by Monte Burke
O’Connell had been the first man down the field for the Nighthawks. He’d drawn a bead on the kick returner, but had failed to see the returner’s lead blocker, the “up man,” coming in from his right. The blocker had launched himself into O’Connell and delivered a vicious, but legal, helmet-to-helmet hit. The blow severely dented O’Connell’s face mask.
As soon as the paramedics get to O’Connell they strap him to the backboard and cut off his jersey in the shape of a cross. He wakes up as his face mask is being screwed off (the paramedics leave his helmet on as a precautionary measure) and finally, to much relief on and off the field, he moves his arms and legs. He’s rushed to the hospital. He has suffered a nasty concussion. His season, which once seemed likely to blossom into at least a shot with an NFL team, is now over.
Despite a late touchdown throw from Masoli, the game essentially ends when Clement runs for a six-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter. Shipp adds insult with a twenty-eight-yard touchdown run on a fourth-and-one play that puts the Locos up 30–10. Olivadotti leaves his perch in the box early to come down the field with a few minutes still left to play. His eyes are more bloodshot than usual. He apologizes profusely to Joe on the sidelines. He knows Joe counts on him to be his rock. “I’m embarrassed as hell. I let us all down tonight,” he tells his friend and boss.
The loss is a total psychological and physical beat-down. Joe’s team is outgained and thoroughly outplayed. The Nighthawks have lost four key players to injuries during the game, and perhaps for the season.
Hambrecht greets Joe on the field as he walks to the locker room. There is a brief discussion about the lack of fans and what that means for the league. “Well, we’ll see where we go from here,” Hambrecht sighs. The season, Joe knows, is again in peril. He desperately doesn’t want it to end like this.
In the locker room, Joe leads a prayer for O’Connell, who will, somehow, make the team flight home just three hours later. Joe prays more intently than usual.
If the season continues, the Nighthawks will play the Locos again in Omaha in just six days.
Chapter Twelve
Baby, Vegas
Back in Omaha, rumors begin to swirl about the fate of the UFL. One has the league folding immediately, just three games into the season. Done. Kaput. Another has the season being shortened, and the Virginia Destroyers (who are 3-0) and the Las Vegas Locos (2-1) playing in a media-and-league-friendly championship game that would pit Schottenheimer’s team against the two-time defending UFL champs. The third rumor—and the one most palatable to the Nighthawks—is that the winner of the Omaha–Las Vegas rematch will meet Virginia in the championship game.
Joe calls a coaches’ meeting early Monday morning, normally a time when the staff would be preparing for the next game. He tells them what he knows. The Sacramento owner, Paul Pelosi, seems reluctant to pour any more money into his franchise, which is 0-3 for the season. And with bills remaining unpaid, the problems that faced the league back in July have not been resolved. Joe believes the season will indeed be shortened, and that the Nighthawks season may well be over. He says he’ll have more information in a few hours, after a conference call with the owners. “This type of stuff has been going on all season, literally every week,” Joe says. “I’ve tried to keep these issues away from you guys so you could focus on your work.” That was no longer possible. The issues were now public.
The coaches shake their heads and look at each other across the room. The same jolt of sadness, of disappointment, that accompanied the delay in July is back. Marvin Sanders, the secondary coach, speaks up. His patience with the UFL’s problems is blown.
“This is absolutely ridiculous. Again? Joe, I’m really worried,” he says, speaking for everyone in the room. “The players are going to feel let down whether we play or not. Really, we are, too.”
Joe nods his head. A flash of shared frustration crosses his face, then quickly passes. He narrows his eyes. “Marvin…All of you. Look, this is where we come into play. The bottom line is this is what we have. We can feel sorry for ourselves. We can feel sad. That’s natural. But this is a test: Are we going to buckle? Or are we going to figure out how to make it work? Let’s figure out how to make this work.” The thought seems to buoy their spirits, if only for a moment.
With that, he dismisses the coaches. They file into their respective meeting rooms to watch film and prepare for a game that might not take place.
