Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream (57 page)

At Michigan State, he and some other recruits were taken by
their player hosts to a strip joint. Once there, hey paid for Derric to have the educational experience of a so-called couch ride,
where he went into a back room and sat on a couch while one
of the women at the club stood over him and made various
enticements.

At Baylor, he went to a party where a woman he had never
met before came up to him and said, "I know who you are.
You're Derric Evans." She seemed eager to sleep with him,
which struck him as slightly unusual because she was white, but
he eagerly accepted since it seemed part of the package.

At all three of these schools, he said he was taken to one of
the local stores to pick out tennis shoes or sweaters orjersies or
running suits, not only for him, but for his mother, his girlfriend, whomever he wanted. He finally settled on Tennessee,
a fairly easy choice because, he said, coaches there offered the
best deal by promising him an off-campus apartment and telling him he would never have to worry about money.

Gary Edwards, fully recovered from the controversy over his
algebra grade, made trips to Nebraska, Tulsa, Arkansas, and
Houston.

The promises of what he would reap were not as bold as they
were to Derric because he was not the physical specimen that
Derric was, but there were obvious hints-an assistant coach at
Nebraska telling Gary to look at what this player and that one
had, a player at Tulsa openly discussing what the coaches could
do for you if you were good enough. Gary himself saw players
at some of the schools driving Cadillacs and BMWs, and he was
savvy enough to know that these cars did not come from a college player's salary, which presumably was nothing.

Gary accepted a scholarship from Houston. The whole recruiting experience had been something he could never have
possibly imagined. The phone had rung constantly with recruiters, all begging for a piece of him. "I don't know anyone
who would have the same hat size after that," said his father.

But it didn't stop there. Because Derric and Gary had been
on a state championship team, the first from Dallas in thirtyeight years and also one that had become a gigantic cause ce-
lebre in the black community, their star status only intensified.

Kids asked them for autographs. When they went out to
eat in the neighborhood, restaurant managers ripped up the
check. Once when they were pulled over for speeding, the Dallas policeman who stopped them recognized them. After giving them a lecture about not letting the state championship go to
their heads, he sent them on their way. At school, as usual, they
came and went as they pleased. Neither of them drank. Neither
of them took drugs. Instead they lived on a better high, the
high of invincibility at the age of eighteen.

"We was on top of the world," said Derric. "We had [all these]
recruiters and a state championship and we thought there ain't
nothing can happen to us."

They committed their first armed robbery together on May
18, 1989.

The idea came from another Carter Cowboy, who had already
committed several armed robberies of his own and bragged in
the school lunchroom about how easy it was. Gary and Derric
did not wear masks and their getaway car was Derric's mother's
white BMW. They got around a hundred bucks apiece and it
took them several weeks to spend the money because they were
both from comfortable, middle-class homes and did not want
for anything.

They did a total of seven armed robberies in the space of a
month until they were arrested by police. Their motive, as far
as anyone could tell, was that they had done it sheerly for kicks;
something to do before it was time to play big-time college football. Nor did they give any thought to the consequences.

"Me and Gary, we were sittin' in the police car and we weren't
even worried," said Derric. "We thought we're gonna go to jail
for a little while and our mothers would come bail us out and
we'd go back home and it would be over with."

Besides Derric and Gary, three other members of the Carter
Cowboy state championship team were charged with armed
robberies. These five, and ten other black teenagers, committed
a total of twenty-one robberies in a loosely organized ring.

Just like the grade controversy, public opinion over the case
broke almost strictly along racial lines. Whites, finding the robberies perfect justification for their original feelings that the
Carter Cowboys had cheated their way into the playoffs, had no
sympathy for the defendants at all. They were thugs and criminals who deserved to be put away. Blacks, hurt and humiliated at what had happened, prayed that some mercy would be
shown for these kids who had made a colossal, inexplicable
mistake.

Walking into the courtroom for his sentencing on September
22, 1989, Derric Evans thought the very worst he would get was
ten years, and he still had hope for probation. Gary Edwards,
convinced that he would get probation, had already made plans
to watch a friend play high school football that night.

"I believe much of the media attention on these trials is because some of you were on a state championship football team,
and a few of you have scholarships and great potential," began
state district judge Joe Kendall.

"I can think of, but will not name, off the top of my head
three former Dallas Cowboys and one former Miami Dolphin who have two striking things in common. They all four
have Super Bowl rings and they all four have been to the
penitentiary.

"Although it sometimes may not seem so, the criminal justice
system really doesn't care who you are. The typical American
male lives vicariously on Sunday afternoons in the fall and winter through the lives of football heroes. However, when it
comes to violating the law, at the courthouse it simply doesn't
matter that you can run the football."

Derric Evans was sentenced to twenty years in prison.

Gary Edwards was sentenced to sixteen years.

The three other defendants who had been members of the
1988 Carter Cowboy state championship team received sentences of thirteen years, fourteen years, and twenty-five years.

Marshall Gandy, the prosecutor on the case, was generally
reluctant to blame outside factors for any crime. No single, pat
explanation could explain what caused these kids, the children
of good, hardworking parents from middle class homes, to go
out and rob fast-food places and video stores just for fun. But
he didn't believe Derric Evans and Gary Edwards exhibited
typical patterns of criminal behavior, and he wondered what
favor had been done these kids by placing them on a golden pedestal. He found it remarkable that Derric Evans had signed
his letter of intent to Tennessee in a hot tub with a passel of
gold chains around his neck. The only aspect more remarkable
was the presence of Dallas television and newspaper reporters
to cover the signing because of Derric's stature as a high school
football star.

"You look at how we treat them in high school, and how we
treat them in college, and everyone asks why they act like children," said Gandy.

