The big man in the creaky office chair hasn’t always been here, but he’s here now and will be here as long as he needs to be. The guy known to everyone as Doc sits upright, almost statuesque, scanning the field, stretches of silence interrupted by his soft, grandfatherly voice. He speaks in a gentle voice that is never in a hurry, as timeless as the game he has played and watched his whole life. The Choctaw World Series of Stickball has been played here, at the Choctaw Central High School, as long as he can remember.

He scans rosters for the players’ names as the action unfolds below, squeezed onto the Swiss Army knife playing field designed for soccer, football and track, but sometimes he’s too slow, missing his moment as he slowly inhales and exhales. In this tidy but unswept press box, above the concession stand and butter-popcorn air, he’s both an announcer at the games, and a custodian, of sorts, a keeper. He helps to preserve the game as it once was, explaining its purpose as he watches, demystifying strategy and untangling points of dispute in the game’s history, a history he has both lived and learned.

He’ll tell you it’s an old game, older, and far more violent than lacrosse. He will tell you players carry two sticks instead of one, and use a buckskin ball that should never be touched with a bare hand. There’s a spirituality to the game and the way it is played, but that doesn’t make it into the spoken word of his play-by-play commentary. Neither do his worries, that the game’s traditions are slipping away, even as his people reach out to seize them.

Doc is silent for a moment. Listen. Behind the clash of sticks and sounds of competition, there is a drumbeat, thump, thump, thump, a steady cadence in the background, like a memory nearly lost. Like the game, the drum is from an older time, before Europeans came to this continent, made of hickory and deerskin. And the people, Doc’s people, sitting in the stands, are quiet, too. As they watch this arcane game, sometimes talking to each other in their mother tongue few fully understand anymore, they reconnect to an older time as well. Both could have been lost long ago, a midday shadow gone in sunlight, but on this day they still linger.

This is why they still watch, why they still play, and why Doc sits in this press box for almost two weeks every summer. Few away from here would miss the language or the game, never even knowing they existed, but these people would. And when they listen to the drumbeat, to the speech of their ancestors, and hear the victory shouts in this game, they remember the people they were, they are, and will remain.

This ritual, the 11 days of the Choctaw World Series of Stickball, played on a school field in small town Mississippi, brings their scattered numbers together again in the place of their ancestors, and the past lives again.

It’s good that Doc is back, that they are all back, together again. He hasn’t always been here, although, there was never any doubt that he would return, that any Choctaw tribal member would return.

The Choctaw always come back.

Jackson, Mississippi is where you’ll go first on your way to Choctaw, most likely. It’s a friendly town steeped in a southern drawl and a matter of fact point of view.

In this rural landscape, out of towners are often assumed to have a certain viewpoint, and they’re easily spotted.

“I knew you were from out of town because your shirt was tucked in,” said a woman to a stranger.

But hospitality is also as constant as the unpredictable weather. The sky can change fast in central Mississippi, the thick sticky air uniting in big, gray and black clouds, the cumulonimbus floating together to block out the sun. The rain soon comes, and between Choctaw and the airport in Jackson are miles of woodland that recall an older wilder time, when game first walked these paths.

If you take a wrong turn, you’ll find yourself heading to Choctaw by way of back roads. The cracked, narrow asphalt running past undergrowth that seems to take on its own personality, and roads of red dirt that lead to dead ends; green fields stacked with wrecked rusted cars.

Then, when you’re close enough, they appear: Casinos rise out of the woods, a sudden and surreal combination of civilization and wilderness joined as one.

It is not game, but gaming establishments that feed the tribe now, serve as a source of revenue and provide jobs, a benefit the federal government handed out as a sort of consolation, a tithe for the years of mistreatment all the Indian tribes have suffered. The casinos are a step forward toward a still uncertain and in many ways alien future, but to a degree they also finance the preservation of the past, allowing the tribe some latitude to maintain what remains of their heritage as they believe it should be. But the reservation is not the people, and in truth, the casinos are only a small part, just a sliver of the Choctaw Indian Reservation, a total of 35,000 acres spread over 10 Mississippi counties. Nearly 10,000 tribal members live here in eight communities and many of them send stickball teams to the annual World Series of Stickball, dozens of teams and hundreds of players that gather to remember. Just a bit down the road is the school, and the press box where Harold “Doc” Comby sits in the old office chair. He’s the Deputy Director of Choctaw Public Safety, but he’s set that aside for now.

The Choctaw are cautious, sometimes, wary of what outsiders will do, how they might twist the fabric of who they are into something it is not. They’re no longer alone here. They compete with a deluge of culture that is not their own.

Archive Photos/Getty Images

Above: Hernando de Soto’s expedition was the Choctaw’s first contact with Europeans.

There’s good reason to doubt newcomers. It’s a lesson the Choctaw have learned at great cost over the centuries. Trust in newcomers has cost them almost everything, the lives of their people, their land, and some of who they once were. And it is not an unfamiliar story.

When the Spanish landed in South and Central America in the early 1500s, the cruelty, violence and disease they carried with them affected historic changes on the continents. The Aztecs and Inca were butchered, their wealth stolen and extorted. The highly profitable expeditions of the Conquistadors made Catholic Spain the wealthiest nation in the world, a super power amidst building tensions with Protestant England. It made the nation eager for even more.

Hernando de Soto was the first of these Spanish conquerors to venture deep into what would become Mississippi, crossing the great river that would share the same name, an expedition in the mid 1500s whose only ambition was greed. The Choctaw’s encounter with European armor and guns was bloody, and one-sided. But in spite of this experience, the Choctaw did not turn away the traders who came later. In the late 1700s the Choctaw signed the first of a series of treaties with the federal government, one of the first tribes to do so. These agreements established peace, carving out boundaries for co-existence.

Yet these promises, like many others, would be broken. With each treaty, the Choctaw gave up more land, until the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, signed in 1830, sent thousands of tribe members into exile a few years later, to Oklahoma. More than two-thirds of the 19,000 tribes people living in the land of their ancestors were the first Indians were displaced, relocated to land the federal government had set aside for Native American transplants. It should have been a final blow to the Choctaw in Mississippi.

Yet some refused to leave, digging in to the place where they had always lived. And they are still here today, in the towns of Choctaw, Bogue Chitto, Conehatta, Red River, Standing Pine and others, the homeland of the Choctaw Indians. And for the last 66 years they’ve celebrated their culture with the annual Choctaw Indian Fair, stickball at its center, and remember those who refuse to forget who they are.

Every Fourth of July weekend, Independence Day for American citizens, the Choctaw celebrate their own. While residents of neighboring towns sing the national anthem, conduct parades and have barbecues, the Choctaw gather, tap their drums and play their game in vast numbers, with a level of skill far surpassing that on display in the July 4^th softball game or the backyard Thanksgiving Day touch football game. They are the best in the world at their sport, competing in several divisions, Men, Women, Over-35, and Youth (10-13 and 14-17). For nearly two weeks, games will be played all day long.

Thomas Ben’s role is also custodial. He’s the commissioner of the game, charged with the preservation of the rules, and with ushering the sport into an age of online live streaming, so tribal members who cannot attend can still participate. Slender with a side of toothy grin, he oversees the games as a fan as a much as an official.

On this national holiday, he looks over the game on the field in the thick air aftermath of a heavy rainfall. The players, some in face paint, many shoeless, sprint across the slick grass, sticks in hand, slamming into each other. To the uninitiated, it seems to be blunt force barbarism just civilized enough for sport. Yet that is why they come back each year, to lift who they are on their shoulders and carry it into the future, to find themselves in the game.

“This is us. This defines the Choctaw people,” Ben said. “I’ve traveled to some of the other communities in other states and they lost some of what they hold dear. With us, it’s still strong.”

Today, in an early round of the tournament, they see a mismatch in the 18- to 35-year-old men’s bracket.  Beaver Dam, one of the game’s historically good teams, is outmuscling and outplaying Tushka Homma, a team representing the Choctaw Nation from Oklahoma that has only participated in the annual tournament since 2010, which has taken place in its current form since the ‘60s.

To those who are not Choctaw, the sport at first appears chaotic, a silent film whose plot has yet to be revealed. Dozens of players wielding two long sticks called kabocca race across a the field, apparently smashing each other to the ground at random, a 12-foot-tall wooden post standing upright in front of each of the two football goalposts.

The crowded field adds to the chaos, more crowded than for either football or soccer, and as they race back and forth, they throw something to each other, something too small to catch every time, almost too small to see and keep track of, a small ball, a towa, golf ball sized, spray painted orange.

That makes it easier to see, and after a few moments, as the ball appears and disappears, now in the air, now upon the ground, and now carried between the sticks, the game begins to make more sense too. There is strategy in what first appears as mayhem, subtle feints and misdirection, elegance in between the crevices of brute physicality. The action never stops. The game is played in running time, and just as the ball rolls out of play, an official puts another into the fray so play can continue. The only stoppages in the game come when a player is hurt on the ground and cannot rise, and then a medical cart is called to assist.

That is what outsiders notice first, the bone-jarring collisions between barefoot men, and the way fallen players leap back to their feet quickly, before showing any weakness. In a sense, it is not unlike the way American football is often viewed by those from other countries, a brute contest without subtlety.

But there is more to the game than random collisions. The apparent chaos is full of meaning, and the game rewards the traits of the warrior: speed, strength, endurance and bravery. After the contest begins with something similar to a jump ball at the center of the field, the men pass and shoot the ball with surprising grace, using both sticks to arc it over the mob gathered around each pole. And when a team scores, the ball striking the pole either while shot or carried, the players, and the spectators whoop, and holler. Scoring takes great effort, teamwork, and communication. And like any sport, these are skills that must be learned, passed down from fathers to sons, mothers to daughters.

After the first 15-minute quarter, Beaver Dam leads 5-0, their shots more accurate, their will more strong, and in many cases, particularly among the defenders, their bodies heavier.

Traditionally, the Choctaw used the game as a way to settle disputes and avoid war among the various tribes and communities. It was decisive and challenging, definitive and violent. There were few rules of any kind. The Choctaw called it Ishtaboli, The Little Brother of War.

In the pine tree wilds of central Mississippi, before the Europeans penetrated the forests, the tribes would play the game for days, sometimes fielding hundreds of players per side, on fields that stretched over rough terrain for miles. At times, the game had the feel of real war; the high-pitched rapid cries after a goal, war paint, bloodshed, even death. Like other Native American stickball games, some consider it a forefather of lacrosse. The Choctaw even boast that it is the granddaddy of America’s pastime, baseball, and historians consider it North America’s oldest sport.

Like lacrosse, there are sticks, and a ball, and passing plays. But there the similarities end. This is not a game for private school students; the Little Brother of War has retained its ferocity. There are no helmets, padded gloves, faceguards or chest protectors. Most players don’t even wear shoes. The two sticks the players wield are as long as 36 inches, made of hickory, a tiny buckskin net at the end. In a pinch, deer leather from Walmart works.

The kabocca are not meant to be used as weapons, but when a player is on the attack, and charging toward the goal, or one steps in front of another to stop him, they sometimes have that effect. When a player hurls the ball downfield, the whipping action of the follow through can easily end with a stick in another player’s eye, and sometimes it is not an accident. Although violence is a given, fights and intentional brutality are rare. Ben, a former player, was once clubbed over the head by an opponent who purposely used his stick as a weapon. Even now, he maintains a look of disbelief when he retells the story. These days, rules have made the game safer.

Players can’t tackle below the waist anymore, or hit players who aren’t making a play on the ball, so the contact isn’t quite as fierce as in football, mainly resulting only in the collapse of tackler and the target. But still, it’s not rare for a player to get knocked unconscious or made groggy for a moment or two, yet according to tradition, even the injured should play on. Stopping is a sign of weakness. Still, there are often plenty of replacements if that happens. Although hundreds at a time don’t take the field anymore, at the World Series each team puts 30 on the field at a time, and it’s not unusual for a team to roster to number as many as 100 players.

It’s a sport that allows for a variety of body types. The players aren’t always muscled, or thin, or tall. Some, often the defensive players who remain back, guarding the pole, have the look of offensive linemen. Others, the attackers, are smaller, leaner, and quicker, with soccer-player speed and agility.

Sometimes the game appears chaotic, bodies of all types jockeying for the ball. The limitations of the game and the equipment make the contest all the more difficult. The net on each stick is small, smaller than the mouth of a paper coffee cup. Passing and catching is left to those with the greatest skills, and even then it is difficult. A well-placed tackle can easily disrupt a catch, and catching the golf-ball sized sphere demands concentration and plenty of room: One stick catches the ball, the other cups it in place, but the crowded field doesn’t make that easy. More often, players settle for hurling the towa as far down field as they can toward a clutch of their teammates. Then both sides swarm the ball, bodies flying and falling. When the masses reach the ball, it often has the look of a rugby scrum, players bunched around the ball in hopes of knocking it into the open.

But even when that happens, running with the ball isn’t often a better option, particularly against skilled competition. The player with the ball on the open field is a target, the ball is easily jarred loose, and savvy teams know how to stop a player from running the length of the field. At various moments, one sees flashes of other modern games in Choctaw stickball, the passing of basketball, the back and forth flow of soccer and the line play of football. At times, it seems as if the sport is a mashup of every game that has ever been played from the playground to the stadium, yet it is also a game that remains close to its roots in ritual, not yet commercialized or made safe and sterile.

In this game, Beaver Dam is the bigger, more physical team. Clad in blood-red T-shirts, they crash toward the ball every time it comes near the post. Conspicuously parked in front of the pole, the fabvvsa, is Lorenzo Bell, 6 foot, 6 inches of beard and bulk, his sweaty hair captured in a bandana. Opposing players, hoping not to be nailed by him, generally stay out of his way. But around the post is often where it’s most congested, where players are already smashed together in a kind of stickball mosh pit, making a concussive tackle difficult, and making scoring opportunities a challenge. Getting close with control of the ball is difficult, made more difficult by the number of players the team chooses to leave on defense, and the ferocity they display in defense of their post, which they guard as if it is their home.

Tushka Homma tries scoring from outside. Shooting the ball can have the look of a basketball shot. The player makes a little jump, and raises the sticks in the air, flicking the ends like a sharpshooter flicks his wrist. Like a basketball, the best shots tend to have a high arc and hit the post up high, but plays anywhere on the post are fair game. Still, it takes skill to shoot a tiny ball so it strikes a pole that is maybe four inches in diameter, and strength and will to muscle the ball in close. This is the difference in the game. On this day Beaver Dam’s relentless ferocity and experience overwhelms the less experienced Tushka Homma.

The chasm widens in the second quarter. Leading 8-0 midway through, the action mounts on the sideline. The ball is flung to the edge of the field, the nearest players are not the quickest players, hurtling themselves to get control of the towa. In absence of speed, a wide Beaver Dam enforcer lowers his left shoulder into a Tushka Homma player, knocking him to the wet grass in a clatter, arms and legs flailing.

“Ooooooh,” Doc’s voice crackles through the speakers. “Man, I could hear that one from all the way up here.”

Beaver Dam scores again soon after, and one of its players horse collars a Tushka Homma player. This is the way the game is played, and no one complains. They go on, someone shouting, “Hit him!”

Games with less experienced teams sometimes offer more fan-friendly contests, at least to the unfamiliar; a series of long sprints with armed pursuers waving sticks aloft. Like many other sports, however, it is defense that makes the difference. Tushka Homma, plagued by inexperience as they struggle to stop Beaver Dam’s runners, and are hammered into the ground each time they approach the pole themselves.

“Nine points might seem like a good cushion,” Doc said over the speaker. “But last night we saw Tucker score 22 points.”

Still, it doesn’t look like Tushka Homma will make a strong case to win the game. A Tushka Homma player adorned in blue and white face paint gets smashed to the ground. They call him Pinti in the mother tongue, the translation is The Mouse.

“We’ve played this all our lives,” says The Mouse later, whose given English name is Jared Tom. “To us, it’s like riding a bike.”

At halftime, Beaver Dam goes into the 20-minute break with an 11-0 lead. It is only their first game of the tournament, but as the week wears on, they know the games will get more difficult, that their bodies will ache and injuries will take a toll. And the better teams tend to have strategy, like they do, with coaches and an organized approach. Many coaches are also players who take on the responsibility of organizing the teams, handing out schedules and T-shirts. The very best teams have coaches that patrol the sidelines, shouting out instructions with the fervor and urgency of an NFL coach in the final minutes of the Super Bowl.

Other teams act more like rec league squads, just there to be around friends and have a good time. They pay little attention to where the players stand, and hardly practice. Beaver Dam and Tushka Homma both play to win, but one was more equipped to bring home the title.

The game ended with a whimper, a stoppage after the third quarter with score still 11-0, a 20^th century accommodation to the Little Brother of War.

My uncle could not speak English, not very much, so he didn’t speak much English. He spoke Choctaw to his dog. This dog had a good mind.

In the concrete bleachers before the game began, the fans remembered. Then, there was silence, and no drum beat.

The silence was in honor of one of their own, a gesture of respect for a stickball great and storyteller; a man whose flaws and talent made him into something else, a memory that could survive through rumor and story.

When people mention Jake York, the word “legend” often isn’t far behind. He was a one-armed stickball player, someone the salt and pepper observers of today say was one of the best. All that and a dedicated Marlboro man, they joke. At least a pack a day, even when he was diagnosed with throat cancer.

His name wasn’t even Jake York — it was John Walter — but he wasn’t a legend so much for his achievements on the field. He was something bigger than that. Through stickball he somehow became somebody else, a staunch defender and a carrier of tradition. Transformed, he became a version of himself that left his vices behind, the kind of player who became part of the game’s history. Like Babe Ruth and baseball, there is Jake York and Choctaw stickball, inseparable. That was what the people remembered in the silence, that and the stories he told.

When they threw the newspaper outside, “Holisso hót amálah ákmpa,” [“Go bring me the paper”] calling to the dog, then the dog used to bring it. When it brought it in its mouth, he’d say, “Yakókih,” [“Thank you”] and acknowledge it by shaking its hands, even though it’s a dog.

In that creaky old office chair with the too-loose armrests and the fading black fabric, Doc wheeled across the room. His announcing partner took the reins, and Doc spoke softly, like he was telling a secret. He leaned forward, resting on his right elbow, narrow eyelids peering through wire rim glasses, and spoke about Jake York.

“One time he told me he took LSD and didn’t remember nothing for three days!”

A hearty wheeze of a laugh comes out, his eyes becoming small, his smile becoming broad. These are the memories he keeps, and he doesn’t jealously guard what he remembers. He shares it, because if he doesn’t, it will be gone, just as the finer points of the game will be gone, the spiritual roots will be gone and the history. To share was once to risk losing ownership of their culture. Now, it is a way to preserve it. Because Doc knows if he says nothing, if he does not tell you about Jake York, and nobody shares their game, then no one will know what they have missed.

“If you want to eat, you’ll have to walk here to eat the food,” telling the dog in Choctaw. “Even though you stand on all fours, you must [walk over] to get the food,” he said. And it used to stand up and walk there.

Tradition, says Doc, is meant as a guide for morality. He wonders if the tradition has been lost, if it will ever fully return.

“This game is a part of Native American spirituality. A lot of people don’t understand that,” Doc said. “There’s a reason you don’t touch the ball. It’s spiritual. It represents the Earth. Nobody teaches that anymore.”

It is a problem that transcends culture, the concern of older generations that the kids of today will never understand values as they did, that the path to learning how to live has been forever lost.

Doc is 60 years old, and old enough to feel like tradition still means something. Old enough to forget things, like how he got his nickname.

“People have always called me Doc,” he said. “My parents called me Doc. When I was a kid, I thought that was my real name.”

Younger generations have started to forget the traditions Doc uses as a guide, the ones that teach how to live, how to be good. He’s a child of the land, and lived off it as a kid on the reservation. He picked cotton with his father, and gathered firewood. His father always picked the dead and dying trees, a service to the land they had come from. But unlike many others, Doc once left. He worked for the Bureau of Indian affairs in Minnesota, and Oklahoma, traveling from post to post raising his daughter. And then he returned. There was never any chance he would not come back, it was only a matter of when.

“It doesn’t matter where you die,” Doc said. “The tribe will bring your body home.”

His world is a world where people have two names, and traditions have real meaning. It’s a world that has changed many times. It isn’t change itself that worries the Choctaw but changes in the past haven’t always worked well for them, and sharing who they are hasn’t always turned out well. They are a people who remember the awful things that have happened to them, and they sometimes worry about it happening again. Some are quiet and reserved about their heritage, fearing that if they say too much they’ll lose ownership over who they are, something that has almost happened before. The only fear is that the game, and who they are, could be taken from them.

Someone once asked a former commissioner, Henry Williams if he’d try to get the tournament on TV. Doc remembers the exchange:

“‘How come you don’t have ESPN come out here and tape this?”’ someone asked.

“Because they would take it from us,” Williams said. “If you teach the light-skinned people everything, they’ll take it.”

Even the language itself is at risk. Few but the tribal elders speak the language fluently. The kids, they can understand some words, some sentences, but many cannot hold conversations. It’s less established than the game. But they’re performing triage on the language, allowing for it to be grown and fostered. A language program has been enacted to try and get it back into the schools and to teach the children how to speak the language of their ancestors. Stickball, Ishtaboli, the kabocca and towa, is just a part of the equation, a way to keep the past alive in the present.

Then, “Binilih,” [“Sit”] he commands, and it would sit.

“Ittólah,” [“Lie Down”] he commands, and it would lie down.

“Nosih,” [“Sleep”] he commands, and it would close its eyes.

Jason Lewis came back to make sure the language stayed alive. He grew up far from Choctaw, in the dry air of Southern California where he attended UCLA. But his heritage tugged at him, nagged at him to pay attention, return and take action. He’s 38 now, and works for the Choctaw tribal language program. For three years he’s been working on a program to help the youngest generations learn the language, a key to resuscitating one of the most unique parts of Choctaw culture.

“We’re putting a language program in the schools, because the little ones aren’t getting it at home,” he said. “The language loss is happening really rapidly.”

Jake York knew this, and in his own way, he told people not to give up on their mother tongue. He told them through story, one his uncle had told him; The Dog who Spoke Choctaw. The story became a fixture of modern Choctaw culture, and was collected in Choctaw Tales by Tom Mould. When he died last December, it was one of the ways they remember him, in the story about the dog who knew their language.

That dog was never spoken to in full English, which is how it learned Choctaw. Uncle never spoke to it in English but, “Ittólat tonólish,” [“Lie down and roll”] he’d say, and the dog would lie down and roll.

“Illipah,” [“We eat”] you’d say to make it walk on its hind legs and make it walk there to eat.

“A holisso hoyot alah.” [“Fetch the paper.”] As commanded, it would bring it in its mouth.

That is what I want to tell you. If a dog can learn Choctaw, then you all can learn, too.

The final night of the tournament, the championship game between Beaver Dam and Koni-Hata began as the others have. The procession of players walked in silence, only the drumbeat as the background. But this time the crowd had gathered, collected from the 10,000 Choctaw from the neighboring communities. It was a game that Beaver Dam, in part, dedicated to their storyteller Jake York.

He helped remind this latest generation that it isn’t hard to remember where they came from. They remember the origins of this warlike game, and its power to solve differences. But the people have also forgotten some things, or at least tucked them away for now.

That is why they have begun to open their game to the world. They’ve overlooked some of the wariness they have used to protect themselves, and are less wary of sharing so prized a cultural property. Because sharing it is a way to keep it alive. Practicing the sport in this annual ritual is one way to do so, but another is to keep the game alive in the minds of people who are not their own, adopted enthusiasts of Choctaw culture, to make themselves and their culture visible.