Later in the afternoon, Joe gathers the staff together again. He has news. Everyone nervously steals glances at Joe, trying to get a read on what he is about to say. Joe sits down at the head table in the meeting room, directly under the banner with the quote from the Gospel of Mark.
“Guys, I have some bad news,” he says. “Later today, the UFL will issue a press release that says the league has folded.”
Complete stunned silence. It’s over.
“Just kidding,” Joe says. He smiles.
The room explodes in relieved laughter.
All of the teams will be playing this weekend, he tells them. There’s a chance that if the Nighthawks win, they’ll play in the championship game. There’s also a chance that even if they win, the season is over. Nothing is certain except for the fact that this game is on.
Minutes later, Joe addresses the players and repeats what he’s told the coaches, minus the joke. “The bottom line is that whatever happens in the weeks to come, we absolutely have to win this game,” he tells them. “That part of the equation stays the same.”
In other words, now that the game is saved, all the Nighthawks have to do is go out and defeat a team that, just a few days before, had completely dominated them.
One afternoon after practice, Joe leads his third “Life after Football” seminar. This week’s topic is personal finances. All but sixteen of the Nighthawks players show up for the meeting; eight coaches are on hand as well. (The league’s probable demise has apparently jolted the men into thinking a bit more about a football afterlife.) Joe has brought in a group of managers from TD Ameritrade who will talk about credit card fees, retirement savings accounts, and stock portfolios, and answer what will turn out to be hundreds of individual questions from the players and staff, questions that range from mortgages and car payments to retirement plans.
But before the suits can take the floor, Joe stands up to address the room. He has a few things he wants to say first.
“Here’s the one lesson I’ve learned over the years,” he says. “No one, and I mean no one, cares about your money more than you do. It’s an absolute must for you to know exactly how much money you have coming in and going out. You can’t rely on other people to do that for you. I certainly don’t.”
Joe then hands out a sheet of paper that has thirty-six different categories listed on it, each with its own individual box. It’s his own monthly and annual budget worksheet. “You’ll see I’ve only included the categories and not the actual expenditures,” he says with a grin.
The worksheet includes categories that one might expect to see. There are slots for maintenance on cars, cash given annually to his children, and dues for his golf clubs (Baltusrol and Omaha Country Club). But Joe also gets surprisingly granular on his sheet. There’s a slot for the flowers he occasionally buys Amy and one for monthly cable TV. There’s another labeled “fish food.”
Joe, despite his millions, sits down with Amy every year and fills out this sheet by hand. Even though he has become a very wealthy man, he is as careful with his money now as he was back when he was a flat-broke high school football coach scrounging for change to buy sprinkles for an ice cream cone.
That the Nighthawks and Locos are playing each other twice within a six-day span is yet another challenging quirk in the UFL’s reconstituted season. The Nighthawks will have limited time to regroup strategically and—more important—emotionally. A team defeated in the manner the Nighthawks were can suffer a loss even greater than the game itself—a loss of confidence, in themselves, their system, their c
oaches. Joe’s task this week is to ensure that doesn’t happen. And that starts with coaching his coaches.
He meets with his three coordinators and their respective staffs individually. Olivadotti is still deeply embarrassed by his defense’s performance in the last game. “We screwed up and we will fix it,” he tells Joe. All week long, Olivadotti subjects his players and coaches to repeated viewings of their disaster in Las Vegas. He wants them to really feel the same embarrassment that he does. During practice, with every glare at a player who has made a mistake, and every pat on the back of one who has done something well, Olivadotti is telling Joe I won’t let you down again.
Kent, too, uses film as a motivator. He shows the special team units footage of all the kickoffs and punts. In every frame, the Locos physically dominate, making the bigger hits, tossing Nighthawks players to the turf. Kent refrains from showing the O’Connell hit again, but that play and injury serve as an implicit rallying cry.
