What I really want to hear is that the scouts are drooling over me and that Coach Lowe is telling them I need to go high in the draft.
“You still hungry to win? Because some kids win once and they take their foot off the pedal. They stop training as hard. They let the outside world become a distraction. They lose focus and then they lose games.” He glances down at the photos under his wrists.
My good mood evaporates. From what little I can see, those pictures contain nothing good. If I’m here to talk to Coach about those, I better brace myself for a tongue lashing—and not the sexy kind I got a couple of days ago from a cute red-headed Delta Gamma in the bathroom at the Gas Station.
“I want to win,” I repeat slowly. “Nothing’s going to be more important come fall than making sure the BCS trophy stays here at Western State.”
“Hhmmph,” Coach grunts.
Err. Not the answer he was looking for?
“This is my worry. Without Masters pushing you every second, is the defensive squad going to be as sharp or tough? Physically and mentally, are you going to be a National Championship team?” He reaches for the photos and tosses them toward me.
I look at the colored papers and inwardly cringe. After the championship game, it’s safe to say we went a little crazy. People treated us like gods and there was a never-ending funnel of booze that night. And the women. Holy shit. They were everywhere, and they came in pairs and more. They were all tens. Maybe elevens.
I couldn’t count much that night. I don’t have to look at the pictures to know what they contain. They’d been on the Internet within hours of the game’s last whistle. Hammer and I and the D-line were getting drunk, doing whipped cream body shots off of various coeds.
There’s a worse photograph that I don’t see in the pile. That’s the one where I’m lying on a bar top with one girl’s head between my legs while Hammer is pretending to spank her in the ass. Another girl is leaning over my mouth feeding me a shot. My mom raked me over the coals for that one. My “I had my pants on, Ma,” excuse didn’t fly with her, and I suspect it would go over equally poorly with Coach.
“This was after the season was over,” I point out.
He taps a finger on the top photo. “Where’s your captain in these photos?”
Knox Masters was fucking his new wife, the girl you had banned from having any contact with the team, is what I want to answer, but I know that’d go over like a lead balloon. Besides, I’m not throwing my teammate under the bus, even one who’s no longer technically a Western State Warrior.
“At his hotel.”
“Right.” He gives one final tap and shoves backward. The motion sends the photos flying off the desk onto the floor, and I see the last one in the pile is indeed the foursome picture. Fan-fucking-tastic. “Your captain was at the hotel, avoiding the press and ensuring the Western State Warriors’ reputation was untouched while you and the rest of your crew were out there making us look like a bunch of high school kids who’d never seen a set of tits before. Do you know how hard it is to assure a worried mama that we’re going to take good care of her son and won’t let him sin his way through college when these pictures are everywhere?”
“No, sir.” The mom may not like it, but the son sure as shit does. I keep that nugget to myself.
He pins me with a hard stare. “You’re a superb talent, Mr. Iverson. You will undoubtedly be drafted, but how high you go depends a lot upon the off-the-field qualities you show. Your scouting reports say that your leadership potential is unknown. Being captain of the defense could go a long way to shoring up your intangibles.”
Captain? That’s not something I’ve ever gunned for. I love playing the game because that shit is fun, and all the other hard work I put in, from eating the right foods to working out hours a day to studying game film, helps me do what I love at a high level. But captaincy? Leadership? That sounds like a lot of BS that I don’t really care to shoulder, but I can’t really say so to Coach.
If he’s asking, the appropriate answer is always “yes” because if you say no, you’re getting voluntold to do it anyway. Might as well make yourself agreeable. Path of least resistance and all that.
“If that’s what the team wants from me, that’s what I want to give the team.”
Coach Lowe gives no indication my lack of enthusiasm bothers him. “With Masters gone, someone needs to keep the defense in check. I don’t want to see more of this.” He gestures toward the pictures I have awkwardly collected in my lap.
“Not a problem.”
“If it does become a problem…” His threat hangs unspoken in the air. I didn’t even sniff the field my first year behind a first team All-American linebacker who was drafted in the third round by the Niners. He’s not in the league anymore, but when I walked onto campus, he was one of the big men and I was his understudy.
Since my sophomore year, I’ve held that inside linebacker position against all challengers and I’m not giving it up now no matter how many blue chip recruits and backups are chomping at the bit to take my place.
“It won’t.”
“Good.” He leans back into his chair and swivels so he’s looking out the window onto the practice field. “I think you would be a good captain, Matthew. Your teammates like you and more importantly they listen to you.” The dry note in his voice says that right now they’re listening to all the wrong things. “But taking your direction in this”—he brushes a palm across the clippings—“is an easy path. You need to prove to me you can lead them in something else.”