This, in part, is Ben’s job, to help take the game into the future. This year the production crew added aerial footage to the YouTube live stream. It came from a drone, a battery powered quad copter operated from the roof of the press box. High above the field it buzzed and zoomed, following the action, the old and new sharing the future.

And just months after the storyteller passed, the team that has claimed Jake York as their own remembered him in their victory. Beaver Dam took home the trophy, defeating Koni-Hata 3-2 in sudden death overtime.

With victory, the ritual was over. This time there was no silence. That moment had passed, but the team had not forgotten. The squad from Beaver Dam joined together on the field, held their sticks high and tapped them together, a celebration, a remembrance, joining the drum beat. And they gathered around, the sticks forming a peak high above the swarm, chanting their team name, their community name, their language.

They had listened, and they had remembered. And now, on a field in Mississippi, on land that is their own, the past could be heard in the sound of their voice.

All photos taken by William D’Urso.

"Has it ever been tougher to play defensive back in the NFL?"

That question, posited by Kevin Harlan last year during Week 14's matchup between the Bills and Broncos, followed this play, an "illegal contact" infraction by Nickell Robey on Wes Welker in the end zone. Instead of a big-time stop on third-and-7, this became an automatic first down for the Broncos, who would find the end zone two plays later. They went on to win by 7:

This ticky-tacky, touch foul could serve as confirmation that the age of punch-you-in-the-mouth, fearsome cornerbacks like Dick "Night Train" Lane, Lester "The Molester" Hayes, Kevin "The Rock" Ross, or Skip "Dr. Death" Thomas are long gone.

The 2014 season saw new emphases placed on defensive pass interference, defensive holding and illegal contact. The almost-draconian prosecution of this mandate affected game flow and gave the defense a seemingly impossible task. "Defense hasn't been outlawed," wrote The Boston Globe's Christopher Gasper, "but it might as well be."

There was trepidation from players, coaches and fans as to what these rules emphases would do to the game -- both immediately and in the long term -- and no one really knew what to expect. One year later, what's been the effect of the league's decision to further benefit the offensive side of the sport?

The effect of these rules emphases

The long and short of it was that the league wanted to take some of the subjectivity of the defensive pass interference and illegal contact rules out of the game. The NFL's Competition Committee, made up of eight members -- Rich McKay, Jeff Fisher, Stephen Jones, Marvin Lewis, John Mara, Mark Murphy, Ozzie Newsome, Rick Smith and Mike Tomlin -- looked at the existing rulebook and decided to make these calls a point of emphasis. First, they wanted to tighten up the regulation of the 5-yard buffer zone defenders had before they'd be called for illegal contact.

"I think there has been a perception that defensive backs have pushed the envelope with the [buffer zone]," Ben Austro, editor of Football Zebras and author of So You Think You Know Football: The Armchair Ref's Guide to the Official Rules, told me.

"I think a lot of the conversation by the Competition Committee before the 2014 season was due to complaints from both receivers and defensive backs." said Austro. "A legal chuck one week wound up being called more tightly with a different crew, and players were asking for more consistency. Before 2014, if a defensive back was in the process of disengaging in the vicinity of 5 yards, he got the benefit of the doubt, which made the enforcement a little fuzzy. Although the Seahawks wound up being the popular lightning rod for leveraging this enforcement in their favor, it really was more widespread."

"They talk to the officials about these points of emphasis," Jim Daopoulos, who spent 11 years as an on-field NFL official and 12 years as an NFL Supervisor of Officials, told me. "They tell them, 'It says a contact has to occur within 5 yards.' As officials, we used to give them this little buffer zone, you know, 5-and-a-half, maybe 6 yards; we give them that buffer zone to have that little contact."

"Now, what they've said is, 'Hey, no more of that: 5 yards is 5 yards, and that's where the contact stops.'"

And, evidently, they mean all contact:

Yes, that got a flag. Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie barely contacted Larry Fitzgerald, and fell over in the process. However, it could be said, even though the throw is way too high, that his contact disrupted the timing.

The same goes for the play below, where Colts defensive back Greg Toler grazes Patriots receiver Julian Edelman past that 5-yard buffer zone, and draws a flag. The throw is high, probably uncatchable, but if there's any contact, the referees were instructed to throw a flag:

For the most part, they did.

"It's a matter of consistency," said NFL Senior Director of Officiating Al Riveron. "We take out the thought process, the gray area, the 'Well, did he run through it, did it really impede him running the pattern?' Now, everyone knows, you grab a shirt -- if you grab the shirt, period, it's a foul -- if you impede the receiver from running his route after 5 yards, it's a foul. Before, we would stand there and go, 'Well, did it impede the play, did it hold him up? Was the receiver able to run through it?' Now it takes all that judgment out. Now, you hold him, you pull the shirt, you put your arm around his waist and turn him, it's a foul. Whether in anybody's view it impeded him from running his route or not, it's a foul."

It's no surprise that consequently the total number of these fouls called in 2014 jumped up significantly. Here are the numbers from the last five seasons.

It wasn't just illegal contact that became a major focal point. Defensive holding calls jumped up significantly as well, as shown above. Like the illegal contact mandate, the goal was to take the subjectivity out of it.

"There used to be a lot of 'snuggles' -- we used to call them 'snuggles,' where guys would get together and they'd kind of grab, they'd get in tight," explained Daopoulos. "Well, [the Competition Committee] wanted some of that snuggling to go away too. They want that receiver to run free. They want him to have that opportunity to get open. So, what they did was that they tightened it up."

Defensive holding penalties increased from 115 calls in 2010 to 181 in 2013, then shot up to 235 calls in 2014.

Again, this was the consequence of the NFL trying to take subjectivity out of officiating.

"The problem that used to occur was that there was an awful lot of inconsistency" in how defensive holding was regulated, Daopoulos said. "As officials, you'd watch it, but basically what you'd try to do is, you tried to determine in your gut. You watch the two players and ask, 'What's going on there? Is he getting an advantage? Is there an advantage and disadvantage?' Then, we'd have to make a decision.

"Now, that philosophy has changed a little bit, and they've wanted that called really tight."

What these emphases mean for defenders

Obviously, the (over)emphasis on illegal contact and defensive holding affected the way that defensive backs -- namely cornerbacks -- can play the game. Corners used to be able to get away with heavy jams at the line, muggings really, and could pull and tug on jerseys down the field as long as it wasn't overly obnoxious. That's gone out the window, said Daopoulos.

"Defensive players thought it was called too tightly," he told me. "They thought they weren't really given the opportunity to play defense."

At least, not the type of defense they grew up playing, nor the style they had been coached to do. The new crackdown meant players' styles required more finesse.

"It's a little frustrating," Steelers cornerback Cortez Allen told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "It puts more emphasis on cleaner technique and things like that. It's something we have to deal with."

As Reidel Anthony, a former All-American receiver for the Florida Gators and first-round pick for the Buccaneers, told me, the new rules have changed the way that the game is taught. Anthony, who played five years in the NFL, is now a coach and an instructor for both receivers and cornerbacks with Performance Compound in Tampa. What he sees is an evolution in coverage as the old-school "bump-and-run" coverage has been replaced by a less conspicuous method.

In the old days, corners would use "an arm bar," Anthony told me, "or grab you with their hand when you come out of your break; they'd really get up on you at the line of scrimmage, almost lining up offsides, you know, just being really physical. Nowadays, they can't be that physical, because if they miss, they can't grab, and once the receiver gets by them, they're in a bad situation.

"Everything now is trail-technique (with minimal contract)," he continued. "So, corners are being taught to get into the hip pocket of the receiver and try to read the route. That's why you see a lot of the press coverage now. They try to disrupt the timing of the route just by standing in front of you, and make you adjust your route a little bit and use a release, instead of getting a free release."

Richard Sherman, and the Seahawks, who have been "credited" by some for the implementation of these new rules changes with their physicality over the years, have illustrated this sea change in style that Reidel talked about. Sherman and the Seahawks have implemented an innovative technique called the "step-kick," which focuses less on the jam and instead simply emphasizes patience.

The idea is to disrupt the timing of a route by simply standing in the way of your opponent. They can't get a free release, so they have to use a receiver release technique to get off the line of scrimmage. The strong jam, the pulling and tugging at the line is less common. It's been replaced somewhat by a mirroring at the line, with a trail-technique down the field:

The step-kick technique, as Jayson Jenks of The Seattle Times writes,

Is pretty much as it sounds. At the line of scrimmage, Seattle's corners get in front of their receiver to press. Receivers usually shimmy and shake to create separation at the line -- think of Doug Baldwin -- but the Seahawks teach their corners to take one step sideways when the ball is snapped. That way, the corner is less tempted to react wrongly to the receiver's dancing. That's the "step."

The "kick" in the equation comes when the dancing is over. At some point the receiver has to get going, and when he does, the Seahawks kick their foot backward to run with the receiver and keep him in front of them.

The step-kick in action:

As Sherman told draft prospect Vladimir Emilien on American Muscle, it's all about patience:

"No offense," Sherman tells Emilien, "but I think I can help you."

"So, you see how you are hopping and jumping? Until he gets outside of my frame, I'm not going nowhere. He comes, I'm just here -- he gets outside of my frame? That's when I hop. I'm always in control. Patience. If you can calm down your feet, and relax, it can help you." The step-kick, or as Sherman puts it, the step-hop.

Of course, not every team plays press, and even the Seahawks play a lot of off-coverage. With off-coverage, the technique at the top of receivers' routes must change with the times. No more grabbing and "snuggling" will be permitted, so tape study of route combinations and tendencies becomes even more important. The offense has a clear advantage going forward because receivers can more or less go where they please, unimpeded, with impunity. This means cornerbacks must be more savvy, instinctual and reactive, and footwork and technique are more important than brute strength and physicality.

What it means for the receiver position

The NFL tends to evolve in cycles of action and reaction. Due to the combination of these new rules emphases, and a trend toward bigger cornerbacks on the outside, there's been a reactionary swing that's seen smaller receivers achieve more success.

Since his time in the NFL (1997-2001), Anthony tells me that the NFL has changed tremendously.

"For the smaller guys like myself that were known for speed and not all the strength and big-body wise," he said, "the ability to get a free release, it makes it a lot easier. Because now, after 5 yards, they really can't even put a hand on you.

"So now, you're just running free, you don't have to worry about anyone grabbing on you, tugging on you, pushing you, really slowing you down," he adds. "That's why you see the smaller guys still making a big splash, the Antonio Browns, the Steve Smiths, those guys are 5'9, a buck-eighty-five, a buck-ninety. So, with the ability to get those free releases, with nobody touching you, it makes the game a whole lot easier for the smaller, speed guys."

As you can see over the past five years, the number of "small" receivers (5'11 and under) in the top 20 of NFL catches has not only jumped, but has crowded the top of the list:

Brown, Emmanuel Sanders, Golden Tate, Julian Edelman, Odell Beckham Jr. and Randall Cobb took the league by storm in 2014, and make up six of the top nine in the NFL in receptions. T.Y. Hilton and Steve Smith made the top-20 list as well, checking in at 16 and 18, respectively. This was a departure from the norm, where a few "small" receivers would be sprinkled in among the top-20, but that list was normally dominated by the big, outside No.1 types.

Not only that, but smaller receivers are factoring more in scoring as well. Here are the top touchdown catching receivers from the last five years:

Three small receivers -- Brown, Beckham Jr. and Cobb -- all made the top-10 list among receivers in touchdowns in 2014. Looking through the previous four years, only Wes Welker shows up on those lists, in 2011 and 2013.

As NFL.com's Bucky Brooks noted in a tape study on some of these standout small receivers:

With more NFL defenses utilizing press coverage to disrupt the rhythm of the passing game, coaches and scouts are placing a greater emphasis on acquiring slippery receivers with the speed, quickness and burst to escape the clutches of physical corners on the perimeter. Long, rangy corners routinely struggle to shadow shifty receivers at the line of scrimmage; thus, pass catchers with electric moves and polished route-running skills can often create big-play opportunities on slants and fades.

As Brooks puts it:

For all the value big-bodied receivers bring to the table, particularly in the red zone, it is hard to find a mammoth receiver with the speed and quickness to generate explosive plays in the passing game (receptions that cover at least 25 yards). Offensive coordinators covet pass catchers who can deliver big gains on vertical routes or catch-and-run plays, and most receivers who excel in that area are speedsters with exceptional burst and acceleration. They blow past defenders on an assortment of downfield routes (go-route, post-route and stutter-go), yet also have the ability to turn a crossing route into a big gain.

Anthony, whose knowledge base straddles the old school (his experience in the NFL) with the new (his experience preparing receivers for the NFL), says that the facets coaches and players are focusing on has changed.

First off, of course, is a receiver release. Instead of the physical demands in beating a mugging at the line, it's now a more technical art.

"The first thing at the line of scrimmage is to use your feet," Anthony told me, "but the other thing, is your hands. Getting off the line in press coverage is like being in a boxing match. You throw one punch at a time, and if they throw a left hand out there, you knock it down with your right.

"If they throw a right hand, visa versa," he explained. "So, using your hands is the key. Once you get their hands off you, they can't touch you for the rest of your route. Now, you work the top of your route. That's where you have to be a little more precise, doing a lot of work at the top of the route."

Pittsburgh's Antonio Brown, all 5'10, 186 pounds of him, is one of the best -- and most prolific -- pass catchers in the NFL, and represents the prototype for this new trend toward smaller, shiftier receivers. Below, Brown exhibits what Anthony explains, using his hands to counter Terrance Newman's pesky jam attempt. Once Brown has beaten Newman off the line, you can see Newman's panic set in. He knows he's been beat:

In turn, Newman grabs ahold of Brown's jersey (miraculously not called, for some reason). Brown reacts though, using Newman's momentum against him. He stops on a dime, comes back to the football to make the catch.

Or, as Anthony described: "Move your feet, boom-boom-boom, give them a six-step to go, knock their hands down, now, at the top of the route, if the guy's behind me, guess what? I've got to use my feet like I did on my release."

Brown, naturally, is the master at this. "Give them something that makes it look like you're going outside, then run the dig," explains Anthony. "Or, get them thinking you're going inside, then run the comeback or the out."

Watch below how Brown beats the press, gets the corner in trail-technique, then uses his head, shoulders and footwork to sell an in-breaking dig route, only to run the sharp out-route to the sideline. That's a clinic:

"So, the things that you did at the beginning of the route," said Anthony, "nowadays you have to do that the top, because instead of being right in front of you, he's right behind you."

Effects on the game at large

As you might've guessed, these rules emphases didn't just affect the techniques that players used. They may have correlated with increases in passing yards and passing touchdowns. There are now an average of 473.6 passing yards per game, up more than 30 yards per game since just 2010. The 807 passing touchdowns in 2014 was an all-time record.

However, with all the emphasis on freeing up the offense and increasing scoring, there was a surprising drop in passing attempts in 2014, and even more puzzlingly, scoring went down slightly:

That scoring went down slightly in 2014 is tough to explain. Is this an aberration, a one-year anomaly based on a litany of other factors, or has the league peaked in terms of the scoring explosion? One year is obviously too small a sample size to know with any certainty.

But the curious and contradictory fact that passing attempts went down in 2014 could be partly explained by the fact that there were more penalties enforced for defensive holding (235 in 2014 to just 181 in 2013), and illegal contact (106 to 38) in 2014 than ever before. That's 122 pass attempts (mostly) that became a "no play" in records tracking because of the emphases on holding and illegal contact.

The illegal contact penalty is especially interesting in that it can been exceedingly ticky-tacky -- literally any contact is outlawed -- but it's a 5-yard penalty that results in an automatic first down. I took a look at third downs of 5 or more yards, and the numbers in 2014 compared to previous years are telling:

These raw numbers aren't incredibly striking in that they're super prevalent, but those touch-fouls on illegal contact on third-and-long have the potential to completely change games, particularly late in the fourth quarter.

They're drive extenders, crucial in both comeback attempts and in putting games away. They can completely change the complexion of a game. And, the frequency of touch-fouls being called on third-and-5-plus nearly tripled. On the sport's most important down (third), the rules emphases really showed up, and the onus is now less on the offense converting a tough pass play from the pocket and now more reliant on simply drawing a flag. Third-and-5-plus plays are only converted about 30 percent f the time. Will these emphases increase the odds on third-and-long significantly? Will offenses take advantage of this with plays and route combinations designed to draw these ticky-tacky, illegal contact penalties?

If refs are being instructed to take all subjectivity out of it, it's certainly possible.

The bottom line

Seahawks corner Richard Sherman didn't mince words last year when he pointed out that the NFL simply wants more scoring because of the popularity and importance of fantasy football. "When the fantasy football numbers need to be what they need to be, then the league needs to do what it needs to do to get it done," he said. "This is a money-driven league, so whatever sells the tickets is gonna sell the tickets."

Former NFL official and Supervisor of Officials Jim Daopolous didn't disagree. "Every year, the Competition Committee gets together, and they try to determine what they can do to improve the game. They change rules for two reasons: One, to increase offense, to increase scoring, and number two, for safety reasons."

The offensive numbers bear that out. The TV ratings bear that out. The NFL is more popular than ever. It's simply up to the players to adapt to this irreversible trend toward favoring the offense.

Savvy defenders must observe, know the tendencies of certain referees, and adapt to how tightly the game is being called until calls become more consistent. That isn't actually that different than before.

And if defenders feel diminished or like the added scrutiny makes the game softer? Tough luck.

Ray Perez is Dr. Death. Dr. Death is the Oakland Raiders. The Oakland Raiders are everything to Perez, who has been advocating ceaselessly to keep the team in Oakland while attending school at Sacramento State. Dr. Death isn't an alter ego, but an extension of Perez himself, a silver, black and dagger'd face of the movement to retain the team. He has traveled back and forth from Sacramento to Oakland to speak with politicians and developers, and is in contact with officials at least every other day. He hasn't slept much.

"My grades took a hit, because that's how indulged I've been, and that's how much this stadium situation has taken over," says Perez -- Death. "I've been front and center, and people know me as Dr. Death, this guy who is fighting to keep the team here, and I get personally attacked on social media, like, 'You're dumb, you're stupid, you don't know what you're talking about,' to, 'Thank you so much for doing so much for us.'"

The good thing about the stress is that it isn't for naught. Perez has confidence, though tempered, that the Raiders will remain in Oakland.

That's more than fans will say in St. Louis, according to Michael Morhaus, a CPA who is still holding onto his seat licenses even though his father, upset at the product on the field, got rid of his two years ago. Morhaus has been taking the temperature of the fanbase through multiple conversations. Almost everyone is certain that owner Stan Kroenke would rather be in Los Angeles. Only Morhaus' neighbor is optimistic -- "he's at 51 percent thinking that they'll stay."

Elsa/Getty Images

"My dad and I used to go to the games all the time, back when you could walk around better," Morhaus says. "It was first row, 35-yard line. We were right behind the offensive line and the Gatorade, so I could literally see Jim Hanifan going over the printouts with Orlando Pace and the rest of the offensive line, and I was 30 feet from Kurt Warner and Marshall Faulk and Isaac Bruce."

Morhaus says he'll always be a Rams fan -- "Until they leave."

The Chargers have had the most protracted battle for a new stadium of the three teams up for relocation. Over the last 14 years, the team has wrestled with the city to get a facility in downtown San Diego. When Kroenke bought land in Inglewood, the Chargers, fearing they'd lose the Southern California market, quickly pushed forward plans for a stadium in Carson that could be shared with the Raiders.

That stung Chargers fans. Andy Glickman works as a creative development manager for an online learning company in L.A., but his heart is in San Diego and the Chargers are his team. He hates Los Angeles with a passion. He says that owner Dean Spanos is attracted to L.A. like a man in a stale marriage might be attracted "to the hot stripper down the street." The stadium debate is affecting Glickman's health.

"I was getting headaches, like migraines, and I couldn't figure out what it was," Glickman says. "And then I bolt up at night, in my sleep, thinking about, you know, 'Those fuckers aren't even paying attention to the-- ' that's when I realize that ... 'Oh my god, that's what's creating stress headaches.'"

Andy Glickman & son

Los Angeles is a specter to these fans, something that has wriggled into their heads by its mere possibility. Nobody likes it, everyone respects it. It's admittedly cool, undeniably big, and likely a profitable place to play football even if attendance, much less passionate and long-term attendance, isn't as guaranteed as front offices would like you to believe. Los Angeles has had plenty to fill the the NFL void the last two decades -- the Lakers, Clippers, Kings, Dodgers, Angels, Trojans, Bruins and Galaxy -- and fans have plenty of other things to do if wins are scarce.

L.A. will enjoy its new toy, to be sure, but the cost will be tears.

Former Cleveland Browns running back Earnest Byner remembers when the players were informed in a team meeting that the franchise would be moving to Baltimore, the pin-drop silence -- they were shocked -- and the immediate acceptance of the situation. The players didn't protest. Nobody spoke up. They did, however, bear the brunt of the city's heartache.

"It was after a game and I was leaving, trying to get to the car, and this lady was talking to me about the team, and, I mean, she was crying," Byner says. "I just, I just ended up holding her and having her head on my shoulder. I felt the pain. I mean, I wasn't in her place, but I just knew she was hurting, you know?"

Players have the best view of the relocation process, nestled between ownership and fans. They know lots of tales of overwhelming dedication. Houston Oilers kicker Al Del Greco was prepared for the move to Tennessee -- he had relocated once before, from St. Louis to Arizona with the Cardinals -- but to do so he had to leave behind a dedicated group of 15 fans that had been outside the locker room at every game at the Astrodome, and at the Houston airport to see the team take off and land whenever it traveled.

Former Raiders and Rams linebacker Mike Jones recalls Raiders fans in the Bay Area coming to see him play for the Sacramento Surge in the World League right after his innocuous first season as an undrafted rookie ... three years before the team moved back to Oakland.

Two memories will always stick with Rams legend Isaac Bruce: The warm and loving embrace of Rams fans when football returned to St. Louis, and, conversely, the fights in the stands when the Rams and Raiders played each other in Los Angeles.

"I was kind of in awe because I had never seen anything like that,"  Bruce says. "I went to Memphis and we probably averaged about 40,000. You had well over 50,000 people, people pledging their allegiance to their team and willing to fight about it. So for me to just see that in the stands, I was kind of shocked.

"It was something totally new to me."

Football is a business. Players accept that notion quickly because it's vital to their livelihood. Fans ostensibly know it, too, but it's hard to reconcile how they use sports with what an owner might call an "experience" or "product." Sports, to fans, are an escape, a way to bond and an identity. However the Raiders, Rams and Chargers may portray their stadium efforts -- the purported economic benefits and promises to inject vitality into the community -- make no mistake that they know what their leverage truly is. In their bids for new stadiums, it's the fanbases that are being held for ransom.

Michael Morhaus

• • •

From 1992 to 2003, 17 of the NFL's 32 teams built new stadiums, largely on promises of economic growth. From 1991 to 2004, 78 stadiums were built across the United States' four major pro leagues -- the NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB -- using 61-percent public funding, according to Reuben Fischer-Baum for Deadspin. The NFL took public funding more heavily than other sports. That trend has only slightly decreased over time, with public funding making up 56 percent of the total costs of new NFL stadiums and renovations from 1997 to 2015, according to the Minnesota Convention, Leisure & Tourism Association. City officials launched effective campaigns to explain to the public why it was in their best interest to give their tax dollars to team owners.

In a 2003 book, Private Stadium, Public Dollars, Rick Eckstein and Kevin Delaney spoke with some of the most influential people involved in bids to build new stadiums in various cities. One business executive in Hartford, Conn., told them how building a new stadium for the New England Patriots would put "feet on the street." A public official in Pittsburgh said that a new baseball park would put "heads in beds."

