by Mark Bowden
He took the same grudging approach with him to UTEP, where Bill Young, the head coach, had taken a gamble on him. At 185 pounds, Seth was well under the expected playing weight for a Division I college linebacker, and he lacked the academic standing to enroll. But Pinkston had sold Seth’s potential to Max Bowman, a coach at a nearby New York junior college, whom Young then hired to help him at UTEP. So Seth was brought in as a grant student, part of the university’s outreach efforts to the underprivileged. Young figured that under his guidance, Seth and the other academically underqualified boys he had shepherded into his program could be taught discipline, manners, and work habits to see them through college and life. In return for playing father/adviser, the coach got talented players capable of turning around UTEP’s struggling football program. If things worked out, that is.
Seth rewarded the coach’s gamble with aggression—on and off the field. Young was an authentic Texas old-school, my-way-or-the-highway, football coach, whose methods borrowed heavily from the military. For instance, he expected his boys to address him and the other coaches with a crisp “Yes, sir!” or “No, sir!”—standard fare on scholastic football fields in that part of the country. Well, it wasn’t going to be standard fare for Seth. At an early practice as a freshman, Seth responded with an innocent civilian New York “yeah” to some coachly inquiry and found himself on the receiving end of a whole raft of good ol’ boy drill-sergeant-style outrage in front of the whole team. Nothing serious or personal was meant by this, of course. Seth was just the first recruit to give Young the opportunity to hammer home this particular point, but fresh off the plane, still uncertain about how homey was going to play out here in redneck Cowpokeland, Seth took the chewing out as a personal affront, and—Seth being Seth— there was no way short of a six-gun to his temple that he was ever going to cough up a respectful “sir” to anyone again.
It started there and just worsened. Used to a high degree of freedom as a teen in Spring Valley, and unused to any kind of paternal authority, Seth balked at the stern efforts Young made to mold his charges into both successful football players and students. The coach enforced a 10:30 p.m. lights-out policy in the dorm, strict curfews with bed checks on game weekends, mandatory study halls—real basic these were, too, such as “Men, see this book in my hand? Any of you ever seen one of these before? This here is a dictionary. Today we’re gonna learn how to use it.”
Seth felt he was being treated like a child, and he didn’t work at disguising his contempt. He had come to play college football, a necessary step on his inevitable trajectory to the pros, and he didn’t need or expect a lot of character-molding bullshit from Coach. One of the reasons Jennifer often saw him alone was that the more conscientious players knew that hanging around with Seth (at least until he began to prove himself on the field) wasn’t exactly the short path to success on Bill Young’s football team. The fact that Young came to see him as a bad apple (actually, this was mostly in Seth’s mind, Young would later insist) didn’t bother Seth one bit—If you let me play, I’ll show you how good I am. If you don’t, your loss.
Young played him, and Seth showed how good he was. He took over as a starting outside linebacker in his freshman year and grew stronger and more ferocious every season. Young rewarded his efforts by taking him off the grant program and writing him a full scholarship. Despite Seth’s surly demeanor, Young discovered that the young man from New York had work habits—at least where football was concerned—that put the rest of his squad, even his starting seniors, to shame. Seth set a whole new standard of intensity, although the coach found the attitude troublingly grim. He’d see Seth slumped in joyless repose at his locker and ask, “What’s wrong?” But there was nothing wrong, at least nothing Seth cared to discuss. Just Seth being Seth.
