But my ankle would heal by next week. Then we’d see just how well words protected him.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s it had been an annual tradition for King College’s president to speak to the team the first week of the season, a quick go-get-’em from the academic brass. But ten years before I matriculated, when King Football was in the doldrums of the nadir of one of the great losing streaks in college football history, “scheduling conflicts” began cropping up. The president was “traveling,” he was “unavailable,” he asked to reschedule at the last minute and never bothered to set another time. The subtext was clear: visiting the team considered most likely to get kicked out of Division One didn’t jibe with our college’s mission to hoard prestige, and to make time for an unimpressive enterprise such as ours must have seemed at best a waste of valuable energy and at worst to risk being infected by our virulent losing bug. Nor was this just King Football paranoia. During that same decade the president had been happy to address the college’s other, winning sports teams, from field hockey to basketball to squash.
So it was a coup to have the college’s brand-new president, Heinrich Aaronson, standing on the practice sidelines the day before the team departed for South Bend. A willowy Caucasian with a salt-and-pepper mustache, Aaronson was dressed in khakis and a tweed jacket that any person who exercised regularly would have soaked through in the 85-degree weather, but which didn’t elicit a single drop of sweat from him. He watched us with genuine, though slightly bemused, interest, surveying our rituals and routines with the same keen focus he’d honed as an anthropologist studying remote Amazonian tribes before taking his career in an administrative direction.
The coaches were on their best behavior. No “anusface” or “clit-sucker,” no grabbing a player by his face mask and screaming. Today they were our tough-but-fair leaders, our gruff-but-loving father figures, and from the eager, almost giddy way they ran around and laughed, they seemed to enjoy this chance to play the role of college football coaches.
Following conditioning sprints, the team took a knee around Coach Zeller and President Aaronson. Walking woundeds like me stood at the back.
—Let’s give the president a big hand!
We applauded as Aaronson stepped forward. He proceeded to speak with the slow, patient, almost painfully clear tone he’d developed while sounding out English for Brazilian tribes who’d never laid eyes on Westerners.
—Thank you, gentlemen, and thank you, Coach Zeller. Some of you may know I was at Caltech before this, and I have to say, I always felt that that school was lacking a key … cohort. At so many elite schools, the focus is on excellence of the mind. But here at King we have students who cultivate body and mind—you all are what makes our college so special. That isn’t to say we don’t have our challenges. I know there can be something of a … border between the academic side of King and athletics. But Coach Zeller and I are intent on erasing that division. So I’ll be shouting my lungs out for you all this weekend in South Bend, and Coach Zeller—
Aaronson looked to Zeller to see if it was okay to share the news. Zeller nodded.
—Coach Zeller has graciously agreed to be a guest lecturer in a certificate course on leadership next semester.
Vets chuckled.
—You’re gonna be a professor? Devonté asked Zeller. Like, in a classroom?
—That so hard to believe? Y’all know I wear a mean suit and tie.
He turned to President Aaronson.
—Thank you, Mr. President. It’s damn excitin’ to strengthen our relationship. I tell these boys every day, they are scholars and athletes. In that order.
Coach Zeller placed his hand on President Aaronson’s back and left it there.
—We got a tradition that ends practice with a special cheer. I should warn you, it’s got a bit of profanity.
—I’ve heard a word or two in my day, Aaronson said.
Coach Zeller turned to the team, chuckling.
—All right, then. Reshawn, break us down.
Players shared apprehensive glances. In the abstract it made perfect sense why Coach Zeller would want Reshawn, our consummate scholar-athlete, to lead us in the cheer. But there was good reason why Zeller had never asked Reshawn to lead us in screaming “King King motherfucker!” before.
—I would prefer not to, Reshawn answered flatly.
Jimbo hung his head. Other players watched Coach Zeller, waiting to see how he’d respond. But while Zeller in any other circumstance would have lost his cool and told Reshawn he didn’t give one fuck what he preferred, he could do no such thing now, not with Aaronson standing right next to him. Instead Zeller blurted out a hearty laugh and turned to Aaronson, who for his part seemed more fascinated by us than ever.
—This close to game time, Zeller said, Reshawn gets a little superstitious.
—Of course.
Zeller looked out at the team again, and though his mouth was still smiling, his eyes were pure ice.
—All right, Machen, he said to Errol. You do it.
At Training Table that evening, word spread that all players on the travel list were to voluntarily return to the Hay after eating to watch an extra round of film. I wasn’t expected to attend—these meetings were about Notre Dame, involving assignments and strategies that would be obsolete by the time I got back on the field—but I decided to go anyway,
