by Tim Green
Ruffians
Tim Green
*
PROLOGUE:
The Crowd Roared In Clay's Ears Like A Storm. He Was So close to Gilly that he could feel his steel mask clanging against his teammate's helmet.
"Whad ya say?" Gilly screamed.
Clay could barely hear him.
"I said, 'You stay inside ... the X stunt is off!' " Clay yelled. Gilly responded with a puzzled look, and Clay knew that he had been heard. The Penn State offense broke their huddle and bounded toward the line of scrimmage.
MO. K?" Clay bellowed.
Gilly glanced nervously from Clay to Coach Leary, who stood on the sideline looking intently at the field. Gilly was only a redshirt freshman. He was lucky to be on the field. Leary could change that, and would if he screwed up something like this. Gilly knew better than to ignore a play Leary had signaled in from the sideline, especially at this point in the game. But Clay Blackwell was the team's captain. He was their star, and it was his last game in a Northern uniform.
The Penn State linemen were hunkering down in their stances. Across from Clay was Keith Zard, Penn State's three-hundred-pound Ail- American. Clay looked intently at Gilly. His expression asked the question again.
O. K!" Gilly said, nodding so that Clay would know. Clay grinned, slapped Gilly on the shoulder pad, and lined up. Clay knew Leary would have a fit. They were only up by nine and with three minutes left. Penn State could win it with a field goal if they scored now. With their own quarterback out for the game, Clay knew Northern's offense would put the ball right back in Penn State's hands. Keeping them out of the end zone was critical. Northern was 5-5. They weren't going to a bowl game despite high pre-season expectations. A win against the nation's second ranked club would make up for a lot of the disappointments.
It was fourth and goal from the seven yard line. Leary had called the X stunt because he thought crossing the rush lanes of the end and the tackle would put quick heat on the quarterback. Clay knew he could beat Zard without Leary's stunt. This game was the last he would ever play at home in front of the Northern fans. Clay knew he could win it almost single-handedly with a quarterback sack.
Clay was deaf to the noise of the crowd. His concentration was so great he heard nothing. He saw only the thick, bloody fingers that protruded from Zard's black leather gloves. When those fingers left the turf as the ball was snapped, Clay lunged.
He raced three steps up the field, then threw his head and shoulders to the inside, jabbing with his right foot at the same time. Clay sensed the mayhem of the interior line. Arms and legs and helmets flashed violently. Zard went for the fake as Clay knew he would. Just before the big man's hands struck Clay in the chest, he darted back to the outside. The field was clear except for the quarterback. It was like sifting through Cracker Jacks, and suddenly there was the prize.
Clay could see himself smashing into the quarterback and rising from the turf to accept the hysterical cheers of the crowd. He couldn't see Zard spin and roll, whipping his rear leg backward at the same time. It was an old and dirty trick, an illegal trick, but Zard was a team captain too. He was thinking of a national championship.
Clay felt a sharp pain in his shin. He felt himself falling to the turf in slow motion. He reached out and grabbed for the quarterback, who stepped just out of reach and sprinted outside the pocket. Clay's glorious moment was gone forever. He tucked his shoulder, rolled, and came up quickly off the artificial turf. He was in time to see the unhindered quarterback cross into the end zone.
The roar of the crowd ended abruptly. A stunned silence overtook the stadium. Clay lined up for the extra point.
"Clay," Gilly said in a frightened voice, "what happened? Did you lose contain?"
"Fuck" was all Clay could say, slapping his helmet at the same time.
After the kick, Clay jogged back to the sideline, cursing himself. He wanted to throw his helmet, but he knew better. He avoided Leary and went to the water. He rinsed his mouth and tried to spit the sickness from his gut. The optimistic home crowd surged back to life. They wanted to see a long kickoff return. They at least wanted the Northern offense to get the ball out of Penn State's field goal range.
Clay looked at the scoreboard. Northern was still up by two. Even if the offense couldn't run out the clock, Penn State still had to score. But Clay had played enough football to know that the play he'd just called off had put his team on a slippery slope.
