Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream (46 page)

"We've dedicated our lives to it. And they've already fucked
it up once," said Jerrod, the memory of the loss to the Rebels as
searing as it had ever been. And now he had to contend with
an unsigned typed letter in his locker as untraceable as a ransom note accusing him of being a loser in capital letters if the
team didn't win the state championship.

Several days later, starting linebackers Ivory Christian and
Chad Payne found jersies with the numbers of Irving Nimitz's
starting running backs on them. Nimitz's backfield was the fin est in the state. There were notes attached to the uniforms; the
one to Payne said, "I'm gonna wear your ass out!"

The one to Christian, who because of his religious beliefs and
his preaching hated profanity, said: "You ain't shit and I'm
gonna drive your dick in the dirt. MOJO my ass and you ain't
shit." The source of these notes wasn't discovered either.

On Saturday, about an hour before game time, Coach Belew
met, as usual, with the defensive ends. He went over basic
strategy, how to read the keys for the six sweep and the ten
tackle trap and the waggle at eight, what to do depending on
how Nimitz lined up on offense.

"Okay, twenty-nine cover five versus one back or no back,
we're just stayin' straight twenty-nine unless you get a swap call,
okay, right? Get a swap call and then you play a foot technique.
Other than that cover five means nothing to you, it means nothing, cover five means nothing unless your linebacker gives you
a swap call and then of course that means you're in a foot technique on the tackle or if you have a tight end you're in a seven
technique, okay, that's all that means. Bump to eight flip, like
always, check loose to B over, okay, not strong set, okay? "

There were no questions. Everyone understood perfectly because it was something everyone had practiced and studied religiously. Belew then continued in a slightly different vein.

"Hell, guys, there's only sixteen teams [left] and hell, there's
only gonna be eight teams remaining after tonight. You guys
are in the elite few in the state of Texas. Hell, I'm proud of you,
real proud of you.

"Hell, play balls out, it's a great chance to show your stuff,
okay. If we beat these guys and we play great defense, hell,
everybody's gonna know it, right? All the eyes are on us. All the
eyes are going to be focused on you, all the sportswriters, all
the TV, all the fans, everybody, there ain't nobody else playin'.
Okay? So you got a chance to really stand out, okay?

"One thing about it, I've been associated with state champi onship teams. In eighty-four we won a state championship and
in eighty-five we played for it. God clang, guys, there's nothin'
else like it. There's nothin' else like it and I still hear from those
guys. One of them called me last night just to wish me good
luck.... It's still a real special feeling and those guys are
twenty-one, twenty-two years old, twenty-three, they're grown
men now. It's still real important to 'em and it still means
a lot.

"I know it's been a long season, hittin' and runnin' and gassers and all that stuff, I know it's not any fun. Hell, it never has
been and it never will be any fun but it's the reward that you
get for payin' the price, payin' your dues, okay? That's why you
do it and that's why we want you to do it and that's why we ask
you to do it.

"And there's nothin' else like it. There's no other feeling like
it that you can feel from being on a championship team and
playin' with a group of guys like you've played with. It's somethin' you always have. Later on in life they can take your money
away from you, they can take your house, they can take your
car, they can't take this kind of stuff away from you, somethin'
that you'll always have and you'll always be proud of.

"Let's play hard today and let's knock the hell out of 'em.
Rodrick, okay, let's light 'im up. Let's see how good he really is,
okay, let's put some helmets on 'im."

Rodrick Walker came into the game the state's leading rusher
in Class AAAAA with 2,048 yards and 196 points. Coach after
coach paid him the highest possible praise: they pulled out every possible time-worn cliche to describe him. He was unstoppable. He was as good a runner as they had ever gone against.
He was poised to assume his place in the state record books with
the stud duck list of other great schoolboy runners-Billy Sims,
Eric Dickerson, Earl Campbell, Kenneth Hall.

After the team meetings, the atmosphere in the Permian
locker room seemed more grim and determined than it ever
had been. The players finished dressing with the methodical pride of a bride preparing for her wedding, every piece of
equipment adjusted and pulled until it was perfect, and as they
slowly paced back and forth on the black carpet they glanced at
the new spate of quotations that had been tacked to the bulletin
board. From Sam Huff:

People pay money to see great hits.

From Howie Long:

They call me Caveman because of the way I attack people. I like to
think of myself as being relentless.

And from Chariots of Fire:

Let each of you discover where your chance f or greatness lies. Seize that
chance and let no power on earth deter you.

In the trainer's room, Alan Stewart, the Odessa police chief,
was on the phone making sure there was a police escort for the
buses. Two police cars showed up and the buses made their way
to the stadium in a swirling wind that sent little veins of dust
down the empty road like slithering snakes.

About fifteen hundred fans from Nimitz were already there,
some of them having made the 330-mile trip in chartered Greyhound buses that were shoe-polished on the side with the words
WE LUV YOU BLUE. When the first group of Nimitz players took
the field for the pre-game warm-up, the blue-clad, bell-ringing,
flag-waving supporters rose to their feet.

"GO VIKES GO! GO VIKES GO! GO VIKES GO!"

On the field, Walker ran side by side with his teammate in
the backfield and best friend, Byron Miles. They ran in such
beautiful sync that they looked for a moment like Siamese
twins, and they had the cocky jaunt that all athletes have when
they want to draw attention to themselves quietly, the stride
smooth and effortless.

