Backfield Boys

by John Feinstein

  “Bet the media didn’t know they’d been invited to a pep rally,” Jason said.

  Mr. Gatch waited for the applause to die before plowing on. “It’s been a long week,” he said, smiling. “A lot of rumors, virtually all of them completely false. A lot of strife and heartache. But that’s not what today is about. Today, it is my honor to tell you that our new football coach, effective as soon as we win the state championship will be”—he paused for effect—“a remarkable man whom I consider a good friend”—another pause—“Marco Thurman!”

  There was something of a gasp around the room. Then some claps, then some more claps. The offensive linemen were whooping happily. Tom looked around and noticed that neither Coach Ingelsby nor Coach Reilly was in the room. They had slipped out, apparently, as soon as Coach Johnson had finished talking.

  Coach Thurman stood up and shook hands with the others on the platform. He approached Mr. Gatch, who hugged him awkwardly—at least in part because Coach Thurman, at six foot six, towered over him. The circumstances certainly played a role in the awkwardness, too.

  “You surprised he took it?” Tom whispered to Anthony. “He’s gotta know what this is about, right?”

  Anthony shrugged. “Not sure, to be honest.”

  Coach Thurman nodded at the applause, then smiled. “I’m not much of a talker,” he said. “And this should be Coach Johnson’s day. So let me just say that I look forward to having the chance to lead the young men in this room and, once the season’s over, I’ll have a lot more to say to all of you. For now, we’ve got to get to practice today. We have a big game to get ready for on Friday.” He then stepped aside.

  Mr. Seaman came back to the podium. “As Coach Thurman mentioned, the players and coaches have practice, so they’ll be leaving right away. Mr. Gatch has asked that any questions specific to the school be directed to me.”

  Players and coaches stood to leave, the security people making their presence between the media and those who had spoken very evident. Tom saw David Teel jump to his feet and say something he couldn’t hear that got Coach Johnson’s attention. Quickly, Tom walked down the side of the room, against the flow of the crowd, to get within earshot of the two men. His three friends followed.

  “You can stay and listen to this or not,” Tom heard Teel say. “But you might want to get your side on the record.”

  “I’ve got practice right now,” Coach Johnson said.

  “The recording is eight minutes long,” Teel said. “I’m playing it starting in five, one way or the other.”

  Tom saw a look of panic cross Coach Johnson’s face.

  Game on, Tom thought. Game on.

  32

  Teel waited until most of the players had exited. He invited the board members to stay. Several stalked out; a couple of others kept their seats. Tom Robinson had been moving through the media crowd, telling them they might want to wait a minute before packing up their gear.

  Tom noticed that Coach Thurman had walked off the podium and then had gone to the side of the room instead of out the door with Mr. Gatch and the security retinue. Coach Cruikshank and Coach Gutekunst had also stayed.

  Coach Johnson stalked out, but returned a minute later—one security officer by his side. He sat down in one of the chairs on the podium.

  Coach Thurman walked up to where Tom, Anthony, Jason, and Billy Bob were standing. No one had said anything to the four of them to indicate that they couldn’t stay. Several other players also lingered, sensing something was up.

  “I know you’ve heard the recording, too,” Coach Thurman said quietly. “This should be interesting.”

  Teel was now standing in front of the platform, addressing the room. He was holding a digital recorder in his hand.

  “This is a recording that was made two days ago during a meeting in Coach Johnson’s office that was received via e-mail by myself and by Tom Robinson of the Virginian-Pilot. The stories we’ve written will go up on our papers’ websites at four o’clock—that’s fifteen minutes from now. We think the words on this recording are self-explanatory.”

  Tom looked at Coach Johnson. He was—appropriately enough, Tom thought—as white as a ghost.

  Teel walked to the podium, unimpeded by security, and put the recorder on top of it next to the microphone, asked for complete quiet, and turned on the machine.