When he finally met Jennifer, he made good on his old cafeteria boast, and that, too, became a problem. Jennifer went on the European track tour the summer after she graduated, and when she returned to take an assistant coaching job at the school and to resume her training, she and Seth started seeing each other often. Both had found it hard adjusting to the social circles in the athletic dorms, and both had gone through periods of feeling lonely, isolated, and far from home. In short order, they were inseparable, and what a striking couple they made. Hand in hand, black on blond, ebony and ivory, the emerging young linebacker with the grim look on his face and the stern Dutch wonder woman six years his senior—not everyone on campus had horizons wide enough for the view. Some thought the match wasn’t good for the image of the team or the school. Young worried that Seth’s romance would distract him from his studies and from football, which had, in fact, happened more times than he could count. And the interracial aspect, that was worrisome, too. Young was infected with that educated and sensitive good ol’ boy kind of racial outlook, the sort of second-generation, well-bred, kinder and gentler racism that said, Hey, kids, this kind of thing don’t bother me, y’understand, but everybody ain’t as lib’ral as I am. In fact, Young had seen quite a few of these black player-white girlfriend pairings in his coaching years, and in his experience they nearly always ended up badly. So in his father/adviser role, he pulled young Seth aside one afternoon and tried to warn him away from Jennifer, telling him that chances were better ‘n even that there was heartache and a heap o’ trouble jus’ waitin’ for him down the road.
This, of course, pissed Seth off, and when he told Jennifer that night, he touched off a Teutonic typhoon. Jennifer wasn’t attuned to the subtleties of American racial politics; as far as she was concerned, Coach Young’s warning might as well have come dressed in white sheet and noose. Raised in one of the world’s most liberal and tolerant cultures, having competed all over the world with women of all races and backgrounds for more than a decade, she was appalled by the small-mindedness of rural America … and now it had come knocking on her door! No way she was going to let what she saw as backward, provincial crackerism interfere with her pursuit of happiness. The next morning, she barged past the secretary in the football coaches’ suite to confront Young.
“Have you ever met me?” she demanded.
“No,” said the startled coach.
“Well, my name is Jennifer Smit.”
“Oh, sure, I’ve heard of you.”
“Oh, you’ve heard of me? But do you know me?”
“I’ve seen you around. I’ve read about you in the paper.”
“Oh, that’s great. So you’ve read about me in the papers. But do you know me?”
“No.”
“Well, then, I’d appreciate it if you would stop telling your players bad things about me. Because I have nothing bad in mind for Seth. I’m going out with him. I really like him. And it’s not your business who I go out with and who he goes out with!”
And that was that. During those college years, Jennifer would recall later, with some wonder, that Seth was devoted to her. She helped tutor him through his classes, worked out diet and training programs in the off-season to bulk him up and increase his strength, flexibility, and endurance. She gave him a twenty-dollar weekly allowance from her paycheck as a track coaching assistant so he could go out to the bars after practice with his teammates. Apart from being his lover, Jennifer became the kind of mentor and partner to Seth that Young could not possibly have been to all of the young men on his squad. Seth rubbed it in by bringing her out to watch practice now and then, which was fun, underscoring his defiance of Coach and, face it, showing off a little. That blond hair and those long internationally competitive legs made it tough sometimes to concentrate on the ol’ pigskin.
But Young continued to let Seth play, and Seth continued to show how good he was. By his senior year he had built thirty more pounds on his frame, most of it in the upper torso. He led the team in tackles in his junior year as an outside linebacker, and when Young shifted him inside to middle linebacker in his senior year, he led the team in tackles again.
None of which meant Young had to like Seth. Years later, the co
ach claimed to have no memory of this, but the linebacker recalled being voted one of UTEP’s team captains in his senior year, only to have Coach abruptly do away with the policy of having three or four elected team captains in favor of designating two himself, one for offense and one for defense. He did not appoint Seth.
Little energy at UTEP, needless to say, went into promoting Seth to NFL scouts, and, even at 215 pounds, Seth was considered too small to play linebacker at the game’s next level. When he wasn’t invited to the national scouting combine, his pro prospects didn’t look good.
Again, Jennifer proved helpful. The kind of things scouts could quantify about football players, she noted, were track-and-field skills— mostly running and jumping. And these things were her forte. So she altered Seth’s normal training regimen to improve those skills, to build better explosive power in his legs for sprinting and leaping.
