Life Its Ownself by Dan Jenkins

passer?"
    "That there's old Sandi," he said.
    Now I was staring at the cheerleader.
    Mike Homer said, "Lord, I know she's somebody's daughter, but I'd wet her down."
    The assistant coach then raced onto the field to slap a player on the side of his purple helmet for not throwing the ball with enough steam on it.
    A few minutes later, I was shaking hands with Red Jeffers, the defensive coordinator.
    "We ready?" I asked him.
    "God damn, there's old Sandi," he said, feeling around on his crotch.
    Sandi was in a huddle with the other TCU cheerleaders. While I wasn't all that fond of midgets, I said:
    "Old Sandi's all right."
    "You ain't shittin'," Red Jeffers said. "'Course, I reckon she ain't nothin' to compare with New York whup."
    "New York whup?"
    "They got it up there, don't they?"
    "Pretty much."
    "Damn." he said, clawing at his balls again. "All them Wops and Jews with big titties. I'm gonna get my ass up there one of these days."
    Red Jeffers then raced onto the field to slap a player on the side of his purple helmet for not digging out hard enough on a sprint.
    The last assistant coach I met was Ronnie Bob Collins. He was in charge of the defensive secondary.
    "Looks like we have some speed in the secondary," I said to Coach Collins. "Will they hit?"
    "Not like that little shit over there," he said, looking at Sandi. "How'd you like to get hooked up with her? Tell you one thing. You wouldn't need no kick-starter on your tongue!"
    The teams returned to their dressing rooms for last-minute instructions and nervous pisses before the opening kickoff. That was when T. J. formally introduced me to his valiants.
    The introduction was moving enough. I was an All-American, an all-pro, a man who had once sneaked out of a hospital where I was recovering from three broken ribs to beat Notre Dame almost single-handedly on a Saturday very much like this one.
    T. J. put his hand on my shoulders as he faced the Horned Frogs. "If Billy Clyde Puckett was eligible and I needed him today, he'd drag his butt out there—cast and all—and find some way to win!"
    I didn't know what in the name of the Gipper I would say to the TCU players until I sat on the edge of a table and looked out at their farm-kid faces, their street-smart glances, at the white numerals on their purple jerseys.
    Like most major college teams, and most NFL teams, T.J.'s current batch of Horned Frogs were predominantly white with certain positions reserved for black athletes.
    T. J. went along with the thinking that had clouded the minds of other head coaches throughout the history of integrated football. A quarterback should be white, even if he was a lanky senior like Sonny Plummer, who knelt on the floor in front of me and whose arm reminded T. J. of a seal. A ball-carrier ought to be black, even if he was Webster Davis, a tailback T.J. hoped to replace next year with Tonsillitis Johnson, Davis being a runner T. J. described as having no right to be black because he was "too fuckin' slow." Elsewhere, tight ends were white, wide receivers were black; centers were white; offensive and defensive linemen were both—size was all that mattered; linebackers were white, cornerbacks were black. Safeties could be either shade if they were good outfielders.
    There was more country-boy prejudice than scientific logic behind this thinking—the Hall of Fame is littered with exceptions. But nearly every coach is an ex-player who remembers the time some black athlete screwed up in a critical game situation. White players screw up, too, but a coach rationalized this by saying the white players are only trying too hard to win, whereas black players screw up because they aren't trying hard enough, seeing as how they're black, of course. A coach detests careless mistakes.
    Coaches don't care if you understand their logic in the matter, and they don't give a shit whether you condemn it or not. All coaches are cautious and conservative by nature, mainly because their jobs often hang on