  For the next eight minutes it felt to Tom as if no one in the room was breathing. A couple of times he thought Coach Johnson was going to bolt for the door. His body went almost rigid as his own words were played back to him.

  When it was over, nobody moved. Or so it seemed.

  Finally, Teel shut off the recorder, turned to Coach Johnson and said, “Any comment?”

  Coach Johnson stared straight ahead for a moment. “That tape is out of context,” he said, grasping at the most familiar straw available.

  “How so?” Teel asked. “What is missing that will make the facts any different?”

  Coach Johnson stood, pointing a finger at Tom, Anthony, Jason, and Billy Bob.

  “The four of you did this!” he roared. Then he seemed to remember where he was. “I have to go get ready for practice,” he said, stalking from the room through the side door with the security officer trailing in his wake.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Coach Thurman said. “We’ll never get to practice if the media stops us right now. We can talk to them afterward.”

  They sprinted to the back of the room and out the door, a few people shouting questions in their direction.

  “Now what?” Tom asked once they were out of the room and into the locker room, which was off-limits to the media.

  “Now you boys go get dressed for practice,” Coach Thurman said. “We have a game to get ready for, and I suspect we’re going to be doing it without several members of the coaching staff.”

  * * *

  Coach Thurman was right.

  Coach Winston and the two captains already had the team stretching when the four freshmen—and the others who had hung around to hear the tape—arrived. No one said anything.

  There was no sign of either Bobo Johnson, Don Ingelsby, or Terry Reilly. Coach Thurman wasn’t there either. Finally, just as they were wrapping up their stretching and Tom was beginning to wonder who was going to run practice, Coach Thurman and Bill Stiller, the athletic director, came walking onto the field. Harrison Ballard III, the board chairman, who had never opened his mouth during the press conference, was with them, too.

  As soon as they got to the TGP logo at midfield, Coach Thurman blew his whistle. Confusion followed. Some players reacted the same way to Coach Thurman’s whistle as to Coach Johnson’s whistle, moving right away to stand in a circle around him. Others traded glances as if unsure what to do next. Some moved slowly to the circle; others stood talking quietly among themselves as if deciding what to do.

  “If you want to know what’s going on, I’d suggest you all get over here,” Coach Thurman called, his voice booming around the empty stadium.

  The stragglers walked over and joined their teammates.

  “I know you’re all confused and probably a little upset,” Coach Thurman said once he was surrounded by the entire team and the remaining coaches. “I don’t blame you. This has all happened very fast.

  “Let me turn this over to Mr. Ballard and Mr. Stiller, who will update you.”

  Stiller nodded at Thurman and, in a shaky voice, said, “Thank you, Coach.” He paused and took a deep breath. He was struggling to keep his composure.

  “As of ten minutes ago,” he finally said, “Coach James Johnson is no longer TGP’s head football coach.”

  A number of players gasped and a couple cried out, “No, that’s not true!”

  Stiller plowed on. “At the request of the board of trustees, he is submitting his letter of resignation, effective immediately. Coach Ingelsby and Coach Reilly are also resigning, effective immediately.”

  Now everyone was silent.

  “I know a handful of you w
ere in the room after the press conference, so you know what took place. Those of you who don’t know will find out soon—it will be all over the Internet and social media when practice is over. Suffice it to say, Coach Johnson has made some comments that make it impossible for him to continue as coach.” He paused again. “This is a tragic turn of events for all of us.”

  Tom almost laughed out loud at that one. Tragic? he thought. A racist football coach being forced to resign is a tragedy? He started to whisper something to Jason but resisted.

  “I have asked Coach Thurman to take over as your head coach for the rest of the season. Coach Cruikshank will double as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, and Coach Williams”—he looked at slotbacks coach Mo Williams—“will double with the slots and the wide receivers. I have complete faith in them and in you.”

  Mr. Stiller was near tears. He turned to walk away. Mr. Ballard had never said a word.

  “Does he talk,” Jason asked, “or just walk around in an expensive suit?”

