The Franchise

by Peter Gent

  The coach looked at the men holding R.D. Locke. “Don’t let that son of a bitch up.” The coach ran off, carrying the pistol. He had to push his way through the crowd of players gathered to see what all the noise was about.

  On his way to Red’s room the assistant stopped at the dormitory office. He had the telephone switchboard shut down and ordered all the outside doors locked.

  “You’re doing this to me ’cause I’m black,” R.D. yelled, struggling vainly in the grip of the three mammoth men.

  Taylor looked down at R.D. Locke. The black man’s eyes blazed with a hatred that was generations in creation. Taylor turned, walked to his room and lay down. As he listened to the buzz of activity in the hall, he suddenly felt strangely calm. Twenty minutes later he heard Red Kilroy and Dick Conly arrive.

  “All right, the rest of you back to your rooms. Simon, Margene and Ox bring R.D.”

  Taylor listened as the players returned to their rooms. Several of them looked in on Taylor. He waved them off.

  Two hours later Simon came by the room. Taylor was still staring at the ceiling.

  “Well,” Simon said, “he’s gone.”

  “The police come and get him?” Taylor asked. His voice cracked; his throat and mouth were still dry from fear.

  “No, Red said it was just a case of cabin fever.” Simon went into the bathroom and splashed water on his face. “We just put him on a plane. Red traded him to Denver.”

  Taylor nodded his head slowly. “Cabin fever, huh?”

  “Yup,” Simon said. “Worse goddam case I ever saw.”

  SON OF THE SOFTWARE

  “CALL ROBBIE BURDEN,” Cyrus said “and tell him I want a spot in his office for Lem Three.”

  “Why?” Conly said. “He isn’t bothering anybody here. He just sits there, drinking whiskey in his coffee cup, and tries to think of catchy things to write on banners and bumper stickers.”

  “I want him to get an idea of how the League office operates and get firsthand experience dealing in broadcast from production to advertising. There’s a revolution coming.”

  “I know, Cyrus. I told you about it.”

  So Lem Carleton III and his pregnant wife, Wendy Cy Chandler Carleton, moved to New York City, where Lem worked as assistant to Commissioner Robbie Burden for telecommunications and special projects. He spent his time at the League office, trying to comprehend the size and velocity of change in broadcast technology, regulations and profitability. He learned how to market football. He saw them building the barricades for the communications revolution that Dick Conly said was coming.

  It failed to stir him, but it fascinated his wife.

  Wendy Chandler Carleton was exhilarated by the struggle for control of the telecommunications industry. She had an interest in the software. One in particular.

  “Software is my life,” Taylor had told her.

  Dick Conly’s plan for the software was a football-league network broadcast direct by satellite to a football-league decoder. The viewer would be able to watch any league game on a twenty-five-dollar pay-per-view basis, plus the cost of the dish antenna (six hundred dollars) and the League decoder (five hundred dollars).

  Chandler Communications Research and Development had already perfected “addressibility” capabilities for the Direct Broadcast Satellite project. Chandler Aerospace was test-firing satellite launch rockets and had space reserved on the shuttle. They planned to be kicking satellites out of the shuttle like hay bales, and by the mid-eighties approximately forty million homes would be connected—with $1.25 billion potential each of twenty weekends, not counting doubleheaders, Thanksgiving, the playoffs, or Super Bowl.

  Dick Conly figured the Super Bowl broadcast would gross $2.5 billion.

  $2.5 billion.

  One game.

  Dick Conly thought like that, betting millions against billions. Chandler Communications subscription television would gross eight million dollars per game on local pay telecasts of Pistols home games that were blacked out in Park City and a 150-mile radius. Eighty million a season for the Franchise before one ticket was sold.

  The stakes were going up fast.

  THE BOTTLE-CAP WAR

  HENDRIX WAS COMPLAINING about the Union.

  Kimball was needling him out of boredom.

  Taylor was resting on his back with the playbook over his face. He was thinking pass routes while his receiver ranted.

  “The pension plan promised lots but guaranteed little. We don’t even control or have access to the money. Owners’ pension contributions are voluntary and teams are just not paying. Stillman keeps saying it’s a great deal, but he gave the owners control of the pension in return for dues checkoff.”