Still, on draft day, Seth was disappointed. He watched the first two rounds on TV, without really expecting to be chosen—he had excelled as a college player, but had played on a losing team, and he was undersized. His hopes rested in rounds three through six. When his name wasn’t called in those rounds, he just left the house in a nuclear funk. Seth was nowhere to be found when he was taken in the eighth round by the Eagles, and that news, relayed by friends, couldn’t chisel a smile in the stone face. His friends and family wanted to celebrate, but not Seth. Big fucking deal. Eighth round. As far as Seth was concerned, in those lower rounds teams were just rolling the dice. The Eagles had chosen two linebackers ahead of him and had some quality veterans already on the roster. What kind of chance would he have? He was being Seth all out when he flew back to the East Coast for rookie camp with the Eagles’ new head coach.
But if there was one coach in the whole Pigskin Priesthood built to appreciate Seth being Seth, it was Buddy Ryan, who never met a sociopathic linebacker he didn’t like. Seth epitomized the defensive player Buddy was looking for to fill out what was going to become (just ask him) the best defense the game had ever seen. On the one hand, Seth was a grind, a workaholic, with the intelligence and grim determination to master Buddy’s complex and shifting on-field stratagems. On the other, Seth’s lifelong surly mien expressed exactly the image Buddy was after. It was an image that played unconsciously on an American racial myth, the stereotype of the intimidating black male, the myth that black men are inherently more virile and violent than white men. Shit, that’s exactly the defense Buddy was after! Scare the nut hairs off them pretty little white-boy quarterbacks. So blackness itself became an essential part of the Eagles’ defensive character. Reggie, Jerome, Clyde, Seth, Byron, Andre, and Ben all were cut, at least outwardly, from the same mold, Buddy’s mold. The fact that Buddy, the Okie drill sergeant, played a classic overseer role … well, none of the guys seemed to mind that. Playing defense for the Eagles became a distinctly black thing. Together in their far corner of the locker room, their blackness seemed to suck light right out of the room. The Pack (which was overwhelmingly white) would enter casually and drift down about halfway and then stop, the way white folks would cross the street to avoid a group of black men strolling together up the sidewalk, or the way white motorists would roll up their windows and lock their doors entering that part of town. The spell was deliberate. To drive home the message, Buddy’s Boys wore black shoes and draped black towels from their pants. They hung out together on and off the field. No one played the role with more enthusiasm than Seth. He loaned his stone face to the whole squad.
Yessir, Seth and Buddy were soul mates. Buddy had to let Seth go at the end of the summer, juggling his forty-seven-man roster and relatively certain that Seth—the eighth-round pick—would not be picked up by another team. He promised Seth he would be back in Philadelphia shortly. Seth flew back out to El Paso and nearly wore out his new green-and-silver sweat gear; when Jennifer washed it, he’d fish it out of the dryer to put it back on the next day. Buddy re-signed him in time to play in the Eagles’ third game that season. After a standout year on special teams, Seth was Buddy’s starting left outside linebacker for ’87.
EVER SINCE THE SCENE in Honolulu over Wanda, Jennifer and Seth had been estranged. He had flown back alone to Philly for the ’92 season, leaving unresolved once more plans for his wife and daughter to move back east with him.
By October, Jennifer is through waiting. There are positive signs. Seth is even pleasant on the phone once or twice. When one of the Philadelphia Pack decides to write a big profile of him, the man who had stepped up and taken a leadership role since Jerome’s untimely demise, Seth gives the hound her number—what can he be thinking?
Jennifer plays the game like a champ, telling what a great, loving, sweetheart of a guy Seth really is beneath the laser stare, nuclear temper, and apocalyptic gloom … well, yes, he is hardheaded enough to play the game without a helmet and he does hate to lose, but all in all a model NFL superstar husband and daddy underneath.