  In a barely audible voice, Coach Thurman thanked the two men as they exited. Then he returned to normal.

  “I know this is traumatizing for some of you and it’s shocking for all of us,” he said. “But we have the biggest game of the season to play Friday. We’re off to a late start today, but this time of year, length of practice isn’t as important as quality of practice. So let’s get started. Report to your coaches.”

  Tom wasn’t sure where he was supposed to go.

  Coach Cruikshank solved that quickly. “Jefferson!” he shouted. “Over here with the other quarterbacks.”

  Ronnie Thompson was glaring daggers at him as he jogged over to join the quarterback group. Jason was a step behind him until they heard Coach Williams’s voice.

  “Roddin!” he said. “Over here, with the other receivers.”

  Tom saw Jason’s face break into a wide grin.

  He looked at Tom. “Well,” he said, “better very late than very never.”

  Looking as if he’d just won the lottery twice, he went to join the receivers. Tom felt the happiest he’d been since he’d stopped for dinner with his dad and his best friend at the Aberdeen Barn on the way down from New York.

  * * *

  Seven players quit the team that night. Led by Ronnie Thompson, they put out a statement via social media:

  We came to TGP to play for Coach Johnson, not for someone who, with all due respect, has never been a head coach. We understand mistakes were made, but we believe Coach Johnson’s forced resignation was an overreaction to media pressure by the TGP board of trustees.

  They went on to say that they intended to finish the semester academically but—none of them being seniors—they would transfer to play football someplace else the following fall.

  Six seniors also put out a statement saying they, too, were unhappy with the change in team leadership but because they were so close to the end of their high school football careers and to graduation, they would remain in school and on the team—and would dedicate Friday’s game to Coach Johnson.

  Tom was looking over Jason’s shoulder at the computer that night, reading the seniors’ statement.

  “Did Coach Johnson die?” he asked, reading the final line.

  “Sort of,” Jason said.

  Tom and Anthony had come downstairs to Jason and Billy Bob’s room to follow all the various reactions. Different kids were in and out, many to offer congratulations, others just checking to make sure they were all okay after the events of the afternoon.

  The Internet had gone completely wild with the story, as had national TV. ESPN had devoted an Outside the Lines show to the question “Can it be possible that race is still such a huge issue in athletics today?”

  The answer, of course, was yes. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow—whom Tom’s and Jason’s parents both watched every night—devoted her whole show to the same question. John Thompson Jr., the former Georgetown basketball coach, who had been the first African American to coach a team to the NCAA championship, was asked: “Thirty-three years after you won your title, how can this still be going on?”

  Thompson smiled and said, “Because racism didn’t die when we won the championship, just as it didn’t die when Barack Obama was elected president. Sometimes it goes into hiding in today’s world, but it is very much alive.”

  * * *

  “Do we have any chance to win on Friday?” Anthony asked at one point. “Four of the guys who quit were starters. And who knows how those six seniors will play.”

  “They’re dedicating the game to Coach Johnson,” Billy Bob said. “They’ll play.”

  The one question unanswered anywhere was what had become of Mr. Gatch. He had apparently disappeared after the press conference, and no one had seen or heard a word from him since. All the official statements from the board of trustees were coming from Harrison Ballard—who could apparently release statements as long as they didn’t involve actually speaking, or answering questions.

  “I’m gonna make a prediction,” Billy Bob said. “Mr. Gatch has run for the hills. We won’t see him again.”

  “He’s probably pulling his old Klan outfit out of mothballs as we speak,” Tom said.

  “What makes you think it’s been in mothballs?” Jason asked. “He probably sleeps in the thing.”

  They all laughed. Tom had no idea what the future held, but he suspected his and his friends’ days at Thomas Gatch Prep were numbered. It was also possible that the days of Thomas Gatch Prep were numbered. That was fine with him.