If teams and city officials couldn't sway the public with handy mnemonics, they'd appeal to their sense of civic pride, sometimes warning that the city would fall off a social and economic cliff. In Cleveland, they warned that it could become the next Akron, in Cincinnati they warned of becoming Louisville, in Denver they warned of becoming Omaha.

A recent estimate by journalist Neil deMause estimated $20 billion in subsidies to big four sports teams from 1990 to 2011. Nearly across the board, pro sports teams did not come close to returning the investment. And quality of life improvements claimed by the franchise were "a load of crap," Eckstein wrote to me.

He continued:

"Los Angeles has been doing just fine without football for the last decade; there has not been a mass exodus from Seattle after the Sonics left; the Long Island suburbs will not go vacant with the Islanders moving to Brooklyn, just as they survived the Nets leaving; Montreal has shown no ill effects after losing the Expos while the Nationals decidedly did NOT put DC 'on the map'" ...

An economist at Lake Forest College named Robert Baade published seminal research on the economic impact of pro sports franchises on cities. In 1994, he found that, among 30 cities that had built new stadiums between 1958 and 1987, there had been no measurable economic impact in 27 of them, and a negative economic impact in the other three.

Others corroborate Baade's premise. Mark Rosentraub, a professor of sports management at the University of Michigan, found in 1997 that pro teams, on average, account for just 0.2 percent of a city's total employment. Charles Euchner, author of Playing the Field: Why sports teams move and cities fight to keep them, and Alex Fynn, a British author who has written extensively about Arsenal, separately determined that a pro sports team provides roughly the same economic benefit to a community as a large supermarket. In the 1990s, Fynn found that Premier League soccer clubs averaged less revenue than each of Tesco's 20 largest stores.

Studies conducted by teams themselves contradict economists, of course, but their methodology is suspect. For example, deMause pointed out a study done by a consulting firm that claimed that $325 million in public spending on the Dallas Cowboys' new stadium in Arlington would generate $238 million a year in economic activity:

Critics immediately pointed out that this merely totaled up all spending that would take place in and around the stadium. Hidden deep in the report was the more meaningful estimate that Arlington would see just $1.8 million a year in new tax revenues while spending $20 million a year on stadium subsidies.

The massive difference in accounting has much to do with something called the "substitution effect." Money spent on games means money that isn't spent doing other activities within the city. Because families have limited entertainment budgets, judging the economic benefit of a stadium based solely on revenue can be misleading. Eckstein and Delaney suggest that the ancillary impact is actually negative, because businesses want to get away from stadiums and save themselves from excessive noise, crowds and dearth of parking.

And no, society does not crumble when teams leave, deMause tells me.

"Do sales tax receipts go down? No. Does per capita income go down? No. Do job numbers go down? No."

The best argument for keeping teams in town is that sports arguably make a positive impact on a population's quality of life, but even that claim is rife with problems.

"Clearly if all the teams were to move out of my city, I would consider it a detriment to my quality of life," deMause says with a laugh. "The question then is, how do you put a price on that?"

Measuring a city's quality of life -- its happiness, essentially -- is nigh impossible, and attempts by some teams wouldn't pass the loosest standards test. Eckstein recalls being told "bike messengers noticed people around town smiling more" as justification for Cleveland's Gateway Project.

The intangible benefit of sports teams is probably greater than zero, but if you put a price on it it'd be much less than teams demand for new stadiums. DeMause points out one study published in 2005 by Bruce Johnson, Michael Mondello and John Whitehead that asked citizens of Jacksonville how much they would pay to keep the Jaguars based on their own personal valuations. It came up with a rough estimate between $19.6 million and $53 million.

"Which is significant," deMause says. "On the other hand, the number of stadium deals that have kept a team in town by offering them $40 million or less is virtually none. It's almost always more than that."

In St. Louis, for example, a judge overturned a city ordinance that would have required a public vote on funding for a new stadium, clearing the way for a riverfront project that will cost $388 million in tax incentives and state and city bond proceeds as part of a $998 million plan that may or may not convince the Rams to stay.

Armed with 20 years of research (and with a little help from popular media), cities have recently begun mounting stiff resistance against demanding teams. Mayors in Anaheim, Calgary, Glendale and Minneapolis have all recently stood firm against sports franchises.

In Oakland, Mayor Libby Schaaf has wielded her leverage freely, stating outright that she would not support any expenditure that she could otherwise "spend on police, parks or libraries." Last January, she tried to pit the Raiders against the Oakland A's -- long-time co-tenants, now both vying for new stadiums -- saying that she would allow both teams to make bids for separate or joint stadiums on the O.Co Coliseum site. Oakland is trying to amend an $18 million shortfall and hire more police to combat rising crime. Schaaf used her city's financial reality as a bargaining chip.

DeMause says that it's premature to consider this influx of resistance a "movement" -- "I say that as someone who has, a couple times before, thought that the tide was starting to turn then realized that it was just a momentary pause."

There are counterpoints still -- St. Louis' current stadium efforts, for example, or $376 million borrowed by Cobb County to build a new park for the Atlanta Braves. DeMause is willing to call the example of Schaaf and company a "mini trend," however, with the potential to grow into something significant.

Still, a longview of economic and quality of life arguments can obscure their impact on an individual level. Dr. Death is happy to make the case that while fighting to keep the Raiders in Oakland, "we're also fighting for generations.

"And having that stadium here in Northern California, it's going to give the quality of life, it's going to raise it so much that it's going to bring jobs, transportation will be better, the quality of life would be better," he says. "And if the Raiders were to leave, our quality of life is going to crumble, literally."

Even worse may be subjugation to Los Angeles. In San Diego, the big brother-little brother syndrome is real, and getting the Chargers would just one more thing L.A. doesn't deserve. According to Glickman, the hate has been passed down for generations. His mom inspired his disdain for what he calls Los Angeles' "veneers" -- i.e., its claims to the best culture, best places and best people.

Robert Carlson, an account executive at a healthcare company in Mission Valley, is considering moving away if the team leaves. The Chargers are one of the few things still tying him to a city that has become financially difficult to live in. Losing the team to Los Angeles would be added insult.

"Even though Carson isn't technically L.A., it's right there," Carlson says. "It just makes it seem even worse, so I think that's why a lot of the true Chargers supporters were even more excited because it is L.A. and it'd be a -- I don't know, it'd be another instance where we lost out to them."

Robert Carlson

• • •

Nearly 20 years ago, the Cleveland Browns caught players, fans and media off guard when owner Art Modell announced, after a 4-5 start, that the franchise was moving to Baltimore. Modell has become a bad word in Cleveland, but it's not hard to understand why he made the move. Baltimore gave him one of the sweetest deals ever given to an NFL team -- a brand new $200 million stadium and up to $75 million in moving expenses. It also left Browns fans in a heap of misery.

Author and Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Terry Pluto covered the fallout firsthand.

"It was traumatic because nobody really believed it would happen," Pluto says. "The rumors were always that the Indians would move, not the Browns, because frankly the Browns were not -- they were the one team that was the most consistently supported."

One problem: The Indians already had a new facility and the Browns were playing in decaying Cleveland Stadium.

An already teetering season cratered after the announcement. The Browns lost five straight games after Nov. 6, four of them by double digits. In what has become a familiar process in Cleveland, starting quarterback Vinny Testaverde was benched in hopes that backup Eric Zeier could revive the offense. It worked briefly -- Zeier led the team to a win over the Bengals in his first start -- but the team promptly deteriorated, successively losing by 27 points to the Oilers, 17 to the Steelers and 11 to the Packers before Zeier was benched.

The quarterback controversy exasperated a tense atmosphere created by Modell's announcement.

"I do remember one of those guys was saying, 'Man, they've got be crazy to think that we're not going to be affected by this,"' Byner recalls. "I remember walking in the locker room, I could see the guy's face. Nobody was naive to what was happening and to the possibilities of how it might affect all of us, not just game-wise but life-wise. Our life was changing at the time. As a matter of fact, it had already changed."

Pluto saw the same thing.

"I think most of them just wanted the season over, and I don't blame them," he says. "Covering it I always wanted the thing over."

Fans were more than demoralized -- they were incensed. Protests sprouted, and angry faxes flooded the NFL office. Byner described the atmosphere inside Cleveland Stadium as "almost eerie," with vitriol toward Modell being the most prominent outward emotion. Red-faced fans yelled at Byner directly at public appearances just to vent.

"I don't think they were mad at me, just mad in general," Byner says. "The ones that did that were expressing their frustration. I didn't feel that they were mad at me. I just stood, listened, and consoled the best I could."

After the Browns left, so did a bit of Cleveland's spirit. Peter Pattakos, a Cleveland lawyer who also runs the aptly-named sports blog Cleveland Frowns, was in high school at the time. He remembers the disillusionment.

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"You're just like, 'How can this happen?' Especially for a team that was supported as well as it was like the Browns by its fans," Pattakos says. "We were selling out the games, there's no question of fan support. To me, I think, what it does, it highlights just what a farce it is to have these owners interpose between the public and the teams.

"You sort of feel like a zombie football fan."

The injustice only mounted. In their fifth season since moving the Baltimore, the Ravens won a Super Bowl under the guidance of general manager Ozzie Newsome, who had once starred for Cleveland. At the same time, the expansion Browns floundered in their second season, going 3-13 in one of the worst seasons in franchise history.

Byner remembers the last game ever played at Cleveland Stadium. The Browns mercifully won, 26-10, over the Bengals, and Byner had one of the best games of his long career, rushing for 121 yards on 31 carries. Toward the end of the game, he turned to offensive tackle Tony Jones on the bench and said he was going to go thank the Dawg Pound, Cleveland's bleacher section of diehard fans. Before he knew it, he had shaken hands with fans in half the sections of the stadium -- "Some people didn't want to turn me loose."

"When you're a fan and the team doesn't play well, if they're losing, you feel like you lose," Byner says. "That's the way we all take it personally as fans. So when we won, some of the people were elated because, again, they felt like they won."

After three seasons without football, fans returned to the stands when the Browns returned to Cleveland.

"The professional game was basically born here," Pattakos says. "The NFL was started in Akron, the Hall of Fame is here. People really love their football here. The Browns were always a big part of that. Just as a community, just as a part of the culture, something that ties together your Sunday with your family or whatever it might be."

• • •

Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani has been the face and voice of the Chargers' stadium efforts since 2002. In that time, he has not shied away from media, nor has he deviated much from his core message. The city of San Diego has failed the team, he says, and so the team has no choice but to relocate at this juncture.

It's business. After failed explorative forays into satellite cities, the Chargers are desperate for a new stadium, preferably in downtown San Diego. Fabiani doesn't make any arguments about keeping the city's local economy strong or make an easy play at the fans' little brother complex toward L.A. He freely admits that Kroenke and the Rams forced the team to make a decision in its best financial interests.

"We patiently tried working to get something done with San Diego," Fabiani says. "We were prepared to continue that work throughout 2015. And then in January, seemingly out of nowhere, the Rams announced a signature gathering effort in Inglewood to entitle their stadium.

"We had two choices at that point. One, we could have done nothing, in which case the Rams would have had the chance to move into the L.A. market and take away the 25 percent of our season-ticket business that comes from L.A. and Orange County."

The Chargers' other option, the one it chose, was to "create an alternative." The Carson project would be a joint $1.7 billion venture with the Raiders. Fabiani is certain it would work. The only public spending necessary would be $80 million to finish cleanup of the landfill site. More importantly to the Chargers, the stadium would be situated off the highway neatly between L.A. and Orange County, and they would be able to begin breaking ground very soon.

Fabiani doesn't hesitate to talk up Los Angeles' earning potential.

"You have to start with the fundamental proposition that there are 21 million people within a 90-minute drive of the Carson stadium, and more if you add another 30-minute drive because you're including San Diego into that," Fabiani says.

"Second, it's a market where people and companies are willing to pay premium prices for premium product, so if you have a nice suite, if you have a nice club seat -- the stadium is obviously extremely well located next to the 405 freeway, the busiest freeway in the world. It will have Super Bowls there so the naming rights would be valuable -- it's all of those things that go together."

The biggest flaw in the Chargers' plan may be the supposition that L.A. is a viable market. Fabiani repeatedly cited the 49ers' privately-funded stadium in Santa Clara as the model that Carson can use to pay for itself. The problem is, Carson's immediate area isn't as affluent as Santa Clara's. A relatively convenient drive doesn't make an attraction worth visiting on its own. Twenty years ago, the Raiders and Rams moved out of the city after Angelenos stopped showing up to the stadiums to watch poorly performing football teams.

Fabiani's response is that Carson by itself will bring in fans because it'll be "a state of the art stadium, which L.A. has never had for pro football," and that's true to an extent. Eckstein and Delaney found that new stadiums have a honeymoon period during which attendance isn't tied to performance. But while an early study by Baade suggested that this period can last up to 10 years, follow-up research by Eckstein and Delaney indicates that the period has recently gotten much shorter.

"My well informed impression would say the honeymoon for honeymoon periods is over," Eckstein wrote to me. "Whereas Coors Field and Jacobs Field had attendance honeymoons lasting 10 years, now the norm would be more like two to three years."

Fabiani says that the team's own market research shows that Los Angeles will be a profitable market for the Chargers. Unfortunately, Fabiani could not provide that research upon request.

As for the glory of bringing professional football back to Los Angeles -- restoring the Rams or Raiders, or starting a new legacy with the Chargers -- that stuff is beside the point. Fabiani doesn't talk much about the Chargers' on-field product, and the Rams and Raiders haven't said much of anything publicly about their futures (the Rams declined to speak to me for this story, the Raiders did not respond to multiple requests).

All three teams seem perfectly at peace with letting the conversations center on finances and glossy animated stadium renderings narrated by a rented Hollywood semi-star. They may not be able to argue that they'll enrich the surroundings in any way with a straight face, certainly not enough to make a difference to a behemoth like L.A., but it doesn't matter. Owners don't need to be the good guys, because fans rarely ever love them in the first place.

For the most part, fans fall in love with the players and coaches long before they get to know the incomprehensible business side.

They might be like Glickman's 12-year-old son, who still takes his sports cues from his dad:

"I'm kind of cluing him into what's going on" Glickman recalls, "and he said, 'So if the Chargers moved you wouldn't be said?' And I said 'no, not really.' And he got really emotional, he started to tear up. Just the idea, the thought to him, that I wouldn't have a favorite team, he couldn't grasp it."

Or they may be like Carlson was, a young kid once in need of an escape during a divorce.

"They went to the Super Bowl in '94 ... I'd get excited over dumb things like the Chargers jacket I wore to school and I thought it was the coolest thing," he says. "Not having a strong family to go home to, something like that cheers up more than just playing a video game or something by yourself," adding a laugh. "It just felt like when everybody was in that year, it just felt like I was part of a bigger family."

Chad Farley & the Bolthawks

"It's like someone telling you Christmas is no longer going to be in your location for the foreseeable future, and I would probably say that to somebody [who's] not a big fan," says Chad Farley, who is part of a group of fans known as the Bolthawks. "That's just one day and you get together with friends and family, but I do that eight times throughout the year, every sporting event, and we all talk about it in the offseason, plan for it, get ready for it."

The Bolthawks are trying to get a mass order of white, blue and yellow mohawks to pass out among their section when LaDainian Tomlinson's jersey is retired in November.

These fans don't have anything good to say about Fabiani. None of them has any idea what they will do if the Chargers move. Farley says he may still root for the Chargers but not the city of L.A. -- that way he can keep his old jerseys. Glickman has already considered "the mortality of the fan life," and his best guess is he'll retreat into fantasy football. Carlson would try to root for the Padres and maybe hope for an NHL franchise to come one day. He may simply move out of San Diego.

"It would suck," Carlson says with a laugh. "There'd be one less thing to look forward to. For football every week you feel like something special could happen even if your team's not in it."

Owners are the gatekeepers to a remarkable product built by GMs, coaches and players on top of a foundation of emotions laid by their customers. That is management's last but trumping advantage that ensures teams will never stay put: The game will never mean as much to them as it does to us.

• • •

Unlike Dr. Death himself, his father was soft spoken. He introduced his son to Raiders football, but rooted for them in a reserved manner. He never wanted a high-five. Mostly, he wanted to be left alone during games.

He had an impressive collection of Raider memorabilia, however, which ingrained Raider football into Dr. Death at an early age, even if subliminally. The two watched games together before the team moved back to Oakland. They went to a game soon after the team returned and sat 20 rows up in the Black Hole section of the Coliseum. Seeing everything firsthand, Dr. Death says he finally understood the meaning and history behind his father's pictures and paintings. He saw Violator and Gorilla Rilla and several other Raider superfans. He had a blast -- "And I told my dad, 'Dad, I want to go again, that was cool.'"

The next year, Dr. Death told his dad he wanted to begin dressing up. His dad gave the OK, but with a caveat: "No skulls and no spikes, you have to do your own thing."

Dr. Death gradually became what he is today: Crazy pants, daggers on a hardhat like a mohawk, jersey over shoulder pads, face painted silver with excessively applied eye black. "Dr. Death" was the nickname for Raiders safety Skip Thomas. Dr. Death, the fan, became a season-ticket holder in 2010, and doesn't really care whether you refer to him as Dr. Death or his legal name. He'll continue to be Dr. Death if the Raiders move, but he won't be following the team to L.A.

"Dr. Death is my complete identity, even amongst my friends," Death says. "Even my co-workers who don't follow football at all, they know that that's part of my identity and that's who -- it's my official merit badge wherever I go. What does that merit badge really mean when the company goes and leaves? It's like wearing a badge for a company that just filed for bankruptcy and left."

The Raiders define Northern California for Dr. Death, too, a point he has argued extensively with fans on his Facebook page who suggest he isn't a true fan if he isn't willing to watch the team if it is playing in Los Angeles. Dr. Death has considered that reality.

"People think, 'I'm going to be a Raider no matter what, I don't care if they play in London or wherever, I'm always going to be a Raider,'" he says. "But to many of us here, where the Raiders originated then left and then came back, this is bigger than football."

Shortly after 3 p.m. on Friday, May 1, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao weighed in for their historic encounter that would be contested the following night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Later on Friday afternoon, collection agents for the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), which had been contracted to oversee drug testing for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, went to Mayweather’s Las Vegas home to conduct a random unannounced drug test.

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The collection agents found evidence of an IV being administered to Mayweather. Bob Bennett, the executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, which had jurisdiction over the fight, says that USADA did not tell the commission whether the IV was actually being administered when the agents arrived. USADA did later advise the NSAC that Mayweather’s medical team told its agents that the IV was administered to address concerns related to dehydration.

Mayweather’s medical team also told the collection agents that the IV consisted of two separate mixes. The first was a mixture of 250 milliliters of saline and multi-vitamins. The second was a 500-milliliter mixture of saline and Vitamin C. Seven hundred and fifty milliliters equals 25.361 ounces, an amount equal to roughly 16 percent of the blood normally present in an average adult male.

The mixes themselves are not prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which sets the standards that USADA purports to follow. However, their intravenous administration is prohibited by WADA.

More specifically, the 2015 WADA “Prohibited Substances and Methods List” states, “Intravenous infusions and/or injections of more than 50 ml per 6 hour period are prohibited except for those legitimately received in the course of hospital admissions, surgical procedures, or clinical investigations.”

This prohibition is in effect at all times that the athlete is subject to testing. It exists because, in addition to being administered for the purpose of adding specific substances to a person’s body, an IV infusion can dilute or mask the presence of another substance that is already in the recipient’s system or might be added to it in the near future.

What happened next with regard to Mayweather is extremely troubling.

The first fighter of note to test positive for steroids after a professional championship fight was Frans Botha, who decisioned Axel Schulz in Germany to win the vacant International Boxing Federation heavyweight crown in 1995 but was stripped of the title by the IBF after a urine test indicated the use of anabolic steroids.

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Frans Botha’s 1995 victory against Axel Schulz was overturned after he tested positive for anabolic steroids

Bernd Wende/ullstein bild via Getty Images

It’s a matter of record that, since then, Fernando Vargas (stanozolol), Lamont Peterson (an unspecified anabolic steroid), Andre Berto (norandrosterone), Antonio Tarver (drostanolone), Roy Jones (an unspecified anabolic steroid), James Toney (nandrolone, boldenone metabolite, and stanozolol metabolite), Brandon Rios (methylhexaneamine), Erik Morales (clenbuterol), Richard Hall (an unspecified anabolic steroid), Cruz Carbajal (nandrolone and hydrochlorothiazide), Orlando Salido (nandrolone), and Tony Thompson (hydrochlorothiazide) are among the fighters who have tested positive for the presence of a prohibited performance enhancing drug or masking agent in their system.

Almost always, fighters who test positive express disbelief and maintain that the prohibited substance was ingested without their knowledge. In most instances, punishment has been minimal or there has been no punishment at all.

Other fighters like former heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield, Shane Mosley (who won belts in three different weight classes), and heavyweight contender Jameel McCline, did not test positive but were named in conjunction with PED investigations conducted by federal law enforcement authorities.

By way of example, on August 29, 2006, federal Drug Enforcement Agency officials in Alabama raided a compounding pharmacy (a pharmacy that makes its own drugs generically) called Applied Pharmacy Services. The documents seized included records revealing that a patient named “Evan Fields” picked up three vials of testosterone and related injection supplies from a doctor in Columbus, Georgia in June 2004. That same month, Fields received five vials of a human growth hormone called Saizen. The documents further revealed that, in September 2004, Fields underwent treatment for hypogonadism (a condition in which the body does not produce enough natural testosterone, often a consequence of the use of performance enhancing drugs). The home address, telephone number, and date of birth listed for Evan Fields in Applied Pharmacy’s records were identical to those of Evander Holyfield.

Similarly, Shane Mosley never tested positive for illegal performance enhancing drugs. But his testimony before a grand jury investigating the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) made it clear that he used prohibited PEDs prior to his 2003 victory over Oscar De La Hoya.

Many types of PED use are prohibited in boxing and other sports because of health concerns and the fact that they give athletes an unfair competitive advantage. Their use also often violates federal laws regarding controlled substances. But PED use is more prevalent in boxing today than ever before, particularly at the elite level. Some conditioning coaches have well-known reputations for shady tactics. In many gyms, there is a person on site who serves as a pipeline to PED suppliers.

Indeed, for many fighters, the prevailing ethic seems to be, “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.” In a clean world, fighters don’t get older, heavier, and faster at the same time. But that’s what’s happening in boxing. Fighters are reconfiguring their bodies and, in some instances, look like totally different physical beings. Improved performances at an advanced age are becoming common. Fighters at age 35 are outperforming what they could do when they were thirty. In some instances, fighters are starting to perform at an elite level at an age when they would normally be expected to be on a downward slide.

Victor Conte was the founder and president of BALCO and at the vortex of several well-publicized PED scandals. He spent four months in prison after pleading guilty to illegal steroid distribution and tax fraud in 2005. Since then, Conte has undergone a remarkable transformation and is now a forceful advocate for clean sport. What makes him a particularly valuable asset is his knowledge of how the performance enhancing drugs game was - and is - played. Indeed, former federal prosecutor Jeff Novitzky, who was instrumental in putting Conte behind bars, acknowledged in a recent interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience” that Conte now has “an anti-doping platform” and has come “over to the good side.”

“The use of performance enhancing drugs is rampant in boxing, particularly at the elite level,” Conte recently told this writer. “If there was serious testing and the fighters believed that the testing was effective, they’d be less inclined to use prohibited drugs. But almost across the board, state athletic commissions have minimal expertise, limited funding, and little or no will to address the problem. So knowing that the testing programs are inept, many fighters feel that they’re forced to use these drugs to compete on a level playing field.”

In recent years, the United States Anti-Doping Agency has stepped into the enforcement void.