  Spurred by his anger at Charlie Stillman, plus his eternal war against Commissioner Burden, Bobby Hendrix had generated a fair amount of resistance among older players throughout the League against signing the bottle-cap licensing agreement.

  Robbie Burden found himself in legal jeopardy and pressured Charlie Stillman to get the Union in line.

  In Bobby Hendrix’s room the phone rang, and the redheaded man answered.

  “We’ve got to be reasonable, Bobby,” Stillman was pleading over the phone. “The Union could look bad. This could hurt a lot of people.”

  “Name two, besides you and the commissioner?”

  “We need not get personal,” Robbie Burden interrupted. It was a conference call. “This is business and we’re merely trying to rectify an oversight.”

  “Fire Stillman and make that ex-basketball player, Terry Dudley, the new Union director,” Hendrix demanded.

  “What?” Director Stillman lost control momentarily. “You little cocksucker ...”

  “Shut up, Charlie!” the commissioner ordered. “Just shut up!” Robbie Burden’s tone softened for Hendrix. “Listen, Bobby, it’s your union—”

  “Don’t give me that shit,” Hendrix cut the commissioner off. “You go tell your owners to tell their reps to fire Stillman and hire Terry Dudley or you are going to have Dr Pepper’s legal department all over your ass.” Bobby hung up.

  Charlie Stillman was fired.

  Terry Dudley was hired and the Union took control of their own pension and health funds.

  The bottle-cap war ended.

  The revolution had begun.

  PLAYING IN THE DARK

  DURING EXHIBITION SEASON Taylor Rusk worked hard to improve and develop his skills at quarterback. Taylor planned on being the Franchise. He planned to control the players, to deal with Red as he had done at the University. Then start learning to deal with Cyrus and Conly. Cyrus proved to be merely willful and spoiled, but Dick Conly was a lifelong hired gun. Power struggles were Dick Conly’s business; smelling out an ambush was his unique talent. Taylor would build his power base between the white lines on the field. They couldn’t reach him there.

  Red pushed Kimball Adams to spend extra time teaching Taylor to play major-league quarterback. What took Adams years he taught Taylor in months. How to read defenses, when and where to expect them and what to do, how to take his keys from the linebackers and the weak and strong safety. How to call a game, probing for weakness and strength; how to play the field like a chessboard and basketball court. When to audible and why. How to use the clock. How to control his offense. “The best information comes from your teammates on the field, not some asshole on the sideline.

  “Keep control,” Adams said. “That’s the bottom line.”

  Taylor had a good feel for sensing a blitz and continued developing the skill with the sting system of automatics. All backs, ends and linemen had to learn to key without any call. They expanded it eventually to automatic adjustments for every defense. Pass patterns changed in midroute. The angles on the field. Kimball taught Taylor the geometry of the game to combine it with Rusk’s strong arm and touch, the exquisite patterns and fingertip catching of Bobby Hendrix and the devastating threat of Speedo Smith.

  The weak offensive line tried to protect the quarte
rback, and Ox Wood harangued the lineman about pride and courage, the savage man-on-man wars between the tackles, the shame of a quarterback sack.

  “These boys represent all that is good.” Ox had his arms draped over Taylor and Kimball. “Womanhood, motherhood. And we must protect them. We must win the war in the trenches. Goodness needs time to flower, and it is up to us to bite, kick, slug, cut-block and trap-block for our offense to blossom. It can be a beautiful spiritual feeling. We must stand. They shall not pass.”

  Tears streamed down Simon D’Hanis’s face. “Goodness shall triumph over evil! They shall not pass!”

  About all that didn’t pass was Kimball Adams’s kidney stones.

  But they never quit. Humiliated. Beaten. Exhausted. They never quit.

  “You’re fifty percent of the way,” Red said after a disappointing loss. “You’re not quitters.”

  It was that particular night exhibition game when Simon D’Hanis developed his raging hatred for combination football-baseball stadiums.

  The pregame ritual included a flag ceremony with the stadium lights out. Old Glory was led by a single spotlight to center field. Everyone sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” except Red, who forgot the words.