She flies to Philly the day before the big Monday night Dallas game, D-Day, and, planning to surprise him, she and Jasmine spend Sunday night with Erika, who is still coping with Wes’s betrayal. Jennifer watches the glorious win, wincing as Seth tries to keep playing after hurting his knee, cheering when he makes his big play. She and Jasmine sit with Erika and Sandra Simmons, two other members in good standing of the fabulous sorority of Eagles’ wives whose husbands no longer lived at home. Wes’s girlfriend Amy is back, too, over in that other section in one of Wes’s guest seats, prompting much clucking and scorn among the outraged official women. Erika has gotten out of her system any need to confront Wes’s shameless blond sweetie, who now before the players’ wives stands for the whole sleazy, preying culture of Sis-Boom-Bimbohood. Lynn Allen can’t resist walking Jasmine and Montana over and presenting them to Amy—I just want you to see who else you’re hurting!
After the game, Jennifer waits in the Wives’ Lounge for Seth, who is staying late for treatment. Erika stays with her.
“You might need the ride,” she says knowingly.
After an hour or two, with the stadium drained of its loud and deliriously happy fans, Seth’s older brother, Eric, comes in the lounge and ignores her. Then Clyde Simmons walks in, again without a word to Jennifer and Erika, crosses the room to speak with Eric in a hushed tone, and then the two men start back out together.
That’s when Jennifer takes Jasmine by the hand and follows. She can’t stand waiting around anymore. She has to confront him.
Eric turns as he steps through the door, startled.
“Where are you going?” he asks.
“I’m going in,” says Jennifer, in her clipped Dutch accent, a blush of that Teutonic blood in her pale cheeks.
“You can’t go in. It’s only for men. Here, I’ll take Jasmine in,” he says, taking the little girl by the hand.
“If women aren’t allowed, then Jasmine can’t go either. I’m going in.”
“Suit yourself,” says Eric.
Jennifer follows them into the nearly empty locker room, and then into the privileged enclave of the training room, where (as she would later remember the scene) she now returns Seth’s scowl.
“What’s your problem?” she says.
“What did you come here for? You know the deal.”
Hunched on the trainers’ table, the massive plates of his chest and shoulder muscles bunched forward and his long, heavy arms resting on his thighs, Seth looks like some brooding heavy in a gladiator movie. The postgame high of the locker room is gone. He is weary and bruised.
“Tell me, Seth. What is the deal?” Jennifer asks.
“You know the deal between you and me.”
Seth is clearly embarrassed, being confronted like this in front of the trainers, on his own turf.
“I don’t know. That’s just it! Are you still seeing that girl?” Jennifer is getting upset now, starting to feel choked up, which makes her angrier.
“No. That has nothing to do with it.”
“Then why are you
so upset that we’re here? Any normal man would be happy to see his wife and child.”
“I thought you and I had a better relationship than this.”
“Than what? I just came out to see my husband play a football game!”
“You show up unannounced, sneaking around behind me.”
“I’m your wife! I didn’t think I had to be announced. And I was not sneaking. It was supposed to be a surprise.”
That had been the idea. But Seth had been tipped off, of course, by his mother, ever protective of her millionaire son.
“If something has you this upset,” Jennifer says, “then maybe there’s something you need to tell me.”
“Like what?”
“Like if you’re involved with somebody else. Maybe you should let me know right now. Is there somebody in your life? If you’re so bent out of shape, there must be!”
“I told you, there’s nothing going on.”
“Then why are you so upset?”
“I told you why I’m upset! I just thought we had a better relationship, that you wouldn’t do things behind my back.”
“Look,” says Jennifer, wanting to cut this short now, sobbing. “Please tell me right now. You want me to leave, I’ll leave. Jasmine and I will leave, right now, and we won’t be coming back.”
“Do whatever you want to do, Jennifer,” he says, with that cold unfeeling stare. She hates it when he does this, this in particular, implying that their marriage, their family, their future, all of it is her decision alone. And him, with his stone face on, with his regal posture that nothing touches him, he’s Mr. Pro Bowl Linebacker Superstar, Seth being Seth, and she can flit around further in his blazing aura if she likes, or leave, or whatever; it doesn’t matter to him. The mighty trajectory of Seth Joyner’s career will just maintain its cool and magnificent arc in the heavens.