USADA was created in 1999 pursuant to the recommendation of a United States Olympic Committee task force that recognized the need for credible PED testing of all Olympic and Paralympic athletes representing the United States.

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Above: USADA Chief Executive Officer Travis Tygart

Despite its name, USADA is neither a government agency nor part of the United States Olympic Committee. It is an independent “not-for-profit” corporation headquartered in Colorado Springs that offers drug-testing services for a fee. Most notably, the United States Olympic and Paralympic movement utilize its services. Because of this role, USADA receives approximately $10 million annually in Congressional funding, more in Olympic years.

USADA’s website states, “The organization continues to aspire to be a leader in the global anti-doping community in order to protect the rights of clean athletes and the integrity of competition around the world. We hold ourselves to the same high standards exhibited by athletes who fully embrace true sport. We commit to the following core values to guide our decisions and behaviors.” The core values listed are integrity, respect, teamwork, responsibility, and courage.

Travis Tygart, the chief executive officer of USADA, has spearheaded the organization’s expansion into professional boxing. That opportunity initially arose in late 2009, when drug testing became an issue in the first round of negotiations for a proposed fight between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. When those negotiations fell through, Mayweather opted instead for a May 1, 2010, bout against Shane Mosley.

During a March 18, 2010, conference call to promote Mayweather-Mosley, Tygart advised the media, “Both athletes have agreed to USADA’s testing protocols, including blood and urine testing, which is unannounced, which is anywhere and anytime. There is no limit to the number of tests that we can complete on these boxers.”

Thereafter, Tygart moved aggressively to expand USADA’s footprint in boxing and forged a working relationship with Richard Schaefer, who until 2014 served as CEO of Golden Boy Promotions, one of boxing’s most influential promoters. USADA also became the drug-testing agency of choice for fighters advised by Al Haymon, who is now the most powerful person in boxing. In addition to representing Mayweather, Haymon is the driving force behind Premier Boxing Champions. He has bought time on CBS, NBC, ESPN, Spike, and several other networks to showcase his product. Most boxing matches televised by Showtime also feature Haymon fighters.

Drug testing, if it is to inspire confidence, should be largely transparent. Much of USADA’s operation insofar as boxing is concerned is shrouded in secrecy. Sometimes there’s an announcement when USADA oversees drug testing for a fight. Other times, there is not. The organization has resisted filing its boxer drug-testing contracts with governing state athletic commissions. On several occasions, New York and Nevada have forced the issue. Compliance has often been slow in coming.

When asked to identify the boxing matches for which a USADA drug-testing contract was filed with either the New York or Nevada State Athletic Commissions, Travis Tygart declined through a spokesperson (USADA senior communications manager Annie Skinner) to answer the question.

USADA’s fee structure (which USADA has endeavored to shield from public view) has also raised eyebrows.

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USADA received an up-front payment of $150,000 to administer drug testing for 2015’s Mayweather-Pacquiao fight

The primary alternative to USADA insofar as PED testing for boxers is concerned is the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association (VADA). Like USADA, VADA’s testing laboratories are accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency and it uses internationally recognized collection agencies. Unlike USADA, VADA utilizes carbon isotope ratio (CIR) testing on every urine sample it collects from a boxer. USADA often declines to administer CIR testing on grounds that it’s unnecessary and too expensive. Of course, the less expensive that tests are to administer, the better it is for USADA’s bottom line.

VADA charged a total of $16,000 to administer drug testing for the April 18, 2015, junior-welterweight fight between Ruslan Provodnikov and Lucas Matthysse. By contrast, USADA charged $36,000 to administer drug testing for the April 11, 2015, middleweight encounter between Andy Lee and Peter Quillin.

The Lee-Quillin bout was part of Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions series. USADA is often paid quite generously for services rendered in conjunction with fights in which Haymon plays a role.

A notable example is the fee paid to USADA for administering drug testing in conjunction with the May 2, 2015, Mayweather-Pacquiao fight. Haymon advises Mayweather, and Team Mayweather controlled the promotion. USADA’s contract called for it to receive an up-front payment of $150,000 to test Mayweather and Pacquiao.

More troubling than USADA’s fee structure are the accommodations that it seems to have made for clients who either pay more for its services or use USADA on a regular basis. The case of Erik Morales, who has held world titles in three weight divisions, is an example.

Under standard sports drug testing protocols, when blood or urine is taken from an athlete, it is divided into an “A” and “B” sample. The “A” sample is tested first. If it tests negative, end of story; the athlete has tested “clean.” If, however, the “A” sample tests positive, the athlete has the right to demand that the “B” sample be tested. If the “B” sample tests negative, the athlete is presumed to be clean. But if the “B” sample also tests positive, the first positive finding is confirmed and the athlete then has a problem.

In 2012, Erik Morales was promoted by Golden Boy, which, as earlier noted, was under the leadership of Richard Schaefer. Golden Boy was the lead promoter for an Oct. 20 fight card at Barclays Center in Brooklyn that was to be headlined by Morales vs Danny Garcia.

On Thursday, Oct. 18, 2012, the website Halestorm Sports reported that Morales had tested positive for a banned substance. Thereafter, Golden Boy and USADA engaged in damage control.

Al Bello/Getty Images for Golden Boy Promotions

Above: Erik Morales after his 2012 fight against Danny Garcia

Dan Rafael of ESPN.com spoke with two sources and wrote, “The reason the fight has not been called off, according to one of the sources, is because Morales’ ‘A’ sample tested positive but the results of the ‘B’ sample test likely won’t be available until after the fight. ‘[USADA] said it could be a false positive,’ one of the sources with knowledge of the disclosure said.”

Richard Schaefer told Chris Mannix of SI.com, “USADA has now started the process. The process will play out. There is not going to be a rush to judgment. Morales is a legendary fighter. And really, nobody deserves a rush to judgment. You are innocent until proven guilty.”

Then, on Friday, one day before the scheduled fight, Keith Idec revealed on Boxing Scene that samples had been taken from Morales on at least three occasions. Final test results from the samples taken on Oct. 17 were not in yet. But both the “A” and “B” samples taken from Morales on Oct. 3 and Oct. 10 had tested positive for clenbuterol. In other words, Morales had tested positive for clenbuterol four times.

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Morales tested positive for clenbuterol four times before fighting Danny Garcia

Clenbuterol, a therapeutic drug first developed for people with breathing disorders such as asthma, is widely used by bodybuilders and athletes. It helps the body increase its metabolism and process the conversion of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats into useful energy. It also boosts muscle growth and eliminates excess fats caused by the use of certain steroids. Its therapeutic use is banned in the United States, as is its use in animals raised for human consumption. It is also banned by WADA.

Under the WADA prohibited list, no amount of clenbuterol is allowed in a competitor’s body. The measure is qualitative, not quantitative. Either clenbuterol is there or it is not.

According to a report in the New York Daily News, after Morales was confronted with the positive test results, he claimed a USADA official suggested that he might have inadvertently ingested clenbuterol by eating contaminated meat. Meanwhile, the New York State Athletic Commission issued a statement referencing a representation by Morales that he “unintentionally ingested contaminated food.”

However, no evidence was offered in support of the contention that Morales had ingested contaminated meat.

Nor was any explanation forthcoming as to why USADA kept taking samples from Morales after four tests (two “A” samples and two “B” samples from separate collections) came back positive. Giving Morales these additional tests was akin to giving someone who has been arrested for driving while intoxicated a second and third blood test a week after the arrest.

The moment that the “B” sample from Morales’ first test came back positive, standard testing protocol dictated that this information be forwarded to the New York State Athletic Commission. But neither USADA nor Richard Schaefer did so in a timely manner. Rather, it appears as though the commission and the public may have been deliberately misled in regard to the testing and how many tests Morales had failed.

New York State Athletic Commission sources say that the first notice the NYSAC received regarding Morales’ test results came in a three-way telephone conversation with representatives of Golden Boy and USADA after the story broke on Halestorm Sports. In that conversation, the commission was told that there were “some questionable test results” for Morales but that testing of Morales’ “B” sample would not be available until after the fight.

Travis Tygart has since said, “The licensing body was aware of the positive test prior to the fight. What they did with it was their call.”

That’s terribly misleading.

This writer submitted a request for information to the New York State Athletic Commission asking whether it was advised that Erik Morales had tested positive for Clenbuterol prior to the Oct. 18, 2012, revelation on Halestorm Sports.

On Aug. 10, 2015, Laz Benitez (a spokesperson for the New York State Department of State, which oversees the NYSAC) advised in writing, “There is no indication in the Commission’s files that it was notified of this matter prior to October 18, 2012.”

The Garcia-Morales fight was allowed to proceed on Oct. 20, in part because the NYSAC did not know of Morales’ test history until it was too late for the commission to fully consider the evidence and make a decision to stop the fight. Since then, people in the PED-testing community have begun to openly question the role played in boxing by USADA. What good are tests if the results are not properly reported?

Don Catlin founded the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory in 1982 and is one of the founders of modern drug testing in sports. Three years ago, Catlin told this writer, “USADA should not enter into a contract that doesn’t call for it to report positive test results to the appropriate governing body. If it’s true that USADA reported the results [in the Morales case] to Golden Boy and not to the governing state athletic commission, that’s a recipe for deception.”

When asked about the possibility of withholding notification because of inadvertent use (such as eating contaminated meat), Catlin declared, “No! The International Olympic Committee allowed for those waivers 25 years ago, and it didn’t work. An athlete takes a steroid, tests positive, and then claims it was inadvertent. No one says, ‘I was cheating. You caught me.’”

Victor Conte is in accord and says, “The Erik Morales case was a travesty. If you’re doing honest testing, you don’t have a positive “A” and “B” sample and then another positive “A” and “B” sample and keep going until you get a negative result.”

In the absence of a credible explanation for what happened or an acknowledgement by USADA that there was wrongdoing that will not be repeated, the Erik Morales matter casts a pall over USADA.

The way things stand now, how can any of USADA’s testing in any sport be trusted by the sports establishment or the public? Would USADA handle the testing of an Olympic athlete the way it handled the testing of Erik Morales?

That brings us to Floyd Mayweather and USADA.

Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images

Mayweather has gone to great lengths to propagate the notion that he is in the forefront of PED testing to “clean up” boxing. Beginning with his 2010 fight against Shane Mosley, he has mandated that he and his opponent be subjected to what he calls “Olympic-style testing” by USADA.

At a media “roundtable” in New York before the June 24, 2013, kick-off press conference for Mayweather vs. Canelo Alvarez, Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe declared, “We’ve put in place a mechanism where all Mayweather Promotions fighters will do mandatory blood and urine testing 365-24-7 by USADA.”

But neither Mayweather nor the fighters that Mayweather Promotions has under contract have undergone 365-24-7 testing - tests that can be administered any place at any time and would make it more risky for an athlete to use prohibited PEDs.

Drug testing for a Mayweather fight generally begins shortly after the fight is announced. Mayweather and his opponent agree to keep USADA advised as to their whereabouts at all times and submit to an unlimited number of unannounced blood and urine tests. That sounds good. But in effect, USADA allows Mayweather to determine when the testing begins. That leaves a long period of time during which there are no checks on what substances he might put into his body.

For example, Mayweather didn’t announce Andre Berto as the opponent for his upcoming Sept. 12 fight until Aug. 4, only 39 days before the fight. That didn’t leave much time for serious drug testing. From the conclusion of the Pacquiao fight until the Berto announcement, Mayweather was not subject to USADA testing.

Here, the thoughts of Victor Conte are instructive.

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Above: Victor Conte, once the vortex of several well-publicized PED scandals, is now a forceful advocate for clean sport

“Mayweather is not doing ‘Olympic-style testing,’” Conte states. “Olympic testing means that you can be tested twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. If USADA was serious about boxing becoming a clean sport, it would say, ‘We don’t do one-offs. If you sign up for USADA testing, we reserve the right to test you at any time 365-24-7.’ But that’s not what USADA does with Mayweather or any other fighter that I know of.”

“The benefits that an athlete retains from using anabolic steroids and certain other PEDs carry over for months,” Conte continues. “Anybody who knows anything about the way these drugs work knows that you don’t perform at your best when you’re actually on the drugs. You get maximum benefit after the use stops. I can’t tell you what Floyd Mayweather is and isn’t doing. What he could be doing is this. The fight is over. First, he uses these drugs for tissue repair. Then he can stay on them until he announces his next fight, at which time he’s the one who decides when the next round of testing starts. And by the time testing starts, the drugs have cleared his system.

“Do I know that’s what’s happening? No, I don’t. I do know that the testing period for Mayweather’s fights is getting shorter and shorter. What is it for this one? Five weeks? The whole concept of one man dictating the testing schedule is wrong. But USADA lets Mayweather do it. USADA is not doing effective comprehensive testing on Floyd Mayweather. Testing for four or five weeks before a fight is nonsense.”

As noted earlier, USADA CEO Travis Tygart declined to be interviewed for this article. Instead, senior communications manager Annie Skinner emailed a statement to this writer that outlines USADA’s mission and reads in part, “Just like for our Olympic athletes, any pro-boxing program follows WADA’s international standards, including: the Prohibited List, the International Standard for Testing & Investigations (ISTI), the International Standard for Therapeutic Use Exemptions (ISTUEs) and the International Standards for Protection of Privacy and Personal Information (ISPPPI).”

Skinner’s statement is incorrect. This writer has obtained a copy of the contract entered into between USADA, Floyd Mayweather, and Manny Pacquiao for drug testing in conjunction with Mayweather-Pacquiao. A copy of the entire contract can be found here.

Paragraph 30 of the contract states, “If any rule or regulation whatsoever incorporated or referenced herein conflicts in any respect with the terms of this Agreement, this Agreement shall in all such respects control. Such rules and regulations include, but are not limited to: the Code [the World Anti-Doping Code]; the USADA Protocol; the WADA Prohibited List; the ISTUE [WADA International Standard for Therapeutic Use Exemptions]; and the ISTI [WADA International Standard for Testing and Investigations].”

In other words, USADA was not bound by the drug testing protocols that one might have expected it to follow in conjunction with Mayweather-Pacquiao. And this divergence was significant vis-a-vis its rulings with regard to the IV that was administered to Mayweather on May 1.

In evaluating USADA’s conduct with regard to Mayweather’s IV, the evolution of the USADA-Mayweather-Pacquiao contract is important.

It was announced publicly that the bout contract Mayweather and Pacquiao signed in February 2015 to fight each other provided that drug testing would be conducted by USADA. But the actual contract with USADA remained to be negotiated. In early March, USADA presented the Pacquiao camp with a contract that allowed the testing agency to grant a retroactive therapeutic use exemption (TUE) to either fighter in the event that the fighter tested positive for a prohibited drug. That retroactive exemption could have been granted without notifying the Nevada State Athletic Commission or the opposing fighter’s camp.

Team Pacquiao thought that was outrageous and an opportunity for Mayweather to game the system. Pacquiao refused to sign the contract.

Thereafter, Mayweather and USADA agreed to mutual notification and the limitation of retroactive therapeutic use exemptions to narrowly delineated circumstances. With regard to notice, a copy of the final USADA-Mayweather-Pacquiao contract provides: “Mayweather and Pacquiao agree that USADA shall notify both athletes within 24 hours of any of the following occurrences: (1) the approval by USADA of a TUE application submitted by either athlete; and/or (2) the existence of and/or any modification to an existing approved TUE. Notification pursuant to this paragraph shall consist of and be limited to: (a) the date of the application; (b) the prohibited substance(s) or method(s) for which the TUE is sought; and (c) the manner of use for the prohibited substance(s) or method(s) for which the TUE is sought.”

How was Mayweather’s IV handled by USADA?

As previously noted, the weigh-in and IV administration occurred on May 1. The fight was on May 2. For 20 days after the IV was administered, USADA chose not to notify the Nevada State Athletic Commission about the procedure.

Finally, on May 21, USADA sent a letter to Francisco Aguilar and Bob Bennett (respectively, the chairman and executive director of the NSAC) with a copy to Top Rank (Pacquiao’s promoter) informing them that a retroactive therapeutic use exemption had been granted to Mayweather. The letter did not say when the request for the retroactive TUE was made by Mayweather or when it was granted by USADA.

Subsequent correspondence in response to requests by the NSAC and Top Rank for further information revealed that the TUE was not applied for until May 19 and was granted on May 20.

Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Oli Scarff/Getty Images

In other words, 18 days after the fight, USADA gave Mayweather a retroactive therapeutic use exemption for a procedure that is on the WADA “Prohibited Substances and Methods List.” And because of a loophole in its drug-testing contract, USADA wasn’t obligated to notify the Nevada State Athletic Commission or Pacquiao camp regarding Mayweather’s IV until after the retroactive TUE was granted.

Meanwhile, on May 2 (fight night), Pacquiao’s request to be injected with Toradol (a legal substance) to ease the pain caused by a torn rotator cuff was denied by the Nevada State Athletic Commission because the request was not made in a timely manner.

A conclusion that one might draw from these events is that it helps to have friends at USADA.

“It’s bizarre,” Don Catlin says with regard to the retroactive therapeutic use exemption that USADA granted to Mayweather. “It’s very troubling to me. USADA has yet to explain to my satisfaction why Mayweather needed an IV infusion. There might be a valid explanation, but I don’t know what it is.”

Victor Conte is equally perturbed.

“I don’t get it,” Conte says. “There are strict criteria for the granting of a TUE. You don’t hand them out like Halloween candy. And this sort of IV use is clearly against the rules. Also, from a medical point of view, if they’re administering what they said they did, it doesn’t make sense to me. There are more effective ways to rehydrate. If you drank ice-cold Celtic seawater, you’d have far greater benefits. It’s very suspicious to me. I can tell you that IV drugs clear an athlete’s system more quickly than drugs that are administered by subcutaneous injection. So why did USADA make this decision? Why did they grant something that’s prohibited? In my view, that’s something federal law enforcement officials should be asking Travis Tygart.”

Bob Bennett (who worked for the FBI before assuming his present position as executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission) has this to say: “The TUE for Mayweather’s IV - and the IV was administered at Floyd’s house, not in a medical facility, and wasn’t brought to our attention at the time - was totally unacceptable. I’ve made it clear to Travis Tygart that this should not happen again. We have the sole authority to grant any and all TUEs in the state of Nevada. USADA is a drug-testing agency. USADA should not be granting waivers and exemptions. Not in this state. We are less than pleased that USADA acted the way it did.”

If Bennett looks at what transpired before he became executive director of the NSAC, he might have further reason to question USADA’s performance.

The use of carbon isotope ratio (CIR) testing as a means of identifying the presence of exogenous (synthetic) testosterone in an athlete’s body was developed in part under the direction of Don Catlin. It has been used in conjunction with Olympic testing since the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano.

As noted earlier, USADA often declines to administer CIR testing to boxers on grounds that it is unnecessary and too expensive. The cost is roughly $400 per test, although VADA CEO Dr. Margaret Goodman notes, “If you do a lot of them, you can negotiate price.”

If VADA (which charges far less than USADA for drug testing) can afford CIR testing on every urine sample that it collects from a boxer, then USADA can afford it too.

“If you’re serious about drug testing,” says Victor Conte, “you do CIR testing.”

But CIR testing has been not been fully utilized for Floyd Mayweather’s fights. Instead, USADA has chosen to rely primarily on a testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio test to determine if exogenous testosterone is in an athlete’s system.

Testosterone and epitestosterone are naturally occurring hormones. Testosterone is performance enhancing. Epitestosterone is not.

A normal testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio is slightly more than 1-to-1. Conte says that one recent study of the general population “placed the average T-E ratio for whites at 1.2-to-1 and for blacks at 1.3-to-1.”

Under WADA standards, a testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio of up to 4-to-1 is acceptable. That allows for any reasonable variation in an athlete’s natural testosterone level (which, for an elite athlete, might be particularly high). If the ratio is above 4-to-1, an athlete is presumed to be doping.

Some athletes who use exogenous testosterone game the system by administering exogenous epitestosterone to drive their testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio down beneath the permitted ceiling. This can be done by injection or by the application of epitestosterone as a cream. In the absence of a CIR test, this masks the use of synthetic testosterone.

But there’s a catch. If an athlete tries to manipulate his or her testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio, it is difficult to balance the outcome. If an athlete uses too much epitestosterone - and the precise amount is difficult to calibrate - the result can be an abnormally low T-E ratio.

“In and of itself,” Conte explains, “an abnormally low T-E ratio is not proof of doping. The ratio can vary for the same athlete from test to test. But an abnormally low T-E ratio is a red flag. And if you’re serious about the testing, the next thing you do [after a low T-E ratio test result] is administer a CIR test on the same sample.”

Earlier this year, in response to a request for documents, the Nevada State Athletic Commission produced two lab reports listing the testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio on tests that it (not USADA) had overseen on Floyd Mayweather. In one instance, blood and urine samples were taken from Mayweather on Aug. 18, 2011 (prior to his Sept. 17 fight against Victor Ortiz). In the other instance, blood and urine samples were taken from Mayweather on April 3, 2013 (prior to his May 4 fight against Robert Guerrero).

Mayweather’s testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio for the April 3, 2013, sample was 0.80. His testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio for the Aug. 18, 2011, sample was 0.69.

“That’s a warning flag,” says Don Catlin. “If you’re serious about the testing, it tells you to do the CIR test.”

The Nevada State Athletic Commission wasn’t as knowledgeable with regard to PED testing several years ago as it is now. Commission personnel might not have understood the possible implications of the 0.69 and 0.80 numbers. But USADA officials were knowledgeable.

Did USADA perform CIR testing on Mayweather’s urine samples during that time period? What were the results? And if there was no CIR testing, what testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio did USADA’s tests show? At present, the answers to these questions are not publicly known.

Note to investigators: CIR tests can be performed retroactively on frozen samples.

All of this leads to another issue. As noted by NSAC executive director Bob Bennett, “As of now, USADA does not give us the full test results. They give us the contracts for drug testing and summaries that tell us whether a fighter has tested positive or negative. It is incumbent on them to notify us if a fighter tests positive. But no, they don’t give us the full test results.”

Laz Benitez reports a similar lack of transparency in New York. On Aug. 10, Benitez advised this writer that the New York State Athletic Commission had received information from USADA regarding test results for four fights where the drug testing was conducted by USADA. But Benitez added, “The results received were summaries.”

Why is that significant? Because full test results can raise a red flag that’s not apparent on the face of a summary. Once again, a look at the relationship between USADA and Floyd Mayweather is instructive.

On Dec. 30, 2009, Manny Pacquiao sued Mayweather for defamation. Pacquiao’s complaint, filed in the United States District Court for Nevada, alleged that Mayweather and several other defendants had falsely accused him of using, and continuing to use, illegal performance enhancing drugs. The court case moved slowly, as litigation often does. Then things changed dramatically.

As reported by this writer on MaxBoxing in Dec. 2012, information filtered through the drug-testing community on May 20, 2012 to the effect that Mayweather had tested positive on three occasions for an illegal performance-enhancing drug. More specifically, it was rumored that Mayweather’s “A” sample had tested positive three times and, after each positive test, USADA had given Floyd an inadvertent use waiver. These waivers, if they were in fact given, would have negated the need to test Floyd’s “B” samples. And because the “B” samples were never tested, a loophole in Mayweather’s USADA contract would have allowed testing to continue without the positive “A” sample results being reported to Mayweather’s opponent or the Nevada State Athletic Commission.

Pacquiao’s attorneys became aware of the rumor in late-May. On June 4, 2012, they served document demands and subpoenas on Mayweather, Mayweather Promotions, Golden Boy (Mayweather’s co-promoter), and USADA demanding the production of all documents relating to PED testing of Mayweather in conjunction with his fights against Shane Mosley, Victor Ortiz, and Miguel Cotto. These were the three fights that Mayweather had been tested for by USADA up until that time.