  The stadium remained dark as the starting lineups were introduced. From inside the tunnel each player ran out in the spotlight—alone. The stadium was a dark, roaring maw.

  “Just follow the spotlight, men,” the guy with the walkie-talkie said. He slapped Ox Wood on the shoulder and the big All-Pro lumbered out into the stadium. The crowd howled and roared out of the dark. Ox just thumped his way through the tunnel, out the dugout and into the spotlight. The brilliant beam seemed to carry Ox over the warm-up circle, past the pitcher’s mound, across the infield and out to the football field. The darkness yowled. Unaffected, fearless, steady, gliding in the spotlight, his short legs skating the yellow circle of light, Ox Wood stopped at midfield and waited. He stood alone in the swirling, dusty stream of light.

  Simon D’Hanis was terrified, frightened, confused and lost. His legs felt rubbery. Could he make the run? Suddenly darkness swallowed the great hulk of Ox Wood and the crowd squalled like some wounded animal as the smoke-filled, swirling, filthy stream of light crawled toward Simon. An electronic voice was calling him out into the void. “Number Sixty-three, Simon D’Hanis.”

  “Just follow the spotlight, son.” Someone slapped Simon’s pads, and the frightened young man staggered from the tunnel into the spotlight’s glare.

  Simon D’Hanis was not ready for the spotlight.

  He couldn’t seem to get his balance, running fearfully, surrounded by blackness in the bright-yellow vacuum, with eighty thousand people screaming damnation, hurling their fury at him from the darkness. Simon was weightless, senseless, and could only blindly stagger, watching the lighted spot on the ground, twice almost falling, to the vocal pleasure of the Cleveland fans. But Simon battled back, struggled, analyzed his problem, focused his effort at staying erect. By the time he was passing the on-deck circle, he was getting his feet back under him. He was feeling good and running fine.

  The crowd roar was losing its fearsome quality. Simon’s eyes began to adjust; his running rhythm smoothed out nicely.

  “Just follow the spotlight.”

  A few more steps past the batter’s circle, then across the infield, on out to the football field. Eighty thousand sets of vocal cords running vibrations at him, and Simon D’Hanis was pumping up and sending some vibrations out himself. He began screaming, joyously, angrily, ecstatically.

  Word was being passed to Simon D’Hanis’s adrenal glands. The surge of adrenaline pushed Simon into a full barbarian warrior running naked from Gaul to Rome. Simon, the naked warrior, was accelerating well when the pitcher’s mound leaped up in front of him out of the darkness. The cleats on his right shoe hooked on the pitching rubber. Stumbling, staggering, showing the quickness of mind and body that made him such a great athlete, Simon kept his feet until he reached the outfield, then fell, bounced and did a complete somersault, flipped back to his feet and continued to Ox Wood’s side.

  Taylor heard the audience catch its breath. Simon heard a funny little click in his knee.

  The crowd began cheering for Simon D’Hanis, who finished his run to midfield like a Tennessee walker.

  “It’s those goddam Russian steroids,” Taylor said to Bobby Hendrix. “He’s turning into Olga Korbut.”

  THE REGULAR SEASON

  THAT FIRST SEASON Bobby Hendrix, Kimball Adams and Taylor Rusk shared a three-bedroom apartment out by the airport, close to the practice field. Hendrix was afraid to move his family and pull the boys out of school, since he was on the Blacklist and might be out of football at any moment.

  Kimball called his wife for the first time since he had arrived in camp six weeks before.

  “Aren’t you coming down, honey?” Kimball asked.

  “You asshole!” she screamed. “I would rather stay in Cleveland and watch Lake Erie die and the river burn than be in goddam Texas with you, you drunk, potbellied, obnoxious, rag-armed son of a bitch.”

  “Honey ... honey.... We were busy ... two-a-days into the regular season. They didn’t have phones available. You know you love me.”

  “Like I love vaginal itch, you schmuck!” She slammed the phone down.

  Adams looked at Hendrix. “She may be a while.”

  Mrs. Kimball Adams stayed in Cleveland and sold Kimball’s clothes and car. They never got back together.

