was usually the least impressive group—not only the smallest but also the most contact-averse in the game. But when the whistle was blown our starting Y receiver, carrying the ball in his right hand, took only a single step forward before he caught a cramp in his left hamstring. The drill seemed to go into slow motion: the wide receiver’s body sinking, on its way to collapsing on the ground in pain, his helmet lowering, allowing the charging defensive back to strike him with his own helmet, face mask to face mask, CRACK, a brutal hit that sent both the ball and the receiver’s helmet flying.
The team erupted. Players sprinted over to slap the defensive back’s ass or stand over the wide receiver and whinny into his naked, woozy face. I was part of the pandemonium, jumping, laughing, my blood fizzing furiously through my veins, and when I felt a hand grab the back of my jersey, I thought it was just one of my ecstatic teammates seeking something to hold on to. But then a second hand grabbed me, and now I was being shoved forward against my will, toward the cones, and as the team settled down I found myself standing face-to-face with Reshawn. Chase had taken advantage of the frenzy to swap our places in line.
—Fuck yeah, Furling! Coach Hightower yelled, thinking I’d voluntarily stepped up to slay our star freshman.
My heart slammed in my chest, like the fist of a karate novice trying to clumsily break through a sheet of particleboard. I had no choice but to crouch into my stance. You should want this, Miles. If you’re going to play D1, if you’re going to achieve the greatness Coach Johannsen saw in you, you’re going to have to take down backs like him.
Reshawn stared back at me. His eyes were cold, indifferent.
The whistle shrilled. One moment I was lowering my shoulder, and the next I was being sucked backward, breath fleeing my body.
Overall, I did quite well in my first collegiate Oklahoma. I got to go two more rounds, and in them I managed to bring Devonté to the ground before the cone, then gave Kwame a concussion that forced him to sit out the rest of practice. But nobody cared about those. All people talked about at lunch and in the break was what they referred to simply as “the hit,” and when the linebackers gathered for afternoon meetings, everyone was eager to watch my unmanning on film. Coach Hightower arrived through the door in the back of the linebackers room. He was silent, and pointedly didn’t return my desperate stare. He turned the lights off, lowered the projector screen, and cued up the film.
When the team had exploded at Reshawn’s hit in real time, it had been with a happy, chaotic clamor, but the film we watched was silent, making it look like the players who were slapping and pushing each other were rioting. Reshawn was indifferent to what he’d just instigated and calmly walked to the end of the running backs line. All the while Miles lay sprawled on the grass, and I didn’t realize until now that Coach Hightower had been standing less than a foot behind me. He looked down at me with his arms crossed, like someone who’d been wandering through the forest when he happened on a badly wounded doe.
—You surprised, Furling? he asked me now. You come at someone like that and a retarded girl’s going to truck you.
—Yes sir.
He rewound the film and sent me and Reshawn into slow motion.
—You’re crossing your feet … your hips are high … your fucking head is tilted backward. Did you pay attention at all during fit drills?
—Yes sir, I said, voice shaking.
—Sure as fuck don’t look like it!
My body was meeting Reshawn’s again on screen, rippling upward, tilting inexorably from vertical to horizontal.
—That is a goddamn disgrace.
I dragged myself downstairs to dress for the afternoon practice. Did I know there would be a red jersey waiting in my cubby? Yes, I did, but that made me no less disappointed to find it, and no less embarrassed to walk into the locker room holding it.
Fade and Chase were dressing. Chase smiled, knowing full well that if I blamed him for swapping places I would just come off as trying to make excuses for what Reshawn had done. Fade saw the red jersey in my hand.
—Chin up, young’un, he said. I got redshirted. Chase did, too.
I sucked my teeth like I’d seen the black players do.
—Coach Hightower was on my nuts until Oklahoma, I said. Fade smiled—not cruelly.
—You gotta understand, he said. Hightower wasn’t really talking to you. He was talking to Chase.
—What’s that mean?
Fade slid on his shoulder pads, fastening the elastic straps around his armpits.
—Look. Chase had a bad spring game, but he had a great spring. Everyone knew that. Hightower knew that. So … it’s like you and your girl are in love, right? Everything’s great, birds singing. Then y’all have a fight. Big fight. You say things you don’t mean. You break up. You still got feelings for your girl, but you just don’t know whether y’all can get back together again. Then one night you find out your ex is heading to a party. You decide to go too and bring another girl with you. You make it so the three of you are in the same room at the party, and you kiss on the new girl, tell her she’s the prettiest thing in sight. It’s win-win—either you make your old girl crazy with jealousy and she realizes she wants you back, or you leave the party with your new girl and fuck her like the world’s fit to end.
I was now firmly third string for this season, or, in team parlance, was now a bottom feeder. My campaign