The documents were not produced. After pleading guilty to charges of domestic violence and harassment, Mayweather spent nine weeks in the Clark County Detention Center. He was released from jail on Aug. 2. Then settlement talks heated up.

A stipulation of settlement ending the defamation case was filed with the court on Sept. 25, 2012. The parties agreed to a confidentiality clause that kept the terms of settlement secret. However, prior to the agreement being signed, two sources with detailed knowledge of the proceedings told this writer that Mayweather’s initial monetary settlement offer was “substantially more” than Pacquiao’s attorneys had expected it would be. An agreement in principle was reached soon afterward. The settlement meant that the demand for documents relating to USADA’s testing of Mayweather became moot.

If Mayweather’s “A” sample tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug on one or more occasions and he was given a waiver by USADA that concealed this fact from the Nevada State Athletic Commission, his opponent, and the public, it could contribute to a scandal that undermines the already-shaky public confidence in boxing. At present, the relevant information is not a matter of public record.

USADA CEO Travis Tygart (through senior communications manager Annie Skinner) declined to state how many times the “A” sample of a professional boxer tested by USADA has come back positive for a prohibited substance.

Universal Images Group via Getty Images

What is clear though, is that USADA is not catching the PED users in boxing. Tygart says that’s because his organization’s educational programs and the knowledge that USADA will catch cheaters deters wrongdoing. But the changing physiques and performance levels of some of the elite fighters tested by USADA suggest otherwise.

A simple comparison will suffice. As of Aug. 1, 2015, VADA had conducted drug testing for 18 professional fights. Three of the fighters tested by VADA (Andre Berto, former IBF-WBA 140-pound champion Lamont Peterson, and former 135-pound WBA titleholder Brandon Rios) tested positive for a banned substance.

Contrast that with USADA. Annie Skinner says that Mayweather-Berto will be the 46th fight for which USADA has conducted drug testing. In an Aug. 14, email she acknowledges, “At this time, the only professional boxer under USADA’s program who has been found to have committed an anti-doping rule violation is Erik Morales.”

One can speculate that, had Halestorm Sports not broken the Morales story, USADA might not have “found” that Morales committed an anti-doping violation either.

“USADA’s boxing testing program is propaganda; that’s all,” says Victor Conte. “It has one set of rules for some fighters and a different set of rules for others. That’s not the way real drug testing works. Travis Tygart wants people to think that anyone who questions USADA is against clean sport. But that’s nonsense.”

After Lance Armstrong’s defoliation for illegal PED use, Tygart was interviewed by Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes. Armstrong, Tygart declared, was “cowardly” and had “defrauded millions of people.”

Pelley then asked, “If Lance Armstrong had prevailed in this case and you had failed, what would the effect on sport have been?”

“It would have been huge,” Tygart answered, “because athletes would have known that some are too big to fail.”

“And the message that sends is what?” Pelley pressed.

“Cheat your way to the top. And if you get too big and too popular and too powerful, if you do it that well, you’ll never be held accountable.”

USADA is the dominant force in American sports insofar as drug testing is concerned. But it is not too big and powerful to be held accountable.

The essence of boxing is such that all participants are at risk. The increasing use of performance enhancing drugs makes these risks unacceptable.

Fighters are entitled to an initial presumption of innocence when questions arise regarding the use of performance enhancing drugs. Based on their performance, Muhammad Ali (blessed with preternatural speed and stamina) and Rocky Marciano (who absorbed incredible punishment and seemed to grow stronger as a fight wore on) might have been suspected of illegal drug use had PEDs been available to them.

But fighters who are clean are also entitled to know that they’re not facing an opponent who has augmented his firepower through the use of performance enhancing drugs. And any state athletic commission that fails to limit the use of PEDs within its jurisdiction is unfit to regulate boxing.

Richard Pound was one of the founders and the first president of the World Anti-Doping Agency. On May 13, 2013, a committee that Pound chaired submitted a report entitled “Lack of Effectiveness of Testing Programs” to WADA.

In part, that report states, “The primary reason for the apparent lack of success of the testing programs does not lie with the science involved. While there may well be some drugs or combinations of drugs and methods of which the anti-doping community is unaware, the science now available is both robust and reliable. The real problems are the human and political factors. There is no general appetite to undertake the effort and expense of a successful effort to deliver doping-free sport. This applies with varying degrees at the level of athletes, international sport organizations, national Olympic committees, national anti-doping organizations, and governments. It is reflected in low standards of compliance measurement, unwillingness to undertake critical analysis of the necessary requirements, unwillingness to follow-up on suspicions and information, unwillingness to share available information, and unwillingness to commit the necessary informed intelligence, effective actions, and other resources to the fight against doping in sport.”

A website and those who write for it are not the final arbiters of whether USADA has acted properly insofar as drug testing in boxing is concerned. Nor can they fully investigate USADA. But Congress and various law enforcement agencies can.

There’s an open issue as to whether USADA has become an instrument of accommodation. For an agency that tests United States Olympic athletes and receives $10 million a year from the federal government, that’s a significant issue.

Meanwhile, the presence of performance enhancing drugs in boxing cries out for action. To ensure a level playing field, a national solution with uniform national testing standards is essential. A year-round testing program is necessary. It should be a condition of being granted a boxing license in this country that any fighter is subject to blood and urine testing at any time. While logistics and cost would make mandatory testing on a broad scale impractical, unannounced spot testing could be implemented, particularly on elite fighters.

All contracts for drug testing should be filed upon execution with the Association of Boxing Commissions and the governing state athletic commission. Full tests results, not just summaries, should be disclosed immediately to the governing commission. A commission doctor should review all test results as they come in.

As the Pound Report states, “The objective is to improve the efficacy of testing procedures and other anti-doping activities, not merely to rely on having performed a certain number of tests.” Also, as recommended by the Pound Report, “CIR testing for artificial testosterone should be increased forthwith.”

Ten years ago, John Ruiz lost a 12-round decision to James Toney in a heavyweight championship fight at Madison Square Garden. Then Toney tested positive for nandrolone. The outcome of the fight was changed to no decision. Toney was suspended for 90 days, and Ruiz was reinstated as champion.

Ed Mulholland/WireImage

“The only sport in which steroids can kill someone other than the person using them is boxing,” Ruiz said afterward. “You’re stronger when you use steroids. You’re quicker and faster. If a baseball player uses steroids, he hits more home runs. So what? I’m not saying that it’s right, but you’re not putting anyone else at risk. When a fighter is juiced, it’s dangerous.”

Then Ruiz observed, “People go crazy about the effect that steroids have when a bat hits a ball. What about when a fist hits a head?”

When the sun looms over the Harvey Bear Ranch Park trailhead, the San Martin, California park, like much of the parched state, takes on the crispy brown color of a bowl of Golden Grahams. But early on a Saturday morning, the sun is resting, and Harvey Bear looks, and feels, more like a nightclub.

Headlamps bounce against the dark, and laughter bursts out from a tent containing a swarm of runners and a buffet of potato chips, energy bars, crackers with Nutella and cups of Coca-Cola. It’s chilly near the start of the Run-de-Vous, one of the hundreds of ultrarunning races that take place every year, but seven volunteers are working like the dwarves pounding packs of ice on the pavement and shuffling the broken cubes and sponges into buckets of water. They know what’s coming.

“Good morning!” the runners chirp at each other, like morning cardinals, and leading the way is Catra Corbett, who punctuates her greetings with hugs. Corbett, 50, looks dressed for the nightclub, with arm warmers in rainbow stripes, a matching skirt checkered with neon pink, yellow and purple and a silver and blue tank top with Hoka One One across the front, one of her many sponsors. It’s too early for the rays of energy Corbett’s giving off, but as first light cracks the night sky and the runners start to gather under race director Rajeev Patel, who is standing on a small ladder, Corbett’s mood is brighter than her headlamp. She’s practically giddy.

“It’s very unusual that I get to have fun in a race,” Corbett said.

“Fun,” for Corbett, means she’s only running a 50K, 31 miles. Yes, this woman is treating a race that’s five miles longer than a marathon like a casual jog with her dog. But for her, that’s exactly what it is. Corbett is a little hobbled after a 100-mile race a week ago blistered the pads of her near bulletproof feet (she has an especially gruesome story about her big toe exploding after she trimmed the nail). So she decided to make this day about Truman, who will strive as much as his tiny legs can to become the first dachshund, as far as anyone knows, to run a 50K. Catra’s there to pace him. Normally, he paces her for a good chunk of one of her long runs, which is why Truman’s attempt isn’t nearly as abusive as it sounds. Truman ran 1,300 miles in 2014. As dachshunds go, Truman, with white, lightning slashes against a thunderstorm-gray coat, is a badass.

More than 20 years ago, Corbett would have felt more at home in a nightclub than on a trail. Fun for her then meant dancing for hours a night, high on meth and cloaked in black clothes and white makeup, like a vampire. Now she looks like a punk rock fairy, a colorful sprite known for her spirit and enthusiasm.

People have been known to look at the flashy colors and the 50 tattoos and the 25 piercings and the fuchsia and purple hair, which hasn’t been its original dark brown since she was 13, and assume she’s the nightclubbing hairdresser of her old days. Far from it.

She runs at least 80 miles a week, eats 12 pounds of fruit a day with some veggies and nuts on the weekend, and has run every day for more than 1,000 days in a row. Corbett is only one of five people in the world to finish a hundred 100-mile runs (she’s done 116), and only the second woman to do so (Monica Scholz, a Canadian, is the other). This year alone she’s done three 100-mile races and a 200-miler as well. Next year, she hopes to finish the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail in less than 100 days, an average of 25 miles a day. As if that isn’t enough of a challenge, during the trip, she plans to run additional ultras, until she’s also collected a 100-miler, a 50-miler and a 50K.

Running 100 miles requires a disturbing tolerance for suffering. She ran her first in Texas in 1999 without knowing that she needed to wear roomy shoes to account for her swelling feet, blistering her heels so much that a medic asked her if she planned to finish. She’s peed blood from severe dehydration more than once. The predictable misery of an unpredictable event such as a 100-miler is why she wears such bright colors. Pink is positive, she said. It lights the way like a headlamp through the inevitable dark moments of an ultramarathon.

Yet her worst night didn’t come on a course. That came before all this, in jail, when she was arrested for selling meth. That night was the “ah-ha” moment just about every addict needs to quit. Just like a number of other ultrarunners in the sport today, she found running to help her stay sober. Ultrarunning has consumed her life for 16 years, made her a social media star and, as Patel calls her, one of the icons of the sport.

Maybe that is why she feels most bonded to Truman among all the dachshunds she has owned, she said, because he was reborn through running as well. Three years ago Corbett was still mourning her dachshund, Rocky, who had died a few months before, when she received Truman, who grew up with a hoarder. She initially planned to foster him, not adopt him. He seemed to need her, and she needed him, too. The vet, given his tough situation, told her that because of his past, he would always be kind of broken. Rather than believe that, Corbett chose to bring him to Mission Peak. She set him on the ground and began to run. He began to follow her. He has since raced up it 100 times.

Every run is a nod to their rebirth. This Aug. 15 weekend, Truman and Corbett planned to celebrate together.

Addicted To Run

Corbett suggests that 50 percent of ultrarunners, at least the ones she knows, are ex-addicts of one kind or another. While that number is impossible to verify, and honestly seems a little high, ultrarunners agree that addiction fits with its extreme nature.

“You do have to have an obsessive personality to do this sport,” said George Velasco, who has run many races, crewed many others, and was running a 50-miler at Run-de-Vous.

Obsessive? Only at an ultra such as Run-De-Vous would you hear ridiculous statements such as “I’m out of shape, so I’m only doing a 50K today.” Patel, the race director who writes a blog as Rajeev the Runner, just went through a flare-up of his Crohn’s Disease, and yet even as he winced in pain, he talked about running 100 miles again one day. Velasco himself carries a stuffed Curious George in the front of his pack because he considers his addiction to ultrarunning, which has trashed his right leg, a monkey on his back.

Charlie Engle, one of the sport’s most well-known extremists, was a crack junkie who spent time in prison. Timothy Olson, who holds the course record to the Western States 100, one of ultrarunning’s most prestigious events, was a drug addict. Ben Hian, way back in the 1990s, possibly pioneered recovering from drugs through ultrarunning and won several 100-mile races. There are many others.

Bryon Powell, editor of the popular ultrarunning website iRunFar, said he gets a little weary, and wary, of pronouncements that anyone who runs an ultramarathon must either be recovering or addicted to the sport or both.

“I swear there really are normal people who do these things,” Powell said with a laugh. “Honest.”

Look at Mike Palmer, 61. He is a quiet administrative assistant at the University of California, Berkeley, and his story sounds like the millions you hear from road marathoners. He was in his 30s and realized simple things, like walking a flight of stairs left him exhausted. He remembered running cross-country in high school and started again, then did a marathon, and then another fast enough to qualify for Boston. He decided to take it further after hearing unassuming ultrarunning pioneer Dick Collins, who once ran an ultra a month for 12 years, say running a 50-miler, with its relaxed people and pace and beautiful scenery, was easier than running a marathon. Palmer has since completed 26 trail 100s. He runs for a reason that has nothing to do with any kind of personal demon.

“Let’s be honest. It’s a source of pride,” Palmer said.

But Powell also acknowledges that there are many others who need to run, and, just like his site says, run far. Rob Krar, one of the best, suffers from severe depression. Running helps him control it. Angie White is director of the Kentucky Animal Relief Fund, a rescue that exclusively takes in senior dogs, and she deals with wretched stories of mistreatment nearly every day. She runs to work off her trauma from the worst cases, and the Run-de-Vous is her fifth attempt at a 100-miler. Scientists are even studying running as a way to help calm post-traumatic stress disorder.

Powell is quiet and feeds off Corbett’s energy and her propensity for filling dead space with an endless stream of chatter. So, in a way, the sport’s ability to snag quirky folks may also be part of the allure of ultrarunning for people such as Powell. Running for hours, he meets people who are otherwise nothing like him.

“You know, I tend to think things through, like forever, and she’s very impulsive,” Powell said with a smile. “It balances me out.”

One Night in Jail

One day in the early 1990’s in Fremont, California, where she grew up, Corbett took a call for her boyfriend, a small-time dealer who sold just enough meth to keep their personal supply going. Soon after, just like a scene from “COPS,” the police came busting down their door. It was the best thing that happened to her, she said.

While working at a salon during the day and clubbing on most nights, she had started snorting meth at the behest of her friends and kept at it until some days she drove for hours trying to score. She surrendered to the drug for three years, even using after her boyfriend tried to quit, and she remembers being in her room one day and thinking how her life kind of sucked but that she was powerless to do anything about it. She thinks she was about 27, maybe 29. She isn’t quite sure.

“I just don’t remember those years that closely,” she says now.

After her arrest, she was thrown in the women’s jail with everyone else, the grandmothers and the gangsters. She was barely a woman, a girl, really, and was appalled at the ugly holding pen and scrubs, the disgusting room, and the icky, itchy, gray wool blanket they gave her. She wondered how she was going to wash her face. She realized with horror that she had cut the hair of the guy who took her mug shot.

I don’t belong here, she said aloud, to anyone who would listen, thinking of the cop who arrested her and then lied, promising her own cell.

Her boyfriend accepted the blame, and the judge, taking her job and first offense into account, let her go through diversion. She called her mother and told her about her addiction. Her mom, Corbett’s only parent after her father died when she was 17, angrily reminded her that her sister, who was bipolar, had become a heroin addict.

Her friends wondered when she was going to do drugs again, but that didn’t sound fun anymore. I don’t belong here, she thought again.

She moved away from her friends, and her old life, and decided to get a job at Whole Foods, more for the discount on produce than a paycheck. She’s still there, and has been there 16 years, now as a supervisor in the nutrition and body care department.

Corbett was already a vegetarian, something she had practiced since she was 9, when her brother informed her that her beloved bull, Charlie, was now in the freezer. Getting healthy, she said, wasn’t that far-fetched.

She went to the gym, mainly because it gave her a way to fill her life and burn off her excess energy since she wasn’t clubbing anymore. She started walking her dog three miles a day, and two years after she got clean, she decided to run the distance she usually walked.

Running was unusual for Corbett, despite her dad’s love for the sport of running: they used to watch the Boston Marathon on TV together. She finished the three miles and was proud of herself, so she looked for a 10K to run because her father loved that distance, and she wanted to honor him after his death from an unexpected heart attack at 49. Corbett, now older than her father, still misses her parents. Her mother died in 2002, and she still cries at their graves.

The 10K was tough — she wore black and ran too hard — but afterwards saw a flyer for the San Francisco marathon on her windshield. She entered and bought a book to learn how to train for it. Her first long run was supposed to be nine miles, so she drove the distance to measure it. When she finished, she was thrilled.

At the marathon, some athletic friends told her to bring a nutritional gel because she would hit a wall at mile 22. She took the gel at mile 22 and looked for a wall to appear. She never found it and finished with a solid time, a little over four hours.

, After planning to complete all the marathons in California, learned that a 50K was only six miles longer, and was introduced to trail running in her first race of that distance. She did a 50-miler that same month and her first 100-miler, the Rocky Raccoon in 1999, a couple months later.

There are many tricks to an ultramarathon that make it possible, or easier, depending on a runner’s ability. Many change their shoes several times, use duct tape to cover their blisters and eat candy, such as Kit Kat chocolate bars, before a tough climb. But Catra had no way of knowing any of those tricks at first, and there were few ways to connect with other runners before social media made it easy. These days, even someone who wants to learn how to run a 5K can download a “Couch to 5K” training plan app.

“Fuck, I knew nothing, and there was nowhere I could go for any help,” she said.

She made many mistakes, but she also fell in love.

She sticks to the ultras now because she loves running through the mountains and on trails, not on the asphalt and concrete courses of big-city marathons. And she’s found a way to stand out because Corbett does like to stand out. And not only because of the tattoos and attire.

She will wear nice clothes to work, skirts and dresses mostly, but they resemble her ultrarunning outfits in that they are usually bright and flashy, topped with a huge pink bow in her wild, curly hair. She added many of the tattoos after she got clean, and she’s thankful for that, given that she prefers pretty or childlike, almost innocent art, to the skulls and black roses she surely would have added during her goth period. A favorite tat is of Max, the character from Where the Wild Things Are, because she used to carry a stuffed toy of him in her backpack and lost it during a race. She wants a Hello Kitty making a peace sign for her next one.

Ultrarunning helps Corbett stand out in the running world because, well, she isn’t very fast, and the sport tends to reward the turtles, not the rabbits, save for the very few elites capable of winning a race. If she ran marathons, no one would probably notice her, even in her attire. Her best time in a 100-miler is a little more than 21 hours, averaging just over 5 mph, solid but unspectacular. Corbett, though, just keeps going and going, and she recovers quickly, giving her the two tools ultrarunners need to pile up the accomplishments that make her special. She holds the women’s record for completing the John Muir Trail twice, out and back, consecutively, for a total of 424 miles (she did it in 12 days). As it turns out, she figures dancing the night away and then cutting hair on her feet all day was a great way to prepare for the rigors of an ultra.

Today Corbett lives a stripped-down life, renting a room for the last five years from a grizzled ultrarunner she met while trudging her way up Mission Peak. She would like a house and hopes to move soon, but she also doesn’t really crave anything material save for more Hoka One One shoes and another cute outfit from Running Skirts, another one of her sponsors. Corbett just got a raise from Whole Foods, and her sponsors pay for gear, supplies, and an occasional race, but she can’t afford too much more in California than a spare room.

“When you’re out there, on the trail,” Corbett said, “you realize how much stuff you don’t really need.”

During Corbett’s annual review a month ago, her Whole Foods supervisor told her she was doing well, and her only complaint was that she wished Corbett worked more. Corbett asks for lots of three-day weekends so she can race. Ultrarunning is her life. She’s dating an ultrarunner, and has an ex-boyfriend who was an ultrarunner, and most of her friends are ultrarunners. Truman, her dog, is an ultrarunner. She’s happiest out there trotting on the trail with Truman and thinking how much her life has changed since she stopped doing drugs.

“I’m just thankful I’m not in that situation any longer,” Corbett said. “But I have no regrets. If I hadn’t gone through that, I would not be out here running because I needed to get healthy after all the drugs. I hated running. It’s because of that former life that made me want to have the life I have now.”

A Fair Trade?

The rapper Eminem, whose “Lose Yourself” was recently voted as the most popular running song in a Runner’s World poll, claims he ran 17 miles a day on the treadmill to beat an addiction to alcohol and painkillers, stating that his “addict’s brain” led him to get carried away with running.

“It’s easy to understand how people replace addiction with exercise,” Eminem said recently in an article for Men’s Journal. “One addiction for another, but one that’s good for them.”

Actually, many who treat addiction say Eminem is wrong, even those who emphasize exercise and sports to help others recover. Trading addictions, which is what many assume addicts do when they turn to ultrarunning or other extreme sports, does not ensure sobriety.

Todd Crandell, the founder of Racing For Recovery, an organization that promotes a healthy lifestyle and fitness to help addicts overcome substance abuse, started his nonprofit in 2001 after getting sober in 1993. Although Crandell is proud of his many accomplishments, including finishing more than 20 Ironman races, recovery, Crandell said, takes love and family and support and self-esteem. For many, it may even require belief in a higher power and a 12-step program. It requires a lifetime of work, a race that never ends.

“Even some of my own clients went back to using because they really didn’t change their lives,” Crandell said. “If they’re out riding their bikes for six hours and still missing out on life and family things, then you’re not really recovering.”

There is no doubt completing a race is a powerful drug in its own right. David Clark, a 44-year-old from Louisville, Colorado, once weighed more than 300 pounds, chugged a bottle of scotch a day and gobbled fast food and handfuls of painkillers. He now weighs 160 pounds, eats a vegan diet and has completed 29 ultramarathons. He also owns his own gym, Snap Fitness.

“You put yourself in this tough situation, and you tell yourself that you trust yourself and you won’t quit,” Clark said of ultrarunning. “For an addict, that’s an amazing thing.”

He believes in that power, and that’s why in 2011 he started the Superman project, which helps addicts reinvent themselves as athletes. When Clark was an addict, he couldn’t trust himself to quit drinking long enough to wrap his kids’ Christmas presents. Now he can rely on his internal strength to get him through Badwater, a 135-mile trudge through Death Valley, the hottest corner of the U.S.

David McNew/Getty Images

Above: A runner attempts the Badwater ultramarathon

Even Clark admits that his training can sometimes resemble his old habits, and his comment offers some insight into the attraction addicts feel toward ultrarunning.

“I have definitely been an extreme person,” Clark said. “I think when you are so extreme on the negative side, you almost have to do extremes in the positive side to balance that out.”

Yet many ultrarunners, especially the old-school veterans, have probably taken it too far, Corbett said. Velasco needs to get his leg fixed — “everything” is wrong with it, he said — but he doesn’t want to take the six months off to recover. Corbett knows of many others whose bodies are now broken in one way or another because they raced too much. Corbett herself hasn’t been hurt despite all those races, and she attributes that to strength training, her fruitarian diet and refusal to overtrain. Ultrarunning may be her life, but she does not consider it an addiction.

Clark knows the warning signs from his past life. He now looks at recovery and running independently. Running is wonderful, he said, but it’s not sobriety.

“Running interrupted the daily process of using,” Clark said, “and then it made me feel better and cleared the space to go through the spiritual work.

“The thing is, you can’t help but feel lucky when you make it out. Most people don’t.”

Come Together

Addicts who want to get sober have to give up much more than the drug itself. As Corbett did, most have to say goodbye to their friends and change their life. For many, part of the attraction to ultrarunning is the family and support they find in the ultrarunning community.