Andrus says his side just has to put it together. The pieces are in place. But he wants more from Joe. In one meeting he asks Joe to more strongly demonstrate his faith in the offensive play calling. “I believe in you and this system,” Joe responds. “Just do your thing and do it well.”
The Nighthawks have more than a mental hurdle to overcome this week. There’s a physical one, as well, in the form of the team members they have lost to injuries. During practice, the injured players are on the sidelines watching the action, all in something of a daze, like infirmary patients gathered in the TV room. The team’s best receiver, Chad Jackson, stares at the turf below his tightly wrapped knee, perhaps in disbelief that he has suffered yet another injury in a career plagued by them. Dvoracek limps around in flip-flops. O’Connell wears a hoodie, peering out at the scene from the dark-circled eyes of a man who has suffered a serious head injury. Reynaldo Hill sits on a golf cart, foot on the dashboard, his injured big toe pointing skyward.
Although they’re close to the action, it’s as though the injured men have become invisible on the practice field (though they are well taken care of off the field). The coaches no longer talk to them much; their concentration is on the guys who will actually be playing. Even their teammates barely acknowledge them, an avoidance that seems almost purposeful. The injured players represent something unnerving to the healthy, a reminder of the sudden death blows that this game routinely and randomly doles out to men’s dreams.
The week wears Joe down. He can’t sleep at night. He’s on the phone every day with Hambrecht and Huyghue, trying to help sort out the league’s finances (this time, they’re joined by the other coaches). He is using every last reserve of energy to motivate his coaches and players for the battle against a team that just ran right over them. And, though he mentions this to no one, his own career is at stake here. He feels he must win this game. Going 1-3 in this league would pretty much verify the fears and doubts that all of those college athletic directors had about him. His team seems anxious as well. He decides they all need to loosen up.
At what might very well be the Nighthawks’ last practice, on a sunny and brisk fall day, Joe makes a request of George Glenn, his chief of staff. He wants Glenn to start practice by playing the Surfaris song “Wipeout” on the big speakers that are wheeled onto the field daily and usually used to simulate crowd noise. Glenn complies.
Joe calls the team together in the middle of the field, and then signals to Glenn. At the song’s manic opening words—“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, wipeout!”—which lead to the equally manic and annoyingly hard-to-forget guitar riff, Joe drops his clipboard and starts to swivel his hips, harkening back to his pseudonymous, prize-winning dance during his Dartmouth days. Walter Curry Jr., a big defensive lineman always up for a laugh, joins in. The players are into it. They gather around, hooting and hollering. Suddenly, seventy-four-year-old Don Lawrence jumps in, doing his own slow-but-very-determined twist. (He will check in with the trainer immediately afterward, complaining of pain in his back.) A Nighthawks media relations intern films the dance and posts it on YouTube, but without any sound. Joe will have it quickly taken down after a few ribbing phone calls from his friends. “It was so out of context,” he says. “It was like seeing someone in his car singing his heart out when you can’t hear the music. I looked like a dodo.”
Still, Joe is never afraid to play the fool—in context, of course—if he thinks it will serve a purpose. And his performance is meant to set the tone for the practice, and for the game that is soon to follow: let’s be intense, but let’s stay loose and have fun.
It turns out to be one of the best practices of the year.
Realizing that this may be the last game of the Nighthawks season—maybe even the last of Joe’s coaching career—Joe’s family and friends rally to his side. Johnny, Mary, and Paul all fly in to Omaha with their spouses. His three oldest children, Kelly, Kim, and Kara, come with husbands and children in tow. (Kevin is stuck working back in New York.) Even Kathe briefly considers attending the game, but eventually decides to listen to it via a website radio feed (the only way for out-of-towners to follow the game thanks to the UFL’s inability to secure a national TV contract). Joe’s stepson Jeff, who has been an intern with the team (and was the “squirrely” guy who made Andrus so nervous during the tryouts) will of course be there. His other stepson, John, is flying in from Dallas. And a few members of the old Merrill Lynch crew—Roger Vasey, Bob Bertoni, Ed Sheridan, and Jim Smyth—make a surprise visit. Many of the TD Ameritrade gang are there as well, as they have been all season.