"How would you expect them to act any other way?"

Brian Chavez applied to Harvard after the season ended.

He ranked at the top of his class and had scored a 700 on the
math portion of the SAT. He also hoped that his football career at Permian would enhance his chances of admission. The
coaching staff at Permian did not contact the Harvard football
program on his behalf. When asked by a Harvard coach to
supply a game film of Brian, Gaines sent film of the first game
of the season. It certainly wasn't Brian's best game of the season; he hadn't even played in it because he was injured.

The problem was discovered when a Harvard coach called
Brian's father and said he was having trouble figuring out what
number Brian wore.

Gaines said he sent the wrong film by accident. His father
accepted that but was still upset. "How could you make a mistake with something as important as that?" Tony Chavez asked,
and he worried that his son's chances for admission to Harvard
would be diminished.

Brian himself was deeply hurt, considering the sacrifices that
he had made to play for Permian, like the time in the playoffs
junior year when he had played an entire game with a broken
ankle. He had injured it the previous week, but it was purposely
never x-rayed because the discovery that it was broken would
have kept him from playing. To get through the game, the
ankle was tightly taped, an air cast was put around it, and he
said he was given painkillers right before the game and also during halftime. About a week later, a doctor who examined
Brian told him the ankle had in fact been broken.

On April 14, 1989, he was admitted to Harvard.

Brian went out for the freshman football team in September,
but quit after one day after coming to the conclusion that the
program was on a par with the junior high one in Odessa. He
also found it hard to adjust to the idea of playing games in front
of a handful of people when he had played in front of twentyfive thousand at Texas Stadium.

Permian still exerted a hold on his life. During the annual
football banquet to commemorate the 1988 season, a video of
highlights of the season had been shown. A song by Billy Joel
called "This Is the Time" was used for part of the soundtrack.
When one of Brian's roommates at Harvard played it one day,
chills shot down Brian's spine and he could almost feel tears
welling in his eyes. It all came roaring hack, the wins and losses,
the glories and pains shared with his teammates.

When he went out for the team at Harvard, it no longer felt
right. It wasn't the purpose of his being there, and for the first
time in his life he was in an environment where football had no
special cachet. When he was at Permian, Winchell and Ivory
Christian and he had once received a standing ovation at an
elementary school assembly, with all those gaping nine- and
ten-year-olds wanting so desperately to be just like them someday. But when he stepped out onto the playing fields of Harvard in the fall of 1989, he knew such moments were over. He
felt no magic or history in those fields, just an awareness that
there were more important goals that he wanted to accomplish.
He didn't rule out playing as a sophomore, but not when a new
phase of his life was starting.

"I was only out there because it's football, Brian Chavez is out
there because he's a football player."

Jerrod McDougal tried to adjust to a life that no longer included Permian football.

"A lot of people tell me to let it go, to let it go," said Jerrod. "You just can't let somethin' like that go. It's like you're married
for thirty years and all of a sudden you get a divorce. You don't
just stop lovin' somethin'. You just don't give the better part
of your life away and just stop thinkin' about it. You just don't
do it.

"I'm only eighteen. I spent six years working for it, and all
the time before thinkin' about it. When I got to the eighth
grade, I found out I wasn't going to be able to play college ball.
Shit, high school ball was the best thing for me. And now it's
history.

"I've got no idea what I want to do. I've got no idea what
school I'm going to go to. If I had a choice. I don't have a
choice. My SAT won't be worth a shit. And no football school
wants me. I'm just average, really. I won't be valedictorian like
Brian. The thing was, grades weren't that hard for me to make.
I wish now I had tried harder in my studies."

Jerrod toyed with the idea of going to Australia, but elected
to stay in Odessa and in the fall of 1989 was working for his
father's company. During the football season he went to the
game against crosstown rival Odessa High.

"I want to play football bad," he said on his way to the game,
still driving his praying mantis of a pickup and wearing his letter jacket. "There isn't a day I don't think about it. There isn't
an hour."

The stadium was filled to capacity, with over twenty thousand
fans shaking the beautiful night. "Man, it gives me the chills,"
said Jerrod as Permian quickly scored to take a 7-0 lead. But
as he continued to watch all the sights, the images, he grew
quieter and quieter.

"What hurts so bad about it, I was a part of it for a while.
The thing is, it always goes on, it will never stop," Jerrod
said. "Permian will have good teams when you and I are dead
and gone."

A month later he stood on the sidelines as Permian played
the Rebels in Midland, and he sardonically referred to himself
and the other former teammates who showed up as part of the "has-been club." This game too had a capacity crowd. "Tears
came to his eyes when the Permian band played the old psychup song, "Hawaii 5-0." Late in the fourth quarter, with Permian desperately trying to hold on to a 17-13 lead and beat
Midland Lee for the first time in four years, he cheered crazily.
When Permian staved the Rebels off on the last play of the
game at the five-yard line, pandemonium broke out.

The Lee players were in tears, doubled over in agony. The
Permian players were in tears, standing with their helmets held
high. And in the middle of it all was Jerrod. The moment the
game ended he ran out onto the field and draped his arms
around a player. He hugged him as hard as he could, and his
eyes closed tight.

For the briefest of moments, he was back where he wanted
to be.

Don Billingsley split up from his father shortly after the season
ended. Their living together had always been a rough road,
and without the common bond of football it seemed harder
than ever for them to stay together.

After graduation he returned to Blanchard, Oklahoma, to
live with his mother and stepfather. As had been his habit
through much of high school in Odessa, he continued to drink
heavily. He went through a bottle of whiskey every other day.
But one night, after he came home so drunk he did not know
where he had been, he decided to quit.