A big ultrarunning race usually includes only a few hundred participants, so they all tend to know each other, which is impossible in a race of 20,000 half-marathoners. There’s something about that smaller group, and the fact that they’re all punch-drunk, puking, and in pain, that makes participants feel like they’re all in this together.

In most races, ultrarunners need the support of a crew to fix them meals, watch over their shoes (an ultrarunner will go through several pairs in a race) and doctor their dirty feet. The crews are generally made up of other runners, who will also pace their racer in the last half, when they are typically tired, thirsty and as irritable, as a 2-year-old toddler. It’s a supportive, even loving place, exactly the kind of fellowship an addict needs to beat drugs. That may be as much of an attraction as the physical activity.

You can’t find that feel at every race. There are signs that the old-school group led by veterans such as Velasco and Palmer and Corbett are being overrun in the larger events by younger, uptight athletes coming off a background in Ironman competitions and road marathons.

Perhaps the most obvious example of this comes from the Leadville 100, one of the first and most iconic 100-mile trail runs in Colorado. More than 900 runners crowded the trail in 2013, and this year, more than 750 ran. Some in that race didn’t seem to understand the unspoken rules of the trail. There seems to be more of those people all the time.

“I was dismayed to see all the gel packets all over the trail at Angeles Crest,” Palmer said about this year’s race.

Yet there is still a different feel at ultramarathons, said Powell of iRunFar. When he ran his Hardrock race this year, he knew most of the 150 people running it with him.

At this year’s Western States 100, one of the more prestigious events, 70-year-old Gunhild Swanson was minutes from the cutoff time and less than a mile from the finish. Krar, a 100-mile win already in his legs, nevertheless ran with her the last 1.3 in flip-flops to push her to the end. She finished with six seconds to spare.

“You may not know the guy on your left is a PhD, and the guy on your right is a recovering alcoholic because honestly, you don’t care,” Powell said. “If you’re a dick, they will judge you, but it’s not about what you are or what you’re wearing. It’s a community that welcomes you with open arms.”

The Spirit Of Ultrarunning

The sun needed a little time to warm up, like an old car, but around 10 a.m., it had revved up and spread its rays across Harvey Bear at the Run-de-Vous, heating the two-mile strip of asphalt like a Hibachi grill and threatening to turn Truman into a smoked sausage. Patel, the race director, camped out at the timing mat in a chair, by a monitor that listed the runners’ times and the number of laps they had completed.

If most ultra marathons are run on trails, through forests or up mountains, the Run-de-Vous is, by comparison, a hamster’s wheel. To finish a 50K, a runner (or a badass dachshund), needed to complete a little more than 15 laps. It’s still a nice trail, but running the same loop over and over can be tough.

“Well done,” Patel said to each runner as he or she scuffled across the mat for another lap.

When Truman trotted up with Corbett, a few of the 50 volunteers, crew members and spectators cheered, mostly for Truman. Corbett, planning to pull her dog from the race by noon, paused for a selfie with him.

Not everyone likes the tattoos and the selfies and pink hair, which Corbett acknowledges.

“There’s some narcissism there,” Velasco noted with a smile.

Most ultrarunners, however, even the grizzled veterans, are willing to tolerate, or even embrace that flashy image because of what Corbett does for the sport. Her vanity, for instance, helps promote it.

She’s got deals with Ultra Gam Gaiters, Nuya Nutrition, Jem Raw Organics, Garden of Life and Beyond Meat from her numbers on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and her blog, Dirt Diva. She may even be a trendsetter. When Corbett signed with Hoka One One in 2010, she didn’t like the plain white women’s shoes and spray painted them. Hoka got dozens of calls the next day from other runners who said they all wanted the shoes in the colors that Corbett was wearing. Now many running shoes, clothes and gear are draped in bright colors.

Corbett - and Truman - are two of the most popular ultrarunners in the sport. She’s managed to reach that stature without dominating races like other well-known, champion ultrarunners such as Anna Frost, who won this year’s insanely difficult Hardrock 100, Krar or Kilian Jornet, known for smashing speed records up huge mountains and holder of course records in many races, including the Hardrock.

“The world needs a figure like her,” said Velasco, who is one of Corbett’s closest friends, as he worked on another lap. “She gets a lot of people who normally wouldn’t be out here to do something like this.”

And as self-serving as Corbett appears to be, she personally does as much for the ultrarunning community as anyone. Corbett encourages anyone who passes her and has stopped many times in a 100-mile race to offer advice, or even care for, those runners who aren’t looking good (relatively, anyway), with little regard for her own time or her own misery. She crews and paces for many others, and that can take a full weekend, either running 50 miles with a hurting, cranky, sleep-deprived racer or sleeping in a van in 15-minute increments between filling bottles and making snacks. After she ran her 200-mile race, a race that took everything she had just to finish, a few days later she was out marking and setting the course for a local 50K. Corbett also lobbies Whole Foods to donate food and supplies for races.

“That’s the spirit of ultrarunning,” Patel said. “It’s not about herself. It’s really not. It’s about the community.”

White, who runs the senior dog rescue in Kentucky, turned to Corbett after attempting, and failing, four other 100-mile races. Corbett agreed to coach her and used Truman to raise money for her program. Corbett’s many followers online responded by donating more than $1,200.

“She’s one of my life heroes,” White said. “I only had to ask once.”

Addicts use support groups, churches, AA meetings, sponsors and outpatient counseling to overcome addiction, with mixed results. Ultrarunning gives Corbett, and many like her, a place to go. It feels like home, said Palmer, another close friend of Corbett despite having nothing in common with her other than running.

“You’re in another world when you’re out here,” Palmer said. “I mean, why can’t we have that in real life? Why can’t we have aid stations, where everyone knows you and cheers for you?”

He sighs.

“Instead, it’s ‘You know, you really need to work on this.’”

Frozen treats and fun with friends

By 2 p.m., the temperature spiked to 100 degrees, and all the ice the volunteers worked so hard to chop had melted. There were only the ultrarunners, those who supported them, and the determination to go another lap.

The few runners still going for 50 or 100 miles — many of them by this point had dropped down a distance — were walking, usually with towels soaked with cold water wrapped around their heads. Only White, who trained in the Kentucky humidity, and Ed Ettinghausen, who grew up in steamy Temecula, California, owns the record for running the most 100-milers in a year and likes to wear a Jester’s costume for all his races, were still running.

And then Patel, grinning madly, waved a Popsicle in front of a participant’s face. When the limping, sweaty walker realized it wasn’t a hallucination, he almost started weeping.

“Oh, my God, man,” he said. “Wow. Thanks.”

The popsicles were presents from three different ultrarunners, all who arrived within a half-hour of each other and knew exactly what the others craved.

“Awesome, guys,” Patel told the runners. “Un-fricken-believable man.”

Velasco pauses by Corbett’s chair for a break between laps for his 50-miler. Corbett, after 22 miles, had pulled Truman from the trail and was waiting for dusk to run again. She was antsy, though, and struggling with just sitting around at a race. She decided to crew Velasco a bit.

“Where are your shoes? Why are you taking off that shirt? Why aren’t you sitting down? What are you eating? What are you drinking?” Corbett started chirping. “Sit. Sit. Sit!”

“Catra,” Velasco said with exhaustion, not necessarily from the race. “Relax.”

Still, Velasco did indeed sit, and Powell, Velasco and Corbett began talking about what they usually talk about when they’re together. They talked about their peeps and past races. They laughed about the time Velasco shit his pants running up Mount Whitney, and their aches and pains, and sun poisoning and crewing bitchy runners.

Then Velasco left to do another lap and caught up to White, who was still trotting along.

Corbett stayed behind. The temperature peaked at 101, but by 6:30 p.m., it started to cool a bit. She would bring Truman back out, and as the sun began to set, he would finish his 50K. The next day, just before the 32-hour cutoff, White would finish her first 100 with Corbett by her side.

It was the least she could do. Corbett has her own pacers. When she’s struggling, as she did the week before to finish her 100, she thinks about her parents, or past dogs, running with her. But she also thinks of so many other ultrarunners who had to give it up. They are all still part of the community too.

“There are others who would give anything to still be able to do this,” Corbett said. “That’s how I make myself finish.”

That’s also why she wants it to last, and that means she needs to do her part to support it. The sun fell behind the hills, cloaking Harvey Bear’s crispy brown with darkness, and with the laughter and the twinkling headlamps, it once again looked like a nightclub, the kind that used to keep Corbett up late at night.

Corbett, still wearing the checkered skirt and pulling up her neon arm warmers, planned to stay up late, as she has many times before in both her former and current lives.

This time, in this life, she worked the aid station deep into the night, ending her fun, relaxed day serving Coca-Cola, hugs and cheers as the moon shined its light over her family and the place they all belong.

Start with his eyes. “Paul’s eyes,” Chelsea Oliver says, “instantly drew me in.” Rise from the pinewoods off Hadaway Road in Kennesaw, battle under the fiercest lights of the SEC, land in the NFL — and there’s much to see. Whole worlds. “Laser beams,” Tra Battle, Paul’s teammate with the University of Georgia and the San Diego Chargers remembers. “It’s like his eyes wouldn’t shut,” Chris Burgett, a college teammate says. Coming home late from a road game at Arkansas, Chris once woke to the whole bus snoozing, but there was Paul. Looking out the window. Dreaming in real time.

Maybe the intensity of childhood’s gaze never left him. Growing up with two big brothers, he had to pay attention. “Paul was aware,” Price, the oldest by two years, says. “Had to be,” Patrick adds. “But you could always tell exactly where Paul was at,” Chelsea says “from the look in his eyes.” So see here, now, the wide, bright eyes of Paul Oliver. Remember them. When they close, yours must open.

First Note

You end up loving so much, but first you love a voice — We hand it off to Herschel, there’s a hole. 5… 10 … 12 … He’s running over people. Oh you, Herschel Walker! — the gravel-throated, urgency lights you all up.

The voice belongs to Larry Munson from Hennepin County, Minnesota. He served as a medic in the Second World War, played piano for Sinatra. His broadcast voice was cut in Devils Lake, North Dakota.

Focus on Sport/Getty Images

Above: Star UGA running back Hershel Walker

You’re a child. You know none of this. You don’t know he got his break following Curt Gowdy on KFBC as the play-by-play voice of the Wyoming Cowboys. You’re four years old in 1980. Georgia loses just four games over the next four years. In those seasons and in that voice, you hear in his pronouns (“we,” “us,” “our,” and “them,” “they,” “these people”), a primal claim for home itself.

You’re 10 when your dad takes you to your first Georgia game (Duke, ‘86 season opener). TV simplifies football. From the stands in Sanford Stadium, the action feels distant, disconnected. Your dad, a native Hoosier, watches with Zen detachment. Sensing your confusion, he tells you to watch one player and not just the quarterback. Note the position. Study his movements. See his body language. Mark his adjustments.

So you focus on a single player. Troy Sadowski. You note the position. Tight end. You watch the pattern. And then, you move to the next. Cassius Osborn. Wide Receiver. And you repeat. Gradually, the game unfolds.

Your father claims to root for both Georgia and the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. If pressed for his favorite, he’ll say, “The Atlanta Falcons.” But you remember how he tossed you in the air after Herschel went airborne against Notre Dame. You recall how he and your mother led you in breathing exercises as you wept through the final seconds of the 27-23 loss against Penn State in the ‘83 Sugar Bowl.

In the second quarter of that ho-hum ‘86 season opener, your dad takes off his headphones and places them on your head. The radio runs hot with Munson’s voice. These people are in this thing and don’t think for a moment they’ll stop coming at us.

On Sunday nights you call the Bulldog Hotline on AM750 WSB to speak with Georgia head coach Vince Dooley and Larry Munson. Munson growls and fumbles your name every time. “Let’s go to … Jerome … in Decatur. Jerome, whaddya got?”

“Coach Dooley,” your pre-pre-pubescent voice begins, “can we bring back the red road pants that Herschel wore against Tennessee?” And later: “Coach, what’s your favorite Herschel memory?” Also too: “Coach, how awesome was Herschel?”

On those Sunday nights, after Munson signs off, WSB plays Billy Graham’s Hour of Decision. You need Graham’s somnolent tones and drowsy hymns as your blood runs hot with a voice that pounds with your heart in the dark: Herschel, Georgia, Touchdown.

The Moment: All on Paul

On Nov. 25, 2006, Paul Oliver was tasked with the impossible. Stop No. 21.

The demands of his assignment stretched from the sawdust floor of Holcomb’s Barbeque in White Plains, Georgia, to the high-rise condos of Midtown Atlanta. For more than 20 years, Georgia fans had waited for the next Herschel: a transcendent talent who’d restore national glory. But Walker was gone. So we waited and winced in ‘90 as Tech claimed a national title. Through four presidents, an Olympics in Atlanta, and two wars in Iraq — we waited — weathering the rise of Tennessee and Florida’s reign. And every season, Larry Munson warned believers from Camilla’s pecan groves to Chickamauga’s cloudy peaks: there’d never be another 34.

Twenty-one wasn’t a running back. The greatest talent the Peach State had produced in a generation was a wide receiver and a Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket. The mind boggled, but since his days at Sandy Creek High School in Tyrone, everything Calvin Johnson did boggled the mind. With size like Herschel, skill like Herschel, Johnson was Herschel-like, too, in his humility. After a physics-defying catch against NC State, the All-American, Biletnikoff winner, allowed himself: “I’m amazed myself at that one.” State coach Chuck Amato put it differently. “He’s got a cape and he’s got an ‘S’ on his chest.”

#8: Paul Oliver

Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

#21: Calvin Johnson

Rob Tringali/Sportschrome/Getty Images

Tech soared into Athens on Johnson’s coattails at 9-2 and already 2006 ACC Coastal Division Champs. While there’s no exact phrase for the fullness of the Indian summer that greeted all of us pouring into Sanford Stadium that Saturday, get the picture: The second day after Thanksgiving. Seventy degrees. Sunshine. Treetops all fire and flame. Tech and Georgia: the 99^th year of Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate. Tech and Georgia: the 100-yard field, faded down both hashes, lined and shadowed with harvest, with consequence.

At 7-4, Georgia had already dropped games to Vanderbilt and Kentucky. In a dismal season, Paul Oliver’s emergence at corner was one of Georgia’s few bright spots. Back in October, Bulldogs fans took to AM sports radio and message boards with calls for Oliver to play both ways, like Champ Bailey years before. Oliver, a Parade High School All-American at Harrison, who’d also starred at receiver and returner, deflected the attention. “There is a lot of talent over there [on offense] and those guys are really capable of making plays,” he said. “It is just a matter of doing it.”

Doing it against 21 was up to Paul, but he wouldn’t be alone. Safety Tra Battle, a 5′10 former walk-on who’d hit and ball-hawked his way into an All-American senior captain, was one of Paul’s roommates. “Watching film that week, we saw teams doubling Calvin,” Tra remembers. “We weren’t going to do any of that. We trusted our scheme. We trusted Paul.”

Tra had reason to trust. Two weeks earlier, against fifth-ranked Auburn on the road, they had been nearly perfect and saved Georgia’s season. Tra had three interceptions, a touchdown; Paul posted a pick, a sack, and two tackles for losses. Now, they needed an encore.

Mike Zarrilli/Getty Images

“You know, I should’ve picked it.”— Tra Battle

Standing in section 109, I shielded my eyes as Tech — white tops, gold pants — swarmed the field, sun blazing off their brilliant golden helmets. Georgia countered. Storming out of the tunnel in silver britches, the Bulldogs formed a great wave of red — fire alarm red — and poured onto the field. We rose and roared.

My Bulldog date, Alice, who would later become my wife, squeezed my hand. Eric, my Bulldog buddy, put his arm on my shoulder and howled.

Toe met leather and Tech received the kickoff. On first down, Tech went deep, but Paul and Tra converged on 21. Incomplete. Tra, who yielded half-a-foot to Johnson, shot to his feet barking. Calvin and Paul jogged back silently. Battle kept jawing. “You know,” Tra says, watching the replay this summer, “I should’ve picked it.”

Over the next four hours, Tra did the talking as Paul did it all. Paul shadowed, hand-fought, and hounded Calvin Johnson and beat him on every contested ball. Johnson’s stat line for the day: two receptions, 13 yards.

“We had a wolverine on Calvin Johnson the whole game,” defensive lineman Ray Gant told reporters moments after Georgia’s 15-13 victory. “Paul Oliver played like a champion today.” Georgia’s defensive coordinator Willie Martinez said, “We put it all on Paul. To do what he did, that’s hard. That tells you what kind of player he is.”

Many of us already suspected what kind of player Paul was. The year before — 2005 — I stood in section 109 as Oliver made one of the almost great plays in Georgia history. Against Auburn that night, he was everywhere: Six tackles, two caused fumbles, a pick. With less than two minutes remaining, Georgia protected a two-point lead.

On fourth-and-10, Auburn came to the line with Georgia’s national ranking of No. 4 and Auburn’s of No. 6, in the balance. I watched Paul and Tra on the far side of the field. As Auburn’s quarterback Brandon Cox took the snap and looked downfield, Auburn receiver Devin Aromashodu found a vast expanse of green — wide open — and caught the ball. He soon shook Tra and streaked for the end zone, but a bright red blur had an angle.

As Paul gained on Aromashodu, my own neuronal lightening cast the ghost of Alabama’s George Teague yanking the ball from Miami’s Lamar Thomas in the ‘93 Sugar Bowl. While Teague rode and ripped, Paul leapt and punched and out came the ball.

The Immaculate Fumble. The oblong ball, however, would not obey and rolled out the back of the end zone. The officials huddled, awarded Auburn the ball on the 3-yard line. Milking the clock, Auburn chipped in a field goal, and celebrated. What happened to Tra? Where was Tra?

One true story is that Georgia called Cover-3 and Tra Battle peeled out in cover 2. Another true story ran online the next morning. Concussion Limited Battle. Tra sustained the brain injury in a collision with a teammate before the half. Woozy, unsettled, Tra managed to avoid detection, told trainers he was fine, and played the rest of the game.

Ten years later, at Cream & Shuga Coffee in Jefferson, Georgia, Tra Battle sits across from me at a table by the window with his 4-year-old son, Emmanuel. When I ask about Aromashadu’s catch and Paul’s leap, Tra shakes his head. The entire second half is a blank. The question Where was Tra? is a riddle even for neuroscientists. Tra was on advanced autopilot. Tra was playing zombie-ball. Tra was there, but not there.

Tra and I watch the play on YouTube more than once. “When Paul punched the ball out,” Tra says, “that’s when I woke up.” Tra leans closer and we peer into another slow motion ESPN replay of Paul Oliver catapulting through space. “Right there,” Tra sighs, “that’s when … I reappeared.”

After the game, Tra wandered the sidelines, staring at the lights. Teammates gently explained that the game was over.

But at the end of the ‘06 season, Tra’s “missed assignment” and Paul’s leaping almost-heroics from ‘05, fit neatly into a new narrative. Against Georgia’s two most historic and hated rivals, Tra Battle had earned redemption and Paul Oliver validation.

The final moment with Tech even suggested a perfect ending. With a minute left, Paul picked off the final pass intended for Johnson. Lingering on the ground, he clutched the ball to his chest. Victory, Georgia. I kissed Alice, hugged Eric, and turned to find Paul Oliver. As the stadium — 92,746 — shook, Paul lay motionless near the far sideline.

Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

As teammates and trainers circled Paul, the CBS broadcast crew told viewers at home that freshman Matthew Stafford, with his modest 171 yards passing and one touchdown, was The Ruby Tuesday Player of the Game. In the stands, we knew better.

Tech’s defense slinked back onto the field. Was Paul moving? Sitting up? Officials stopped the clock for the young man still on the hard earth. On the Tech sideline, Calvin Johnson stood with his hands on his hips, staring past the open west end zone to a spot on the horizon where the sun had already set.

A great ring of hands gathered Paul up and he walked off the field, recovering his breath with each step. The clock started again. Stomping, we hollered unintelligible hallelujahs into the night as Paul Oliver’s moment became our moment, his triumph, our own.

After one final knee, with time expiring, Matt Stafford turned and flung the ball up into a future where he and Calvin Johnson would team together as Detroit Lions and Paul and Tra would both be San Diego Chargers.

George Gojkovich/Getty Images

Photo courtesy Chelsea Oliver

Donald Miralle/Getty Images

In California, Paul married his college sweetheart Chelsea, a volleyball standout at UGA, and native of Southern California. They had two dogs — Dooley and Herschel. And then came the little ones, Simeon and Silas. Paul played four seasons with the Chargers, where he was converted to safety. Appearing in 57 games, he totaled four interceptions and 113 tackles, and when he became a free agent, he signed with the Saints. Paul saw the NFL much like his mother would tell him: you are a manual laborer, you work with your hands, this is your job.

Kissing Chelsea goodbye in the mornings, he’d announce, “I’m going to work.”

That work came with occupational hazards and dangers unacknowledged by his employer. In 2010, Paul sustained a concussion against the Raiders that blacked out the entire second half. He never left the field. Later, with the Saints, in a preseason game in Oxnard, Paul tackled Raider Michael Bush on the sideline, but was slow getting up.

Chelsea didn’t hear from him. Simeon was only a few a months old and Paul had been calling and Skyping multiple times a day. Now she called and texted, frantic. Finally, after two days she got a hold of him on Skype. With bloodshot eyes, Paul told her that he’d been concussed again and that he’d call soon.

His brain needed to rest. The Saints put him on injured reserve. The Chargers needed veteran help in the defensive secondary. Paul put on his pads, cleats, and helmet and went back to work in San Diego.

Paul was never the same.

That last year in San Diego, Chelsea watched Paul transform. Previously, he’d map out their days and meals — looking for places to take Dooley and Herschel, new recipes to cook, new restaurants to try. Paul had told Chelsea he had wanted to play in the NFL for 10 years. Now, he had a constant headache. Now, he came home and sank into the sofa with his iPad. Or he retreated upstairs into silence and darkness.

The 2011 season was Paul’s last in the NFL. The family stayed in San Diego another year. Paul tried to recharge. The Titans brought him in for a workout, but didn’t sign him. Physically, he couldn’t lift weights or run without the headaches, the perpetual jackhammer and icepick. In 2013, Paul packed his family up and moved back home to Kennesaw. He wanted his brothers and his mother to know his family. He knew he was taking Chelsea away from hers, so he began a mission to convince her brother Garrett to move to Georgia, too. Paul surrounded himself and Chelsea with a network of family and best friends so they could begin their next chapter.

That chapter back in Georgia would be brief: While Chelsea coached high school volleyball, Paul stayed home, a dad. He’d taken care of his NFL money and talked to Price about opening a turnkey company (“Prestige”) as owner and general contractor. Using Price’s knowledge in residence management and maintenance and his father-in-law’s experience in general contracting, Paul saw potential. Coaching, too, was an option. Both Price and Patrick coached in the Cobb County youth football league. From the outside, Paul had options, connections, resources, futures to choose. But in his every waking moment, his brain was betraying him.

You know this story, even if you don’t know Paul’s story. From years of football, Paul had sustained repeated blows to the head. Season after season, the avalanche of these hits cascaded into microscopic neurological protein deposits known as tau. These proteins wrapped and tangled around brain vessels and cells as part of the progressive, neurological disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) a progressive degenerative disease of the brain caused by repetitive trauma. Robbing reason, stealing the keys to mood, ransacking memory, CTE erases the very essence of what allows for a human being.

Yet, he was still Paul. Sure, he kept asking Price and Patrick for recommendations on garage door openers. Yes, he told his best friend Andy he didn’t feel quite right. But do you repeat yourself? Lose things? Sometimes, inexplicably, feel off? Paul remained the undisputed champ of every backyard barbecue, the cookout king, master of the grill. Smiling as he handed you your plate, Paul asked you about your dog, your job, your day.