  Simon D’Hanis and Buffy, the proud parents of a baby girl, lived in a duplex in Park City.

  “It’s a good place to raise kids,” Simon said.

  “You don’t have to tell us, Simon,” Taylor said. A.D. started laughing while nodding in agreement that Park City was indeed a good place to raise kids.

  A.D. stopped laughing long enough to say, “Especially somebody else’s kids.”

  Simon was irritated, and he always remembered his two old roommates laughing at him for saying that Park City was a good place to raise kids. Later he would begin to believe they laughed at him about a lot of things, and when Taylor tried to tell Simon they had been laughing with him and not at him, it was too late. Simon D’Hanis had ceased laughing altogether.

  A.D. Koster moved in with Suzy Ballard over by the University in the apartment complex he, Taylor and Simon had shared in college.

  Suzy got a few modeling jobs and was in one national beer commercial before she took a job with The Texas Pistols Football Club, Inc., and began an open affair with Dick Conly. A.D. encouraged Suzy’s liaison with Conly. Suzy could help promote A.D.’s career in the Franchise. It was part of A.D.’s plan. A.D. and Suzy became more partners than lovers. They were a good team.

  Red Kilroy also had a plan. It was Red’s plan to trade away Texas’s top three draft choices every year for the next five years. He would bring in good players who could win. All Red cared about was winning now.

  Red Kilroy demanded his players be smarter and stronger. If they were, he made Dick Conly pay them more. As soon as they realized this, they made fewer and fewer mistakes.

  “You can’t overpay good players,” the coach said. Conly agreed. Cyrus didn’t.

  “This foolishness must stop.” Cyrus was in Dick Conly’s office. “I read in the paper that you gave Kimball Adams a ten-thousand-dollar bonus. What for?”

  “He’s coaching Rusk, putting in extra hours, working hard,” Conly defended the bonus to Kimball.

  “I have it on good authority that Mr. Kimball Adams has very unsavory friends.”

  “Of course, Cyrus.” Conly was losing patience. “He plays professional football.”

  “He’s friends with the Cobianco brothers,” Cyrus said.

  “So are you. Kimball Adams isn’t a problem, you are.” Conly stood and pointed. “You. If I turn my back on you, we get turds in the punchbowl. So he shaves a few points; Christ, the man is forty years old and crippled. He puts on a marvelous show. This is show business and h
e sells tickets.”

  Cyrus was not swayed. “He already is under contract. He’s paid a fair wage.”

  “Who are you all of a sudden, Henry Ford?” Dick yelled. “Don’t give me that shit. I’m the guy who negotiates these contracts, with the singular exception when you nearly gave the whole store away, trying to outsmart Doc Webster and Taylor Rusk.”

  Cyrus ignored the general manager. “There is, furthermore, to be an internal investigation started. And if Kimball is keeping company with unsavory characters ...”

  Dick Conly picked up his tumbler of warm Scotch and tossed it into Cyrus Chandler’s face. Cyrus shut up immediately and took on the puzzled look of a man slapped across the mouth with a wet squirrel.

  “What is this furthermore shit?” Conly slammed his empty glass down. “I don’t take furthermore from God himself. I run this franchise and Chandler Industries. You know nothing about how it all fits together!” Conly suddenly slugged the window glass with his fist. It didn’t break: Conly had long ago had glass put in that you couldn’t drive a truck through.

  “Easy, Dick.” The blow startled Red.

  Cyrus was still stunned, Scotch on his face, soaking his shirt.

  “No, it’s too hard for you. So I have to do it!” Dick slugged the window again, harder. The window boomed and rattled and Coniy’s knuckles went numb. “Traveling the world in your DC-9 and being chauffeured in limousines to the sources of your wealth and attending Chandler Industries’ yearly off-site planning sessions is just too tiresome. Instead you jet to the Hot Springs Ranch with your pals from Spur 1939. Ten wrinkled dicks with the young cookies attached, swimming naked in the hot springs.

  “I have to go commercial during the airlines strike and have stenographers pick me up in their Toyotas and don’t get home for two fucking months, to do what you could have done in two weeks while also learning something about why you were born rich. Something I already know because I put it together....