He went to the D-line bench. His teammates sat there, sweat dripping from their hair, heads hung low to ward off the incredible abuse that spewed from Coach Leary.
"Fuck Gillmore! Fuck you, you goddamned freshman son of a bitch! You had contain on that! You could've just cost us this game. This is the last time some of these guys will ever play a goddamn game of football! You, Gillmore! You're gone! Snead? You take this man's job. I know you'll run the play that's called."
Leary's Irish face was purple. Gillmore didn't look up until Clay spoke.
"Coach," Clay said. Leary spun on him. His teammates all looked to see what Clay could possibly say. Everyone knew better than to talk to Leary when he was raving.
"It was my fault," Clay said.
"Nice try, but Gillmore's got contain on an X," Leary said angrily.
"There was no X," Clay said. "I called it off."
Leary stared in disbelief. Clay could see his twisted, coffee-stained teeth. He blinked in anticipation of the yelling that was sure to come.
"Damn it, Clay . . Leary was drowned out by booing louder than any Clay had ever heard. It was almost as loud as the cheering. The Northern back-up quarterback had fumbled the first play from scrimmage. Penn State now had the ball on the thirty-two yard line going in. The Northern defense jumped to their feet, snapping chin straps in place and stuffing mouth guards into their faces. Leary turned to Clay as his teammates began spilling out onto the field.
"Get 'em up, Clay," he said with desperate ferocity, pulling Clay's face close by tugging on his mask. "Forget about the X. We can still win this. Just get those sons-a-bitches up!"
Leary hammered Clay's shoulder pads, and he dashed out onto the field. He stumbled and almost fell as he ran to catch up with the other players.
Clay pushed the earlier mistake from his mind. He had to. In the Northern defensive huddle he slapped his teammates' shoulders and helmets, exhorting them to give one final effort.
"It's our game to lose! Let's kick their ass! Come on . . . the whole season comes down to these last two minutes . . . come on!"
Penn State broke their huddle. Clay got to his position and quickly put himself in Joe Paterno's shoes. Joe needed a field goal to win. Five or six yards would put his kicker within range. Clay knew Joe would run the ball and try to get the yardage. On film, Clay had watched Penn State time and time again run behind Zard in critical situations. They wouldn't do that now. Clay controlled the ground game today.
With this in mind, Clay decided to slide a step inside of Zard. It was a bad position for a pass, and a bad position for a run to his side, but if Penn State ran the ball like Clay thought, away from him, then Zard wouldn't stand a chance of cutting him off. Clay would get to the other side in time to back up his teammates to keep the gain to a minimum.
Penn State's line set on the ball. Clay lined up over Zard. The quarterback began his cadence, and Clay slid inside, just a step. It was all he needed. The ball was snapped. Zard fired out toward Clay's inside shoulder to cut him off. Clay felt that good feeling that filled him whenever he was right about what was going to happen. He struck Zard in the chest and rammed his helmet under Zard's chin. He pushed, then shucked Zard back to the outside, freeing himself to pursue the runner. It was a sweep away. The runner broke past the outside force and headed down the far sideline.
Clay refused to let up. He watched a linebacker dive and miss the runner, then the free safety. Clay adjusted his angle and surged ahead, on line to meet the ball carrier just before he crossed into the end zone. Clay passed smaller teammates, moving incredibly fast and catlike for a big lineman. The Penn State runner thought he was clear. He'd outrun the defensive secondary and there would normally be no one who could catch him. He held the ball out and up to insult the hostile crowd with one final in-your-face gesture. Clay dived. The runner never saw him. Clay hit him in the side of his head with his own helmet, slashing viciously at the runner's arm at the same moment. The ball sprung free. Clay crashed down on top of the runner, knocking him ten feet past the sideline. Gilly dived on top of the ball in the end zone. Clay hopped up and turned to see what had happened. The noise hit him like a nuclear blast, flashing through his bones and shaking him. The crowd was on its feet. The official signaled touchback, a Northern first down.