  * * *

  There was still a game to play, and though the team was divided over the issue of Coach Johnson’s departure, it was bonded by one thing: wanting to beat Roanoke Christian.

  The two captains addressed the issue after practice on Thursday. Daylight saving time had ended the previous Sunday, so the sun was down by the time practice finished and it was cold on the field, with a few snow flurries in the air. Still, when Conor Foley and Ford Bennett asked Coach Thurman if they could speak to their teammates, he readily agreed.

  It had already been a difficult week. The seven players who had quit the team had willingly spoken to the media about how unfair it all was that Coach Johnson had been “run off,” and many of their parents had been making the rounds on the national news shows. Fox News was having what felt like a field day with the story, the issue to them being that the United States was being destroyed by “chronic political correctness.”

  President Trump had even weighed in, saying, “If I ever own an NFL team, which I will one day, Jim Johnson will be my coach!”

  “Jim?” Jason said as they watched Trump blather.

  “I’m sure they’re very close,” Tom said.

  Coach Johnson had been everywhere, saying that, yes, maybe he was a little slow to the table dealing with “change,” but that his record on racial equality was clear: almost half his team was African American, and four of his assistants were African American. Yes, he could probably use some counseling on the issue and he planned to get it, but, as he declared over and over, referring to himself in the third person, “Bobo Johnson isn’t perfect, but he is not a racist.”

  Coach Thurman had told the players they could talk to anyone in the media they wanted to talk to and say anything they wanted to say after the game. “I’m not stonewalling,” he’d said. “I just want you to focus as much as possible on the game. Once it’s over, we can all speak our piece.”

  Foley and Bennett, the two captains, spoke theirs to their teammates. They talked about how none of what had gone on mattered between now and the last whistle the next night.

  “We’re going to remember this week and this game the rest of our lives,” Bennett said. “We owe it to ourselves to make this last memory a good one.” He paused. “And I’m not just talking about the seniors, I’m talking about all of us. If there is a football team here next season, if there’s a school, things will be entirely different. We all know that.”

  Neither Bennett
nor Foley had signed the statement put out by the six seniors. In fact, Foley’s parents—who had two sons on the team—had appeared on several shows to say that their sons had wondered why, on a team that was half African American, every team captain the last four years had been white.

  Foley wrapped up his talk emotionally. Looking in the direction of the six seniors who had written that they were dedicating the game to Coach Johnson, he said: “I’d like to dedicate this game to us—all seventy-four of us who are left—and to the coaches who have stuck with us. We deserve this. So let’s go out and win it.”

  33

  The stadium was packed on Friday night. There appeared to Tom and Jason to be three constituencies: the TGP fans, the Roanoke Christian fans, and the media—many of whom were forced to sit in the stands because the press box couldn’t possibly accommodate all of them.

  Ed Seaman, who had stayed on as the school’s communications director at least for the moment, had been quoted as saying he had more than three hundred requests for credentials. Apparently he’d been told to honor them all.

  For the first time all season, Tom was tingling with anticipation as the players assembled outside the locker room to take the field. He had started the week sharing second-team snaps with Frank Kessler and had ended it actually taking some first-team snaps when Billy Bob was rested.

  Jason was equally fired up. He was listed as the number two receiver at the Z spot, but it was apparent he was going to play a lot. He had caught a number of deep balls in practice from both Billy Bob and Tom.

  Roanoke Christian was undefeated, 9–0. A win, and the Bengals would be the outright conference champion. A loss and—depending on the outcome of the Middleburg-Fairfax game—it would tie for the title with one or two other teams.

  The first half was an offensive show on both sides. Roanoke’s quarterback, Billy Doughty, had already committed to Virginia. He was six foot four, left-handed, and had a cannon arm. TGP, with Billy Bob starting at quarterback, didn’t go through any of its normal Ronnie Thompson early sputters. It was 17–17 at the half, one of the Patriots touchdowns coming on a forty-four-yard strike from Billy Bob to Jason.