For Joe’s two oldest children, being at the game has a certain cathartic effect. Seeing their father on a football field represents something bigger than the game, bigger and in some ways even better than Joe’s attempt to recapture his dream. “It’s so cool seeing him on the sidelines again,” says Kelly. “I never really knew the Merrill Lynch and TD Ameritrade dad. Watching him coach again brings me back to a much better time, before anything bad happened, when he was just my dad.”
Having all of these people present is actually beneficial to Joe, and helps take his mind off the worst part of game week for football players and coaches: having to endure the excruciating hours between waking up and going out on the field when the big day finally arrives. “I absolutely hate the day of games, especially with a late kickoff,” says Olivadotti. (The Vegas game is at 7:00 p.m.) “The hay is in the barn. All you can do is wait.”
On game days, there is an optional prayer gathering in the morning, then the offense, defense, and special teams each meet for a quick ten minutes just to mentally walk through assignments and plays one last time. Olivadotti and Andrus like to have their game plans set in stone by the day before the game, at the very latest. They are both thankful that Joe is not a last-minute tinkerer. “[Don] Shula used to come up to me an hour before the game and say, ‘Hey, Tom, let’s change this and this and this,’” Olivadotti says about his former boss. “I loved the man. Still do. But that used to drive me crazy.”
In the midafternoon, everyone lumbers down to the dining hall for the pregame meal, exactly four hours before kickoff. The coaches always sit at the tables and let the players hit the buffet line first, like cowboys watching their cattle graze. The day of games is quiet, almost solemn. There is none of the usual laughing and horsing around, just the tink-tink of forks on plates and the gentle murmur of lowered voices. “Part of it I think is that they are concentrating on the game,” says Olivadotti. “And another part of it is just zoning out, trying to forget the game so the anticipation doesn’t drive you crazy.”
Olivadotti gets some good—and very surprising—news a few hours before kickoff. Somehow, despite a badly torn knee ligament, Dusty Dvoracek has decided that he will play in the game. The trainers have advised him that doing so risks catastrophic injury to his knee. Dvoracek knows that. But it isn’t stopping him. The coaches aren’t, either: it’s hard to deter a strong-willed, six-foot-three, three-hundred-pound nose tackle.
And, anyway, they nee
d him. “Dusty is the most important player on our defense,” says Brandon Noble. On the face of it this statement seems nonsensical, since Dvoracek’s name rarely appears on the stat sheets (he averages only a few tackles a game). But what he does is perhaps the least selfish, least glamorous task in football. His job is to eat up space, to occupy at least two offensive linemen and hold them in place at the line of scrimmage. That allows the linebackers behind him, and his fellow defensive linemen beside him, to blast through lanes to attack the running back or the quarterback. Dvoracek does this at least as well now as he did during four injury-riddled seasons with the Bears.
This may very well be the last game that Dvoracek ever plays. He’s suiting up for his own gratification—he loves the violence, the battle of wills, the chance to prove on every play that he can overcome pain and push himself beyond his own limitations. But he’s also doing it for Joe. “I believe in him,” says Dvoracek, who has a cherubic face on which he’s raised a short but still scruffy, sandy-blond beard. “All of that ‘being a man’ stuff is true. It’s what life is all about.”
Dvoracek is a study in the contrasts that football seems to demand of its players. He is well spoken, philosophical and smart (he was Academic All Big-12 at Oklahoma). But he is also sometimes out of control. One drunken brawl during college led to his suspension from the Sooners football team. Another one after college resulted in an arrest.
He’s paid a severe price for his love of football. Both of his knees are shredded. He can’t lift his right arm over his head because of the 2007 tackle of Adrian Peterson, in which he tore his biceps. His hands are swollen to the size of oven mitts, and nearly all of his stubby fingers have been broken, sprained, or jammed at one point or another in his career.