Clay ran into the end zone and embraced Gilly as he rose to his feet with the ball held high for everyone to see. The rest of the team was close behind. They swarmed Gilly and Clay, burying them under a pile of bodies. It was almost a miracle.
The crowd continued to roar. The Northern defense dispersed. Out came the offense with renewed hope. Losing now was beyond them. They would have their pan in the sensational victory too. They knew they could run out the clock. The momentum was theirs, and so was the game.
For twenty minutes after the final gun the Northern crowd remained standing and cheering. Much of the student section had spilled past the security and onto the field to knock down the goal posts. For twenty minutes the players, especially the seniors, milled about the field, hugging each other, luxuriating in the victory they would remember for the rest of their lives. Clay searched the crowd behind the bench, where Katie sat. She was at the railing, clapping with everyone else. Clay got two cops to help him bring her over the wall and down onto the field. People in the stands reached over the rail to touch Clay. Two kids who were standing next to Katie begged him for his hand pads. Clay embraced Katie, drenching her with his sweat. Then he pulled off his hand pads and tossed them to the kids. The mob around them screamed.
. . Clay, Clay . .
"We love you, Clay . . ."
"Clay! We'll miss you!!"
Clay waved to them all and grinned. Then he led Katie by the hand, out onto the field amid the tumult.
"Hey, this is a first. You've never brought me on the field before. It's fantastic," she said, loud enough so he could hear.
"I wanted you to feel it, what it's like out here ... I always talk about this." Clay raised his hands in the air, indicating the cheering crowd. "I wanted you to know what it feels like."
Her smile showed her appreciation.
"You were great," she told him. He smiled too and kissed her, then led her by the hand off the field amid the cheers of fifty thousand people calling out his name.
Chapter ONE
THE CONCRETE WAS COLD and made Clay's bare feet clammy. Stripped to his underwear, he stood in a line of about thirty other half- naked young men that extended around the room and out the door. The vaultlike room was cramped. Its high ceiling was a maze of corroding pipe and mold-stained ductwork. One of the players behind Clay laughed abruptly in a nervous and muffled way. Everyone turned. A fidgety silence settled among them once more. They were the rookie class of the National Football League. Every year, like cattle to the auction, the League harvested the finest football players from universities across the nation. Before the merchandise was bought and paid for, the buyers were given generous opportunity to inspect the meat.
Over three hundred college players had been flown into New Orleans from universities as far away as Hawaii and Boston College and as close as LSU and Auburn. Many, like Clay, were subdued even before they got inside. The big, dirty city offered little in the way of a warm welcome. Damp, fetid air from the distant Gulf of Mexico was tainted with smoke belched from factories and power plants. The New Orleans Superdome stood out like an enormous white spaceship, an anomaly in a town whose main attraction was the old French Quarter.
"DL7," called out the pale, spectacled man in a white lab coat.
It was Clay's turn to step onto the scales. The number had been given to him when he arrived at the NFL combines. It was printed in large letters on his T-shirt, and had been printed on the back of his hand in indelible ink as well. For as long as he was at the combines, he was DL7 and not Clay Blackwell.
"Two hundred seventy-three pounds . .
The lab technician paused as he jammed the metal arm hard down on the top of Clay's head.
Large and mostly overweight middle-aged men in ill-fitting clothes sat crammed into desk chairs that filled the center of the room. There were five or six rows of about ten chairs. The men were NFL scouts, and they wrote everything the lab man said like enthusiastic schoolboys, looking up only to eyeball the next slab of human flesh on the block.
The lab man said, ". . . six feet, four point one inches. Next."
Clay stepped off the scale and was pointed in the direction of a steel door at the back of the room. Not knowing what was scheduled next, he wordlessly followed a redheaded guy ahead of him who had DL6 printed on the back of his T-shirt, and stepped through the steel door into another cold concrete room.
"Walk to the yellow X and then back again," shouted a shape from behind a set of bright lights.
Clay did as he was told.