Back home, exhausted, Paul unraveled. He blew up at Chelsea: shoving her, kicking her, pulling her hair. Before, he rarely raised his voice and never his hands. The next day, he’d apologize as if it had all been a bad dream. “Something’s wrong with me,” he said, “I can’t control myself.” Paul pleaded — the next time he fell apart Chelsea should repeat the names of their sons. “Just say Simeon and Silas,” Paul said, “until I snap out of it.”

Did it work?

“No,” Chelsea says. “Well, at first. The first few times it did.”

On Sept. 17, 2013 Paul sat across from Chelsea’s father, Jeff Young, at the dining room table in the ranch home where Chelsea grew up in Fountain Valley, California. They drank wine and talked into the night. Paul was in Orange County for a full-body scan from the neck down. The receipt for glory? A double hip replacement by age 40; severely impaired shoulders; two Achilles hanging by threads; two swollen hands buckshot with bone chips. He was 29 years old. Two weeks later doctors planned to conduct neurological tests and a brain scan.

Jeff poured them both another glass and asked Paul how he even managed get around. Paul smiled and shook his head. What he really wanted to know about was his brain. Paul told Jeff his memory was slipping. Sometimes he’d walk into rooms without knowing why. At the grocery store, he’d turn down an aisle and just stare. He rarely left the home.

“Something,” Paul said, “is going on with my brain.”

They discussed the return trip: Paul and Chelsea and the boys would stay with Jeff. Chelsea would see her two brothers and sister. Simeon and Silas would play with their cousins at the beach. And Paul would receive a full-battery of neurological testing.

Before Paul left, per custom, Jeff wrapped him in a bear hug. In Georgia you might shake hands, Jeff warned Paul early on, but in California we hug.

Seven days later, on Sept. 24, 2013, 11 years to the day of Mike Webster’s death, Paul Oliver woke to a world he could no longer recognize or sort. “That morning,” Chelsea says, “his eyes were almost completely glazed over.”

They argued that afternoon. Paul railed about dirty dishes in the sink, but the sink was empty. Into the evening, he raged. Patrick was on his way to the house, but Paul called and told him not to come over. Chelsea said she was leaving the house with the boys. Paul hopped over the baby gate and climbed the stairs to their bedroom. He went to the dresser and grabbed a recently purchased handgun. Standing atop the landing, with Chelsea looking up, Paul pointed the gun to his head.

No one wants to hear what happens next. And I don’t want to tell it. The moment requires both facing and turning away. But even in turning, maybe we can recover a measure of what’s owed Paul Oliver while doing some basic cost accounting with the game we love.

The day after, Jeff and Garrett Young flew a red-eye from California into Atlanta. Garett and Paul’s Uncle David first entered the quiet and empty home. Their instructions were clear: one high chair, the clean clothesbasket in the laundry room, and two sippy cups.

Love Note: October 1996

When did you realize you loved it in a way you couldn’t love anything else? Maybe you were in Bryant-Denny Stadium on the fourth Saturday of October 1996. Alabama is up 13-0, but Peyton — squinting hard through a driving rain — has Tennessee on the march.

As sheets of rain fall on Manning and the 100,000 souls in every possible shade of orange poncho in Knoxville, you sit bone-dry and alone in Tuscaloosa.

Lance King/Replay Photos via Getty Images

You’re a college sophomore and member of the Speech and Debate team. You’ve been eliminated from each event after round one at the University of Alabama Invitational. The judges let you know the score. Style: too conversational, too casual. Argumentation: grandiose, hyperbolic. Eliminate the personal pronoun. Hands out of pockets. Tighten your tie. No suit? You’re 20; you write bad poetry. You like to think yourself as a seer of secret truths, a lyrical stylist. You don’t own a suit.

Exiled, you wander the deserted quad, under the shade of magnolias. Strolling past Denny Chimes, the campanile tower, you stand at the entrance of Foster Auditorium where George Wallace shrieked against the “unwelcomed, unwanted, and unwarranted.”

In the lobby of a student center, you find the game on a TV. A semi-circle of old folks in wheelchairs, all white, huddle in front of the muted large-screen. Each senior citizen holds matching gray stuffed elephants in Crimson Tide sweaters. Two black nurses, in starched white, keep an eye on the drips and oxygen tanks. Are they alumni? Did they watch Namath and Stabler? Does superstition anchor them here?

You could ask, but that would break the spell with words.

One nurse bites her nails on third downs as the other leafs through a magazine. The old folks, clutching their stuffed dolls, shake their heads as Peyton busies himself with being Peyton: the dutiful honor student, ruthlessly efficient, somehow joyless.

You decide for some fresh air.

The sign on the chain-linked gate clearly defines trespassing as a criminal offense, but if the city fathers truly mean it, would the 15-foot fence be so climbable?

Crows line the stadium’s upper deck. Pigeons hunt between the bleachers. Stray crimson streamers stick to the concrete, plastered by bourbon and Coke. In Knoxville, along the banks of the Tennessee River, the fourth quarter begins, but in Tuscaloosa, inside the enormous silence, you dream of kickoffs.

LCDM Universal History Archive/Getty Images

Spencer Weiner/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

“It’s all in the balance,” Faulkner writes in Intruder in the Dust, “it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun.” While Faulkner was imagining Pickett’s charge, for future generations those fields were 100 yards long. Before playing Yale in 1910, Vanderbilt coach Dan McGugin told his team, “It is the South versus the North, Confederate against Yankee. Remember the campfires of your fathers and forefathers.” On the road, teams like Virginia wore gray. When Ohio State went south to play Auburn in 1917, The Birmingham News noted: “(The) game will be fought in the proud shadow of the Confederacy, and the grandfathers of these southern boys … were the men that hurled back those Yankee invaders.” After VMI defeated Penn in Philadelphia in 1922, the VMI band struck up “Dixie” and soon the tradition spread throughout the South.

If college players were mock soldiers, the original soldiers had fans too. Before the First Battle of Bull Run, Union Captain John Tidball noted the gathering crowd:

They came in all manner of ways, some in stylish carriages, others in city hacks … everybody seemed to have taken a general holiday … All manner of people were represented in this crowd, from the most grave and noble senators to hotel waiters.

While the D.C. crowd cheered for the North, they were rooting for the grandeur of the contest, something ancient. William Howard Russell, London Times, notes:

The spectators were all excited, and a lady with an opera glass who was near me was quite beside herself when an unusually heavy discharge roused the current of her blood — ”That is splendid, Oh my! Is not that first rate?”

Those Civil War tailgates couldn’t last through the slaughter that followed. Demure eyes turned from the terror and prayed. There would be no picnics at the Hornet’s Nest in Shiloh, the wall at Fredericksburg, or Fort Pillow and Donaldson. Home fronts vanished into front lines. Farms and fields flipped overnight into amputation tents and mass graves. Southerners sought safety from the horror, and if all we’d known was pillage, plunder and the perpetual whip, we lit out for a point behind the blue lines toward freedom.

Afterward, we held no Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, no public forums in schools and churches to air our grievances and sort responsibility. We burned the churches and schools and reaped the coals and ashes. And in time, we erected high school altars and college coliseums as staging grounds for some irrecoverable violence.

Oh, but what grounds! Start in the Carolina Lowcountry and Summerville High, where rice once ruled. Ride west along the Black Belt, where flesh was flayed for short crop cotton on the plains of Valdosta, home of the Wildcats, 23-time Georgia State champs. Dip south into the everglades, into Pahokee, into the Muck Bowl. Scoop the deep dark loam that yielded so much torture and sugar. Go west, past Birmingham’s furnaces, over Red Mountain, through the bluffs of Natchez, and across that big brown river. Tap the brakes as you enter the villages and hamlets of Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas.

Under those autumn lights, roars go up for young men who take the field in the singular and furious name of something we can’t fully fathom.

This frenzy crests in stadiums throughout the SEC. Take measure on a Saturday night in Tiger Stadium, late in quarter four, in the Valley marked Death. Mark the trembling the earth. Stand in Jordan-Hare as the golden war eagle circles the field with sunlight clipping its wings. Note the crack at your chest. Hear — at Georgia — the lone trumpeter in the upper deck of the south stands split the silence before kickoff with the first seven notes of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Keep one eye dry. At least try.

Steve Franz/LSU/Collegiate Images/ Getty Images

The thunderclap of the SEC isn’t rooted in dusty echoes of New York press box scribes. Our pageantry isn’t a tournament of roses. Antique jugs, axes, and wooden buckets are not our prizes. Instead, crackling through the sonic southern nights is the leftover voltage from our American Civil War — agony, fury, and jubilee.

Before you leave, you know you must. As the sun sets, you walk onto the field and pace the sideline. The moment requires words, but they have to be earned. Unsure of which acreage he stalked, you march across the 50, and patrol the western sideline too. Under an almost crimson sky, with your hands in your pockets, you say: Bear. Sugar. Sugar Bowl. Sugar Bear. Paul Bear.

Pallbearer. Football.

Behind The Wheel

Price Oliver accelerated through traffic and missed his turn. Damn, he thought. He’d driven the route countless times. On the night his youngest brother died, Price got a call from Patrick giving him the news. Price thought Patrick and Paul were pulling a prank. Not funny, Price said. Patrick said he wasn’t joking and to get to Paul’s house now. Price hung up and hit the gas. Not funny fellas.

Photo courtesy Price Oliver

Left-right: Patrick, Paul and Price Oliver

The Oliver brothers had recently lost both their grandfather, Simeon Scandrett, the family patriarch, and their Uncle Peter. The boys’ own father was out of the picture, but they had father figures, in their uncles and grandfather, next door in Kennesaw off Hadaway Road. The land sat a few miles from Kennesaw Mountain, where Sherman clashed with Confederate forces. Simeon had cut trails through the pine-studded acreage with a Bobcat bulldozer, connecting the three family homes. The Oliver brothers fished, chased dogs, played extra-extra inning baseball with cousins, ran from dogs, scrambled up trees, built intricate forts, fought pinecone wars, and for a long time didn’t know that they were poor.

Price called Paul’s cell. No answer. He missed a turn, cursed, tried Paul again and again, voicemail. Seriously guys?C’mon.

When the water was shut off, they hiked in shifts to Simeon’s house with buckets. When the electricity was cut, Simeon supplied flashlights and candles. When the random pickup stopped in the cover of night on Hadaway — with its passengers spilling out squealing nigger this nigger that while wielding baseball bats to the family mailbox — Simeon Scandrett, a Korean War vet, made sure the box was back up by morning. He instructed his grandsons that when they got the mail to bring the mailbox up, too. And in the mornings, before the school bus arrived, Price, Patrick or Paul would carry the mailbox from the porch back down the drive and plant it into the red soil under a hard rising sun.

A joke like this constituted a genuine brotherly tiff. Price would have to punch both kid brothers square in the chest, without word or warning.

He first spotted the parked police cars, the crime investigation van, the quiet, and then Price knew what he already knew: you don’t joke around about something like this.

“Bald Head is gone,” the late night text read. “I think he took his own life.” The message, from former Georgia teammate Mario Raley, sent Chris Burgett outside and under the stars. His first thoughts went to Chelsea and the boys. And then he thought of his old roommate. As one of the best high school running backs in Georgia in 1999, Chris had lead Chattahoochee over Paul’s Harrison team in the playoffs. At Georgia, Chris switched to the defensive secondary and formed a bond with Paul. They’d spent late nights in their dorm solving the problems of the world, bumping music, and casting their own futures. Chris had a million questions, but one took hold and would not let go: why?

Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Above: UGA coach Mark Richt

The night after Paul Oliver died, Georgia coach Mark Richt received a late call. The voice was indistinct. The caller choked back tears. It took Richt a few minutes to hear the words of his former captain. Tra Battle had been driving all day up and down the back roads between Athens and Jefferson in northeast Georgia. He’d parked his car on the bridge of the Bear Creek Reservoir, a few feet from the water. Occasionally, he’d thought of suicide during his depression once his playing days were over. Now, Tra told his former coach he was scared. He told Richt he wasn’t sure all of what Paul was going through, but he felt he was going to do the same.

“I kept trying to rationalize why. Initially, I assumed he was going through the same thing as me. Maybe he felt as I felt emotionally,” Tra tells me. “By the point I got to Bear Creek I felt, maybe this is the way, maybe this is what should happened, maybe this is how I end the problems.”

Richt told Tra to come to his house right away.

That same evening, Hall of Fame linebacker Harry Carson gave a talk in Boston for an advance screening of the PBS Frontline documentary, League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis. After the showing, Carson fielded questions. One of the very first questions was about Paul Oliver.

Carson connected Oliver’s death to blows to the head sustained in football. Here Carson spoke from experience. Drafted in 1976, Carson found that by 1981 he would become unexpectedly depressed and suicidal. He had to resist the urge to drive his car off the Tappan Zee Bridge and into the Hudson River. Carson noted other changes too: a slower memory, delayed speech. He filed these feelings away and played seven more seasons. After retiring, he was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome.

I asked Harry Carson over the phone in the summer of 2015, why he spoke out that night about Paul Oliver. “I’ve been speaking out for some time because I know that there are players out there who are suffering. I want them to know that they are not alone.”

Football players, by nature, feel the need for stoicism. But there is a tipping point, according to Carson, where strength becomes weakness. “Most of us are not aware of what we experience neurologically. We are trained, sometimes overtly, to not be vulnerable or admit to pain. Suck it up. Don’t cry.”

Jay Dickman/Getty Images

Above: HOF linebacker Harry Carson plays against the Dallas Cowboys

League of Denial, which debuted on PBS two weeks after Paul died, depicts the discovery of CTE by Dr. Bennet Omalu and Mike Webster’s horrific demise caused by the disease. During his decline, a consulting doctor asked Webster if he’d ever been in a car accident? “Oh,” Webster said in a humor that betrayed his condition, “probably about 25,000 times or so.”

According to Stefan Duma, a professor at Virginia Tech, who has been studying the G-forces in football collisions since 2004, this number of 25,000 is actually “highly probable.” Duma also notes that not all car crashes are created equal. Some are mere fender benders and most football hits register somewhere on the car crash rank of 20-30 G-forces. Concussions are believed to occur at 90 G and above. However, recent studies by Professor Eric Nauman and his team at Purdue University have revealed that it is precisely these repetitive lower end collisions, where concussions aren’t even registered, that can most dramatically impact and alter the integrity of a brain. The impact is cumulative. The damage is done in doses.

An automobile is designed to absorb impact — the “crumple zones” absorb energy, protecting the driver and passengers. A football helmet, a hard plastic encasing, prevents skull fractures and rarely cracks, but it does not absorb the energy to protect the brain. In the course of any game, where up to 22 individual car wrecks can occur on a single play, no helmet can’t stop the human brain for sloshing and slamming into the skull. And one major symptom from this brain trauma — that almost took Harry Carson over the Tappan Zee Bridge and perhaps drove Tra to the edge of Bear Creek — are ideations of suicide.

While Carson managed to steady the wheel, for others it turns. Former Pittsburgh Steelers offensive lineman Justin Strzelczyk weaved through on-coming traffic at 100 mph, heading the wrong way on I-90 in central New York, before colliding with a diesel tanker. The plume of smoke was spotted a mile away. In Charlotte, Chris Henry, a wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals, stood in the bed of a speeding bright yellow F-150, arguing with the driver, his fiancé, before falling to his death on Oakdale Road. Two years before his death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Hall of Fame linebacker Junior Seau, headed south on Carlsbad Boulevard in southern California and hurled his silver Escalade over a guardrail, down a rocky cliff, and toward the morning surf.

Strzelcyk died in 2004; Henry in 2009; Seau in 2012. All had CTE.

Paul Oliver had been dead one week when I passed out copies of James Wright’s poem “Autumn Begins in Martin’s Ferry, Ohio” to my first period high school writing students in Arvada, Colorado on October 1, 2013.

For 15 years, I’ve handed out copies of Wright’s poem during the first week of October. The poem depicts fathers in eastern Ohio working unforgiving jobs while their wives sink under the weight of loneliness. Together, though, they share football, the love of their sons.

That October morning, I stood in front of a room of teenagers, gazing at the words I knew by heart, unable to read. My job is to read — the students write — together we discuss. I stared at the lines, stumbled, and stopped. A hard pause. Sorry guys. A hand in the back. Yes? A volunteer. Thank you. A student finished the last stanza I could not start:

Therefore,

Their sons grow suicidally beautiful

At the beginning of October

And gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.

Tragedy would not follow tragedy that night at Bear Creek Reservoir. Tra Battle put his car in reverse and drove to Richt’s home. When Georgia took the field against No. 6 ranked LSU days later in Athens, the team wore black stickers on the back of the helmet. “PO.”

Chris Burgett stared at the ceiling and remembered how he and Tra had to joke around in practice to get Paul to smile. When the pads were on, Paul was all business. Off the field, even years later, Paul remained the humble guy who Chris counted as a brother. Even in the NFL, Paul’s close friends were teammates like Mike Tolbert, who could count on one hand how many stoplights were in their hometown. Chris remembered something else too: he and Paul had promised each other when they were roommates at Georgia that they would start a foundation one day to educate and empower children. Both had been raised in affluent north metro Atlanta suburbs — Kennesaw and Alpharetta — as black kids in a white sea. They wanted to give back. They also figured they had time to chart that course.

Hours after Paul Oliver died, Price Oliver parked his pickup as his brother Patrick rounded the corner from the driveway. Price was a sprinter in high school. He held the Harrison High School record in 100 meters for more than a decade and still holds the record for 200 meters. Patrick, a state finalist his senior year for powerlifting — bench pressing 315, squatting 415, deadlifting 450 — opened his large arms and embraced his brother. Without a word, they wept. Paul, their “little big brother” had Price’s speed and Patrick’s strength and a style that was his own. The three had always moved as one, but as Price and Patrick gathered themselves and walked to Chelsea and the boys, they took their first steps into a world unknown.

Georgia played the 2013 season with the PO stickers on the back of the helmet, but in 2014 the stickers were gone. My questions remained and ran through October, into the holy wars of November, and beyond bowl season. So in the summer of ‘15, I packed my car and headed to Georgia. The highlights and victories — were they the sum of my bargain with Paul Oliver? What are the limits and terms between player and fan? Was I not entertained?

Camp: June 12, 2015

The first whistle blows at 9 a.m. — 50 high school kids from Metro Atlanta stretch and warm-up. Their cadence, clapping, and calisthenics echo through the fog and mist hugging the pines that surround Cobleigh Field at Harrison High School.

Legions of American high school football players this morning are doing the same. But these players at the Paul Oliver Football and Life Skills Camp might be the first to attend a camp whose goal is to not only improve their skills, but to raise awareness of CTE.

The white and black kids self-segregate into straight lines. Each wears a camp T-shirt with Paul’s No. 27 on the back. Counselors and coaches — former University of Georgia, and Harrison teammates and opponents — stroll down the lines, including Patrick and Price Oliver.

During his senior year, Patrick teamed with Paul in his transcendent junior season. Too amped to sit still, Price had to watch alone as his little brothers perfected moves they first mastered on Hadaway against each other. Price, who now works as a maintenance supervisor at Camden Properties, and Patrick, who works for Coca-Cola, haven’t stepped on this field in ages. Both smile as the sun bears down on the kids clapping and chanting.

Strolling through the lines of campers, twirling a whistle, walks Chris Burgett. The more Chris read after Paul died, the less he slept. The less he slept, the more he read. Could playing football result in brain damage? When the link between Paul and CTE was confirmed, Chris reached out to Chelsea. Together, they formed The Oliver Tree Foundation: a non-profit organization to empower young athletes and promote awareness about CTE. Chris knew Paul would spear a foundation; he didn’t expect the work of that foundation to be done without Paul.

High up in the stands is a solitary figure, a woman in a white blouse and blue pants. She sips from a Dasani water bottle. It’s unclear if she’s smiling or squinting from the sun. As a whistle blows and the camp divides into stations, Price walks closer and says:

“That’s mom. That’s where she always sat. And she never missed a game.”

Dorsey Levens, the longtime Green Bay Packer and former Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket, stands by the track, watching football without the pop, thud, or crack from helmets or pads. Levens, who has made a documentary Bell Rung on concussions and CTE, is the camp’s keynote speaker.

As Levens watches, I ask if he feels the paradox.

“Totally,” he says, without me having to unpack the particular paradox.

“Every time I step onto a football field I feel it.”

Later, as we talk on the phone, Levens explains. He watches the sport, follows it closely, even plays fantasy football, but it’s not the same.

“I watch the game differently now,” he says.

How so?

“I cringe a lot more.”

As the campers take a knee and gather around, Dorsey Levens tells a basketball story. During his junior year, in the New York High School State Championship, he missed a critical late free throw. He decided the next summer he’d do whatever it took to be in the best shape possible. So he woke up early and lifted. In the afternoons, he ran. He shot free throws and jumped rope into the night.

“I made a choice to be different. How many of you have made the choice to be different?”

Focus on Sport/Getty Images

“I watch the game differently now … I cringe a lot more” — Dorsey Levens

Levens’ message is boilerplate sports camp, but his presence commands attention. As he speaks, I realize I’m nodding along and then notice other coaches doing the same. Levens has a second message for the campers. “The sport you’re playing is violent, OK? You must be aware of all sorts of things. But first and foremost be aware of your own health. Especially your brain. Pay attention to your head.”

He tells the group that when they see stars, experience fogginess, or get their ‘bell rung’ that means, “You’ve had a concussion. Get off the field. Tell a coach.”

The scenario he describes feels at odds with the basic DNA of football. A high school pulling guard, perfectly and violent executes a block, but feels woozy, dinged, and instead of going back to the huddle, jogs to the sideline? A coach greets him with a series of questions that do not belittle his toughness, patriotism, or the legitimacy of his birth, but gauge his baseline neurological functioning?

Yes. If football is to have a future, such conversations might be required.

When I ask Levens, a veteran of 11 NFL seasons, if he thinks he might have CTE, he doesn’t hesitate: “I think we all do. All of us who played at a high level. We have some form of it.” He knows a former teammate who has just recently been diagnosed with dementia and a prominent former player who spends days inside with the lights out, ‘Going Dark.’ When I ask Levens if his son will play someday, he says, “No way. My child will not step onto a football field.” He walks that back a bit and measures his words: “Let’s put it this way. Should it come up, it would be a very, very careful conversation.”

As he wraps up with the campers under a scorching sun, the kids close out and head for lunch. Coaches get in line with their phones to pose for pictures. Levens smiles, accommodates, and makes sure he speaks with Patrick, Price, Chris and Mrs. Oliver.

Lunch is the staple of every Metro Atlanta sports camp for decades: soggy Chick-fil-A Chicken sandwiches (two pickles) with bottled water. The groups of black and white now blur: some sit together and complain about the pickles or Algebra II; others gossip about girls; some rag each other about their shoes; others quote Drake lyrics back and forth.

The whistle blows and the collective groan goes up. “Seven-on-seven,” a coach calls out.

A bank of clouds block the sun and a drizzle starts. Perfect weather for a camper, not so for an English teacher or a mom in the bleachers. I move to the sideline where Janice Oliver now stands. When the rain picks up, we both head for cover.

As a single mom, who managed a day care, raised three boys, and took night classes for ten years at Kennesaw State University to complete her degree, Janice Oliver does not suffer foolishness. These days, she works for the state in helping implement and ensure delivery of the HOPE Scholarship at universities and college throughout Georgia.

We talk education policy, the pleasures and perils of teaching, and before long our talk turns to Paul. She shares what many will tell me on this day: they didn’t see it coming.

