Chase sighed and returned inside. I waited a moment before joining him, which allowed me to stealthily tuck my erection beneath my boxers’ waistband.
Not only was Maryland away, but so were the Clemson and Georgia Tech games that followed, leaving bottom feeders in Blenheim three straight Saturdays. I found this humiliating, like I was the little brother too short to ride the roller coaster, and I hated, hated, the period that stretched between when the team left for the airport and when we convened at the Hay to watch game film on Sunday. Hated walking around campus and knowing people mistook me for some regular student. Hated sitting in my dorm room and doing homework I had all these spare hours to concentrate on. Hated antsy unnecessary jogs around East Campus in which I obsessed about how far my life was from the bulb-blinded, crowd-roared fantasies I’d had of Division One.
During game time on Saturdays it was tradition for bottom feeders to meet at Stefan Knows, a bar within walking distance of East Campus. The place had been founded in the 1950s, and who Stefan was or what he’d known was lost to history. At night the bar was a shitshow of late adolescence, wall-to-wall with King undergrads drinking cheap liquor from plastic cups and fondling each other in barf-scented bathrooms. But during the day the place was peaceful and drowsy, mellow afternoon light slanting in through the small old windows, solitary alcoholics playing Keno at high-topped tables—the perfect setting in which to belly up to the bar, watch better D1 programs face off on the TV that hung above the well drinks, and keep an eye on the news ticker at the bottom of the screen, where the score for our own game periodically scrolled.
My first two outings to Stefan Knows were disheartening—we lost to both Maryland and Clemson—but we were cautiously optimistic the third weekend, since Georgia Tech was down that year. We filed in at one o’clock and were greeted by the bartender, a young guy named Enrique who claimed to have been a star tight end in high school. In exchange for us listening to his inconsistent explanations for why he’d missed a D1 scholarship, Enrique didn’t ask baby-faced types like me for ID.
As a graybeard biker down the bar got increasingly restless about his Keno results, we watched the Iowa-Nebraska game and called out whenever we spotted the King score scrolling.
King College
3
Georgia Tech
0
King College
10
Georgia Tech
7
King College
10
Georgia Tech
13
Scores could tell us only so much about how the game was actually proceeding, and I noticed that how your imagination filled the gaps depended on how long you’d been on the team. Veteran bottom feeders were saddled with deep pessimism after years of losses; if the score appeared and we’d fallen behind, they shook their heads and said nothing had changed, while if we tied or pulled ahead, they’d say don’t get your hopes up, we still have plenty of time to blow it. Rookies like me were eternal optimists, convinced King Football’s darkest days were over.
King College
13
Georgia Tech
13
King College
19
Georgia Tech
13
But no matter how old you were, you sooner or later came to feel a dark antagonism for that goddamn news ticker. We’d watch the thing ten straight minutes, waiting to see our score, and just when the numbers seemed on the verge of appearing, the programming would cut to commercial. By the time the game returned, our score would have been skipped, leaving us to wait again with no guarantee our score would appear before the next commercial break. There seemed to be some invisible force deciding which scores appeared, and it was difficult not to believe this force was spiting us, mocking us, toying with us.
King College
19
Georgia Tech
20
Only a minute remained in the game. We stopped watching Iowa-Nebraska altogether, ignored the biker screaming gibberish at his Keno screen.
—An exciting finish in Atlanta, Steve, the announcer said.
Suddenly our team appeared. Our offense was on the field, the ball was snapped, and Reshawn caught a screen pass at the line of scrimmage. A defensive tackle dove at his knees, but Reshawn hurdled him with an elegant lift of the legs, regained his feet, and lowered his shoulder on a linebacker, trucking him as he’d trucked me during Oklahoma. He was deep in the secondary now, facing a final defender, a strong safety Reshawn froze in place with a stutter step. He was off—43 yards, untouched, touchdown. We toppled our mugs of beer as we jumped off our stools, gripping each other’s biceps and hands, and when the final score appeared we high-fived Enrique and happily accepted smelly bear hugs from the biker who’d gotten caught up in our exultation.
After making plans to meet back at the Football House, we went our separate ways for the rest of the afternoon. Tired from the beer, I intended to take a long, sweet nap; but when I got to Stager Hall and was approaching my room, I spotted a boy at our door. He was reading the whiteboard with the names Miles and Reshawn written across the top.
—That’s Reshawn McCoy? he said.
—He isn’t here, I said. Just to warn you, he doesn’t like giving autographs.
The boy laughed.
—Jesus. Autographs. Would you mind if I left a note?
He walked in with me. I tore a sheet of paper from my Public Policy notebook and loaned him a pen, sitting on my bed while he bent over Reshawn’s desk and scribbled. The boy was white and on the smaller side,