The enormous phalanx of the Permian band, led by the majorettes in their black velvet costumes, unfolded like the Russian army in a Victory Day parade in Moscow. Not a single person was out of step. Not a single costume looked droopy or
saggy. The band made its traditional circle around the stadium,
not even remotely rattled by the tireless efforts of the Nimitz
fans to drown it out with their continued rosaries.

"GO VIKES GO! GO VIKES GO! GO VIKES GO!"

Minutes before the kickoff, Gaines called the team around
him in the stadium dressing room. For the first time all season,
he had the players exactly where he wanted them. The letter,
whoever had written it, had achieved its intended effect. They
were angry, enraged, humiliated. You could feel it. Losers?

They would show the world who was a loser.

"They're out there hollerin' for Mojo," said Gaines of the
Nimitz fans. "We're gonna give a little dose of Mojo. You
got it?!"

"Yes sir."

"Mojo's gonna be the eleven on the field wearing black jersies, you understand that?"

"Yes sir!"

"I hope all of you have prepared yourself to call on somethin'
extra, call on somethin' extra from within you that's gonna allow you to play even better than you've ever played in your life,
a supreme, fanatical, wild-eyed effort that it's gonna take to win
this football game! Emotion! Enthusiasm! Intensity for four
quarters! Four quarters! Can you go four quarters?!"

"Yes sir!"

He bent down in the middle of the circle and led the team in
prayer, as he did before every game.

"Dear God, we're thankful for this day, we're thankful for
this opportunity you've given us to display the talent that you've
blessed us with. Heavenly Father, we thank you for these men
and these black jersies, thank you for the ability that you've
given 'em and the character that you've given 'em. We ask your blessings on each one of them this afternoon. Help them, dear
God, to play to the very best of their ability. Help them to play
with some quality that they've never played with before, give
them that something extra that they've never had to call up
before."

On the first play from scrimmage the great Rodrick Walker
took the ball on a pitch. He moved to the right side, looking for
the tiny sliver of space he needed to break upfield with his 4.4
speed, just as he had done against Trimble Tech and Arlington
and L. D. Bell and Haltom. But lie wasn't prepared for the mass
of black shirts coming at him in a crazy blur, like hungry rats
jumping over each other's backs to get to a speck of food. He
tried to dodge, to somehow get out of the way, at least make it
to the sideline and regroup a hit, but who the hell were these
people? What possessed them? Defensive tackle Billy Steen
clawed into him first and Payne carne from the outside linebacker position and dove into him at full speed. On Payne's
back, dying for a little piece of the meat as well, was Ivory
Christian. And right behind Ivory were other tacklers equally
desperate to dismember Rodrick Walker.

Jerrod McDougal was right. It was like imperial Rome, like
the Christians and the lions, violent, visceral, exciting, crazy.
And Walker was about to become a sacrifice with twelve thousand fans screaming at the top of their lungs to finish him
off, their thumbs raised so high to the sky they could almost
touch it.

Walker was crushed, a pile of black shirts burying him so you
couldn't even see him anymore. The roar of the crowd grew
louder and louder. A helmet hit him where he cradled the ball.
It popped into the air like a lazily floating balloon. It was caught
by defensive back Stan Wilkins for the fumble recovery.

Two plays later Comer took off for a forty-nine-yard touchdown run. With twenty-two seconds gone, the game was over.

The vaunted Walker managed a total of one yard on seven
carries in the first half as Permian went into the locker room with a 27-0 lead against a team that had come into the game
ranked sixth in the state. The final score was 48-7. Walker
ended up with seventy-one yards on fifteen carries. Comer had
221 yards on twenty-six carries and four touchdowns.

The Nimitz fans, shamed but loyal to the bitter end, started
chanting "WE LOVE YOU! WE LOVE YOU!" to their ever-noble
heroes. On the other side the Permian players marched about
giving each other high-fives, eager to take advantage of the fact
that they still owned the town for another Saturday night as if
they were legally licensed desperadoes, and some of them
seemed doubly inspired by the letter they had found in their
lockers, as well as by the discovery of a new, far more elegant
word for the more traditional shit faced.

"Shit no," said Don Billingsley when asked if he was going to
cut down on the post-party celebrations that night. "I'm gonna
party, see how intoxicated I can get and how many rules I can
flaunt. That's my motto."

After the game ended, the trophy commemorating the win
was held aloft, a golden football mounted on a pedestal.
Permian had so many of these by now that there was no longer
room for them in the school trophy case, and some of them sat
atop the refrigerator in the coaches' office as ignominiously as
empty pop bottles. But there was still something magical about
getting one, and dozens of hands reached out to touch it, to
feel its smooth, gleaming surface and draw sustenance from it,
to keep the wonderful moment going forever, to join the illustrious pantheon of those who had actually made it, who had
gone to State. It was during times like this that they suddenly
became resurrected again: Bizzell, Shipman, Mann, Hassell,
Dale, Hix, Williams ...

Their pictures appeared on the Wall of Fame as in a shrine
to eternal youth, men who no matter how old they were, no
matter what they had done or hadn't done, whether they had
become lawyers or car thieves, whether they were happily married or had the beaten, sucked-in look of divorce, whether they
were successful or were still groping to rekindle that indescrib able moment when everything was all right and the entire
world flickered beneath them with outstretched arms and every
man looked jealous and every woman looked like a lover,
whether they missed the game beyond their wildest dreams or
had come to hate it beyond their wildest dreams, would always,
always, be thought of in cleats and pads and a helmet with a P
on the side that burned as brightly as the sun.