He had to squint to see that there were several lab men in this room and only a few scouts. Two cameras filmed Clay as he headed to the yellow marker on the opposite side of the room. Many coaches and scouts around the league believed a lot could be learned about an athlete's balance and speed just by the way he walked across the room.
Clay was dismissed and told to go dress himself, then report to Room C.
Strength testing was conducted in Room C. This room too was crowded with NFL scouts and coaches. They were packed in a circle around a single bench press like men in a barn about to watch a cockfight. The weight bar held two hundred twenty-five pounds and the object was to press the bar as many times as possible. The last of the offensive line group, OL43, had set the standard at forty-four repetitions. As Clay's turn approached, his armpits dampened with nervous energy. He wanted to be the best at everything he did, but he knew he couldn't match forty- four. Still, the six DLs that proceeded him had all got somewhere in the teens, so Clay adjusted his goal to be the best of the defensive linemen and not worry about the entire group.
The call came, "DL7."
Clay got down on the bench, and with a slight tremor in his hands he lifted the bar off the rack and began to press. With the first few reps his arms felt weak, not as strong as they should have been. But he figured nervous energy was sapping his mind, not his body, and he finally established a comfortable rhythm. Nineteen . . . twenty . . . twenty-one . . . twenty . . . two--his arms shook with real fatigue--twentyyy . . . three . . . twentyyyy . . .
"Aghhh!" Clay grunted as his arms gave out and the heavy bar spr-d toward his chest.
Two lab coats, one on either side, mechanically caught the bar and returned it to its rack.
"DL7, twenty-three reps," said one of the lab coats blandly.
Clay looked around for a sign of approval, but the only ones who weren't scribbling were other players who were not especially interested in seeing him succeed.
Clay left Room C following large arrow-shaped cardboard signs marked THIS WAY, and found himself walking through a maze of damp locker rooms in the bowels of the Superdome. Turning a corner, he was abruptly confronted with the huge expanse of the unnaturally green turf field. Artificial lights buzzed from above like monster insects, and the shouts of players, striving to run faster agility drills, echoed off the distant stands and roof.
While Clay waited for the rest of the DLs to arrive, he watched the last remnants of the OL group run through a series of drills and sprints. Clay's muscles began t
o twitch as he watched. He grinned to himself. This field was where he would set himself apart. For a man who was six foot four and weighed two hundred and seventy-three pounds, Clay's agility and speed was remarkable. He knew that, and he knew that after he finished these drills, everyone else in the place would know it too.
When the group of DLs was finally complete, Clay was assigned to a subgroup that consisted of DL1 through DL8. A lab technician led them to the vertical jump area. Clay watched his competition. His turn came. A lab coat marked his fingertips with chalk. Clay crouched beside the wall where he was to jump. He bounced several times, as if he was going to jump, but returned to his crouch. He got himself into a rhythm. Muscles in his legs and shoulders rippled with tension. Then, when his weight felt right, he sprang. The red marks he left on the wall were a good six inches beyond anyone else.
"Thirty-seven and a half," said the lab coat who stood above them all on some scaffolding.
Clay couldn't help noticing the incredulous looks he was drawing from the other DLs.
"Hell of a jump," DL8 said, shaking his head as he passed Clay to take his place against the wall.
The jump was only the beginning. With each passing test, more and more scouts and coaches gathered around Clay's group to watch him perform. By the time Clay got to his last test, the forty-yard dash, almost half of the people in the dome were clustered around him to see how well he would run. This was the benchmark for football players. From the time they are ten years old, football players talk about their speed in terms of the forty. Clay had worked for weeks on improving his start, and he now carefully placed his hands and feet in their proper places. He lifted his hindquarters, began breathing deeply, and then exploded off the line. Once up, his motions were smooth and fast, almost liquid, but violent, like a tethered stallion cut free. His strides took up enormous sections of the turf. If it were colder, steam would have burst from his nostrils as he churned across the finish line. The time: 4.63, the best any DL would run.
A coach who wore a Dallas Cowboys sweat top leaned over to the scout standing next to him and whispered, "That's a thoroughbred."