Days before he died, Janice watched Paul put Simeon, age 2, in a timeout. Simeon protested. Paul gently put him back. Simeon tried to escape. Paul, even more patiently, redirected. Simeon asked for his truck, but Paul explained timeout was for thinking about his actions.

“Paul was a good father,” Janice says. “And he loved those boys.”

Laughter from the field is punctuated with shouts. The sun is shining and rain is pouring: a Georgia monsoon. One seven-on-seven game is quarterbacked by Derrick Tinsley, a former star running back at Marietta High School and later with Tennessee. Mario Raley, from Independence High School in Charlotte and a former Georgia receiver, leads the other.

I ask Janice if she saw any other signs in Paul when they moved to Georgia.

“You replay events. You wish you’d known. You wish you could go back and help.”

The rain echoes against the bleachers hard and loud.

“But Mrs. Oliver,” I say, “Paul had an aggressive neurological disease. His brain was damaged. What could anyone have done?”

“Can I ask you a question, Mr. Collins?” Janice says.

I tell her she can.

“Are you a parent?”

I tell her I am. Two little girls. Rose and Grace: ages 3 and 8 months.

“Then you know what goes into loving a child,” she says.

Another celebratory whistle blows — three short blasts — touchdown Team Tinsley.

“So you can imagine,” she says.

My imagination reaches for the unimaginable.

Janice Oliver then turns, faces me, and lowers her sunglasses to the bridge of her nose.

“The pain is always and the responsibility is forever,” she says.

When Georgia kicks off months later against Louisiana-Monroe, I’ll hear those words. Later that night when Alabama battles Wisconsin, I’ll hear Janice Oliver’s voice when Badgers safety Michael Caputo takes a routine knee to the helmet. Dazed, Caputo lines up in the Alabama huddle until a Crimson Tide lineman calls to the bench. Wisconsin trainers guide Caputo off the field and away from the fury.

I will hear those words.

The rain lifts and the waves of humidity rise higher. The field radiates its own heat and seems to shiver like an oasis, a mirage.

Paul’s Uncle David Scandrett, who played linebacker at Tennessee, pays a visit. So do former Bulldogs Sean Jones, a safety with the Cleveland Browns, and Fernando Velasco, an offensive lineman with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Tennessee Titans. Other former UGA players BJ Albert and Patrick Croffie shout encouragement. Each player at the camp serves as a reminder — just as every smoker won’t develop cancer and not every boxer will get punch drunk, not every football players will not wage an invisible battle with CTE.

But enough will. And the more one plays, as the hits pile up, so do the odds. According to a recent Frontline report, 96 percent of NFL players examined and 79 percent of all football players who played at the high school level and above have CTE. And as national authors and prominent bloggers announce they’re against football and wash their hands of the gladiatorial blood sport, America’s children continue to play. “We are not advocating the end of American Football, but we are advocating the beginning of open communication about brain injury,” Chris Burgett will tell me in an email later. “We have become advocates to communicate how contact sports can potentially affect an athlete’s health and mental well being from a long-term perspective. There are too many ties between high profile football players and depression, brain injury, and suicide to turn a blind eye.”

When the final whistle blows, Mrs. Oliver comes to the field. The campers — black, white, linemen, skill positions, soaked, stinking and smiling — pass Janice Oliver as she leans against the fence. She’s smiling, too.

The coaches banter and trade barbs from their own glory days at midfield. When Janice approaches, the group goes quiet. Some remove their hats. In the front, they take a knee and everyone forms a semi-circle around Janice Oliver.

“Today was a good day,” she says, “and I want to thank you all for making this special.”

The coaches line up to hug Janice and thank her. Everyone poses for pictures. They all promise to do it next year. Word will spread. The camp will grow. And then the coaches, former teammates and opponents, say goodbye. Life is rarely simple. That’s one reason we need sports. Sports simplify. And the scene at the end of this camp is unmistakable: a grieving mother and her two sons walk off a football field, alone together, missing one.

A week after the camp, I sit in the living room of Andy Elliot’s home in Marietta. Andy was an offensive lineman, a counselor at the camp, and Paul’s best friend. When Paul and Chelsea moved back to Georgia, Andy and his wife Ashley’s back porch was their favorite spot. Paul and Chelsea were looking to buy a house down the street.

Above: Andy Elliot(l) with Patrick and Price Oliver

Often both wives stared as their husbands spoke a language that was all their own, one they perfected in long silences of high school and college, when they’d disappear for days to fish. They grilled whatever they caught along with Po’ Boy Sausages while listening to Nas, Outkast and Pastor Troy.

After Paul died, Chelsea and the boys stayed with Andy and Ashley before they left for California. Getting Simeon ready in the mornings was a challenge. Those duties had been Paul’s. Paul loved spoiling Simeon with candy. To try and maintain a sense of normalcy, everyone made sure Simeon got Kit-Kat candy bars.

“Just a few weeks ago,” Andy says, smiling, “we found a wrapper under the sofa. And then another by the blinds.”

On that October morning in 2013 when Chelsea and the boys drove off with Janice for the Atlanta airport, Andy buckled Simeon into his car seat. “Simeon looked at me with those big eyes … and there was Paul,” Andy says, before his words break off.

Later, I confess that I struggle with the paradox of watching football after knowing what happened to Paul. Andy nods.

“Look, Paul was more than football,” he says. “We didn’t even talk football. We talked about our lives. We talked fishing and music. That day of camp was great, it meant a lot to see everyone, but it’s hard. It’s hard to be around the game.”

Leaving Andy’s house, I drive toward Kennesaw Memorial Park, getting turned around more than once, before pulling into the open gates. Patrick and Price told me where Paul was buried, but Price warned: “You can go there, but Paul isn’t there. Paul is wherever there’s a kid chasing a ball or running from a dog. Paul is with us in the woods as we swap stories. Paul is with those boys right now in California.”

I read the names of strangers. I don’t know a soul buried here. I used to root for one, but as I’m learning, I barely knew him at all. Andy’s statement There was more to Paul bounces against truisms told around tailgates and televisions: It’s only a game, but it’s the only game. And: Football is not a matter of life and death: it’s more important than that.

Up and down the rows of graves in the sweltering midday sun, I keep an unofficial scoreboard. I count: two plastic Mother Marys, one star of David, two ceramic angels, one model car, several deflated balloons, dozens of faded plastic flowers, and three Georgia Bulldog flags. Go Dawgs.

The red and black banners sway in an afternoon breeze that brings neither comfort nor relief.

Grace Note: January 2001

Georgia head coach Mark Richt walks into the Ramsey Student Center in a black leather BCS coat, followed by his newly minted coaching staff. It’s his first Monday on the job.

You do what any self-respecting Georgia fan would. It might be the first day of classes, but there’s plenty of time for introductions. You walk up and offer your hand. He takes it. And then you place your other hand on top of his. It’s probably not the first time he’s been stopped that morning. Probably too not the first time he finds himself praying with a stranger about the program he’d inherited.

“Prayer” might not best capture the tone and content of your exchange. You don’t bow your head or close your eyes. Neither does he. It’s unclear, exactly, what mutual deity you’re petitioning. In Richt’s eyes, you don’t detect motions of the Holy Spirit, but you do catch possible hints and hues of Tom Landry’s cobalt blues.

Scott Cunningham/Getty Images

You don’t say: Sweet God, Coach, this state produces more SEC players than any other. Close the borders. Recruit Rome, Tifton, Austell, Villa Rica, Warner Robins; seal off Stone Mountain, Tucker and all of Metro Atlanta. Shut the state down.

Coach, you don’t whisper, if you can stomach it, watch last season’s Tech film. We had 11 NFL players on defense as Tech quarterback George Godsey — who runs a sub-6 40 — donkey-trotted 33 yards down the sideline untouched.

Coach, you don’t explain, on a dark night in ‘99, we spotted Auburn 38points and allowed the very pedestrian Leard to Daniels combo look like Montana to Rice Reincarnated. No adjustments, no attitude, nothing. Losing happens, you don’t say. Some things you can’t control, but Coach Richt, for the love of God, compete.

Instead, you recite, word for word, The Serenity Prayer. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Then, instead of Amen, you offer, “Coach, welcome to Georgia. There’s work to be done.”

“Well, thank you,” Richt says, your hands still clasped, “We’ll do our best. No one will be working harder.”

Coachspeak, of course. Cliché, sure. Every coach gets hamstrung by the lexicon.

The difference? On that gray morning, as you walk away from Coach Richt, whose record stands at 0-0, you believe every word.

The Good Coach

Entering his 15^th season, Mark Richt (136-48 .739) stands as Dean of SEC coaches. His Georgia teams have played for six SEC titles, claiming two. During Richt’s tenure, Spurrier has left a Gator, returned a Gamecock; Saban has pulled a wide U-Turn too; rivals Florida, Auburn and Tennessee have turned over eight different coaching regimes.

And now, Richt is kind enough to not confess forgetting our first meeting.

“Wow,” he says, “that sure was a long time ago.”

The main wall of Richt’s office is covered with Governor cups, given for each of his 12 victories over Tech. He runs a clean program and a clean office. After our talk at an adjacent table, he applies Windex and terry cloth to the prints left by yours truly.

“I’m kind of clean freak,” he says, almost apologetically.

Richt gets brandished in some circles with “not winning the big one” label. Such critiques forget that Georgia’s own Vince Dooley needed 17 years before he won a National Championship. Or that Bobby Bowden took 18 years and Tom Osborne 19.

Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

Richt is also known for his outspoken Christian faith and his family’s adoption in 1999 of two toddlers — Anya and Zach — from Ukraine.

The night after Paul died, when Tra pulled up into Richt’s driveway, a collection of former teammates who played with both Paul and Tra greeted their former captain. Richt called them, along with the team chaplain, in advance. Richt and Tra, who grew up the son of a pastor prayed late into the night.

That Saturday, Georgia defeated LSU in a raucous 44-41 battle of Top 10 Teams.

Four days later, Richt took his seat at Burnt Hickory Baptist Church in Kennesaw. After Paul’s funeral, the family held a private burial at Kennesaw Memorial Cemetery.

“The hearse drove off and we were all kind of standing there,” Richt says, “and there were probably 30 to 50 former Georgia players. We were looking at each other and reminisced and the mood lightened.”

Richt told the players he was planning an event in the spring. “I’m going to call it The ‘PO Network,’ to name it after Paul. We need to meet just for the sake of being close to each other, for the sake of trying to help everybody find their way.” Richt hoped the network would help provide job opportunities for players when the final game ended.

Paul Oliver would be buried within the hour, but forces were in motion to establish what that legacy of help would mean. As Richt arrived back in Athens to game plan for Tennessee, Chelsea heard from Paul’s agent. Chris Nowinski of the Sports Legacy Institute was curious: Would she be willing to donate Paul’s brain?

An autopsy could confirm what Paul himself had suspected. The significant catch: Paul had been buried. For the autopsy, Paul would have to be exhumed, his brain removed, and the body re-buried.

“I tried to imagine what Paul would want me to do,” Chelsea says, “and then I acted.”

Paul’s brain was flown to Boston and to the lab of Dr. Ann McKee, Professor of Neurology and Pathology at Boston University’s School of Medicine. Due to a backlog of brains — athletes, soldiers — the results of the autopsy would take six months.

Stan Grossfeld/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

In February 2014, the first PO Network event was a success. Chelsea and Price and Patrick Oliver were there. Tra Battle and Chris Burgett were able to connect and share how hard they had taken Paul’s death. While professional networking was covered, the reunion aspect of the PO Network created a support system for returning players. For Richt, whose life changed as a graduate assistant at FSU in 1986 when Seminole linemen Pablo Lopez was shot during a fight outside a party, Paul’s death left little doubt in his mind on the necessity of such a network.

“The PO Network exists because of my desire to bless our players, to help them transition from football to life.”

Richt’s transition reads across his office. On one side on the main wall is a picture from his playing days at Miami. The other holds an image from his coaching days at FSU. That transition, however, was rocky. After a brief stop in Bronco camp alongside fellow rookie John Elway, Denver cut Richt loose.

“All of my identity was in that [football] and then it was going up in flames. I did a bunch of stupid stuff that I never dreamed I would do, just because I didn’t know how to react to not being that guy — not realizing the dreams I had set for myself.”

Stephen Dunn/Getty Images

“Paul Oliver had Stage 2 CTE. It was clear. Undisputedly, CTE.”— Dr. Ann McKee

For Paul Oliver though, the challenge of that transition wasn’t philosophical, but pathological.

A month after the first PO Network Event, Chelsea was notified that the autopsy results were ready. She called Price and Patrick to be in on the call with Dr. Ann McKee.

“Paul Oliver had Stage 2 CTE,” McKee tells me. “There were parts of the brain that were missing due to the gunshot wound and the difficulties which were encountered in harvesting the brain,” she says. “But there was still tissue that was in good condition.

“CTE was most predominant in the temporal lobe, the amygdala, and the hippocampus,” she explains. “We also saw it in the frontal lobe. It was clear. Undisputedly, CTE.”

Many players struggle with the loss of notoriety and purpose, or as Richt says identity.

Paul Oliver’s brain was under siege.

“We weren’t shocked,” Chelsea says, “We knew. But now we knew for sure.”

“It still didn’t change the fact,” Price says, “that Paul was gone.”

While the results confirmed what Paul and Chelsea suspected, it raised new challenges for The PO Network. No amount of networking can rewire a damaged brain. Reunion with trusted teammates cannot wish an aggressive neurological disease to a halt.

Currently, CTE is not on The PO Network’s agenda. I ask Richt if college football — coaches, players, media, and fans — are prepared to have an honest discussion on CTE. Richt’s natural register is toward calm and careful calibration with his words. But the silence between us now lingers a bit longer.

“I don’t know enough about it to be honest with you. But as most things in life, whether you’re ready or not, those discussions, if they need to happen, will happen,” he says.

Many don’t share Richt’s faith in the inevitability of such conversations. Harry Carson says, “No, they are not ready. Not until it is their own son or family member on the field who ends up suffering.” Carson also says cognitive decline haunts generations of players. “Many current coaches played at high levels. They’ve been around. They know. They know former teammates who are suffering,” he said.

Carson’s words echo in Richt’s office and reflect off the image from his Miami days.

From slurring his speech on Cleveland sports radio, to confessions of insomnia, pounding headaches, and financial woes, Bernie Kosar’s cognitive slide hasn’t been secret. His troubles fit a familiar pattern: a 2006 divorce settlement sited his “increasingly erratic and bizarre behavior and addictions” and a 2013 DUI arrest notes he was driving a black Cadillac 74 mph at 2:40 a.m. through a construction zone.

When I bring up Kosar, Richt stands and reaches for the picture.

He hands me a photograph of the ‘82 Miami Hurricane quarterbacks and says, “Take a look there.”

Looking there, in black and white, is a curly haired Kosar, redshirt freshman, numbered 20. True freshman Vinny Testaverde squints into the future. Senior star Jim Kelly smiles, cocksure. Boyish backup Kyle Vanderwende and coach Earl Morrall do not smile. And there stands a stoic Mark Richt, also a senior. They look young, indomitable, and forever quarterbacks. Sunlight cracks through the black and white. When the final playing gun sounds, between them all there will be nine Super Bowl appearances, 70 miles worth of NFL passing yards, and almost 800 professional touchdowns.

None of those numbers belong to Richt. The game humbles all. The frustrated athlete is the father to the man.

We discuss the hard luck of Morrall, a former coach whose story Richt can trace with his own. Despite leading the Colts to Super Bowl III, Unitas replaced Morrall after an early pick. In ‘72, he led the Dolphins to perfection — many people forget that— but Morrall ceded the spot back to Griese before Super Bowl VII.

“You learn you can’t always get what you want,” Richt says. “It was healthy for me.”

Along the 50-yard line of my consciousness float the images of Johnny U’s flattop, Bob Griese’s Coke-Bottle glasses, and the white cleats of Joe Willie Namath. Palm trees sway and bend at the Orange Bowl and for a moment CTE is just a stain on some slide.

Joe Robbins/Getty Images

“You learn you can’t always get what you want. It was healthy for me” — Mark Richt

I weigh my next words and look out the office window over Georgia’s plush practice fields. What would you rather discuss with Mark Richt? A brain-damaged Bernie Kosar hooked up to an IV of fish oil in a detox center in Florida or Super Bowl III? The good soldiering of Earl Morrall or Paul Oliver getting stumped by a trip to the grocery store?

Holding the photo, I ask Richt if The PO Network and the college game are better positioned to provide mental health resources for players than the NFL.

“Possibly. I want to help. We are really in the process of finding out how much help we are giving. I want to be where I don’t have limitations to help. Which could include anything. There is a lot of energy — positive energy around it — but we will still try to nail down exactly what is the best way to function, which gives us the most freedom to help.”

What Richt doesn’t share is that he has already done that precise thing. After Tra Battle’s late night meeting, Richt had Ron Courson, head of the Georgia training staff, set up an appointment with a mental health counselor for Tra the next morning. For a year, Tra saw a counselor and learned how to grieve and treat his depression.

Despite Paul’s own suspicions about his brain and the autopsy’s results, the network that bears his name and initials, does not address CTE. While the camaraderie and networking are important, both Chris and Chelsea hold out hope that information and education about CTE will be included next year.

In the end, Richt says: “I want to stay connected to everybody and I want them to know that Georgia is still here at the end to help with the transition.”

But a full reckoning of those transitions would include the thin line between sentient consciousness and the cascading effects of brain trauma.

The PO Network might be a place where college football begins a dialogue on the magnitude of mental health and CTE. And that might require a coach who once went across an ocean with his wife to adopt a child and brought back two. A coach who pounded the table after Paul died and said, “I don’t want this to happen to another one of my boys.” A coach who knows both chapter and verse: Learn to do right. Seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.

Paul Oliver didn’t die of depression from a world without football; he died from a brain disease caused by the repetitive head banging in football. He didn’t need a job to fill a void in his soul; he needed neurological treatment for a ravished brain.

Paul almost received that help. Instead, Chelsea flew alone to California weeks later with the boys. During the same conversation she told the family that Paul’s brain was being autopsied, Chelsea announced she was moving back home.

At Hartsfield-Jackson International airport, officials gave Janice Oliver a security pass to walk Chelsea and Simeon and Silas to their gate. Before boarding, Chelsea hugged Janice. Together, they wept. Boarding the plane, Chelsea thought, “This is really happening.” One stewardess helped Simeon into his seat. Another stewardess handed Chelsea a stiff whiskey.

Both boys closed their eyes, and fell asleep as their mother wondered when exactly she’d stop crying.

I turn off my recorder. Mark Richt cleans the table and replaces the photograph. I share with him my wife’s obsessive cleaning habits. He laughs and we briefly compare notes on Colorado. He was born in Broomfield; I live in Boulder. We walk out together and shake hands. I wish him well with The PO Network and he wishes me safe travels.

Heading down the long corridors of Georgia’s football command center, past the titanic closed office doors of coaches, my feet carry me into Heritage Hall. A tractor beam pulls me straight to the glass display where I spent hours as a boy gazing up at the bright red jersey and battered red helmet.

Now, I stand eye level with Herschel Walker’s gear from the ‘83 Sugar Bowl. The right shoulder is streaked with stray Nittany Lion blue. The ‘G’ at the center of the helmet is smudged. Its black paint bleeds down the side like skid marks from screeching tires.

Footnote: July 18, 2015

You sit in the same coffee shop you used to anchor in your ancient college days. Opening your laptop to transcribe the conversation with Coach Richt, something about Charleston, South Carolina is trending on Twitter.

The coffee shop buzzes with caffeinated Methodists. The United Methodist Conference is back in town. The tables are full of leather bound King James Versions with cracked spines, iPads with glowing Cross-Reference Concordance Scripture apps, and lattes. Across from you lounge summer school sorority sisters and fraternity brothers buried behind their phones next to stacks of unopened Psychology and Finance textbooks. Their T-shirts announce nostalgia for days not yet gone: 2014 Daddy Daughter Softball Day! Kappa Alpha: Faithful Unto Death.

You read the blocks of 140 characters about Charleston. At first, you think you’re reading the synopsis of a new crime show. Facts take shape and the picture forms. Bible Study. Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Race war. Nine dead. Overhead, the speakers play In a Sentimental Mood. You close the laptop and try to think of a place to be alone.

Walking across North Campus you remember your favorite times in Athens weren’t those six Saturdays in the fall, but the summer and winter holidays. Athens opens up with pockets of unexpected quiet. You walk past the library and past Park Hall. You keep a hopeful eye out for Dr. Hubert McAlexander, who’s retired. The dapper professor from Holly Springs, Mississippi, who wore seersucker suits and gold ties, didn’t so much teach Faulkner, but channeled and charmed his ghosts into the classroom’s ether.

And you remember that wintry day in Park Hall with the radiator humming over the silence and Dr. McAlexander’s unmistakable and uncanny Faulknerian voice reading the final words of Absalom, Absalom!: “I don’t hate it,” Quinten said quickly, at once, immediately, “I don’t hate it,” he said, I don’t hate it, he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark; I don’t, I don’t, I don’t hate it. I don’t hate it.”

You walked out of Park Hall after class and went down to the Jim Gillis Bridge overlooking Sanford Stadium. Full of ponderous undergraduate weight, you balanced thoughts of the South between love and hate, and looked into that stadium that held so much of what you loved.

Now, the stadium gates are locked, but you still have some local knowledge.

High in the bleachers of Sanford Stadium, you sit alone and try to trace a decade ago when Paul Oliver streaked down the sideline against Auburn and leaped into the night. You study the spot where he clinched victory against Tech. You look into the stadium arc lights and imagine them full borne and blazing. You think of Tra Battle gazing up and wondering where he was exactly and what all of it meant.

How easy it is each fall, in all those lights, to lose sight of each who suffers, either from CTE or symptoms identified with CTE. Granted, he’s hard to see — the singular player who suffers — but he contains multitudes: Mike Webster…You saw parts of this man disappear…Dave Duerson…wasn’t fading, but he was…Tony Dorsett…like a fog…Karl Mecklenburg…can’t see…Jim McMahon…can’t get home…Shane Dronett…woke up screaming…it is, Al Toon says, what it is…Tom McHale’s…brain slammed against his skull…Joe DeLamuielleure… saw stars everyday…Fred McNeill…tells his wife that the people chasing him through the night have been replaced by armies of insects…Andre Waters…had various religious reading material scattered throughout the residence…Bubby Brister…is slipping…the ringing, Kevin Kolb says, is like someone shooting a shotgun right next to my ear, every second of every day…Ollie Matson…just endured it…John Grimsley…would lose his temper…Mark Duper…can’t remember…Terry Tautolo…sleeps in a tunnel…Gary Plummer…has dementia…We were told, Leonard Marshall says, if you see stars, take Advil…Charlie Brown…wears sunglasses…Forrest Blue…saw giant soldiers chopping cars on the highway…The NFL, Brent Boyd testified to Congress, is trying to distance themselves from liability for all the carnage left behind by our NFL concussions — just as tobacco companies fought like hell to deny the links between smoking and cancer…Merril Hoge…can’t remember his daughter’s name…Brett Favre…can’t remember his daughter’s soccer season…Steve Gleason…leaves videos for his son to watch when he is gone…Ralph Wenzel…no longer communicates in complete sentences…Kevin Turner…receives oxygen through a port in his neck and nutrition through a tube in his stomach…Steve Smith…uses his eyes to control a computer’s voice-activated system…Terry Long…swallowed anti-freeze…George Visger…pisses blood…Lew Carpenter…began having trouble keeping things organized…Ted Johnson….shuffled from one dark room to another…it is, Wayne Chrebet says, what it is….These young players, Rayfield Wright says, have no idea what’s in store for them…John Mackey…did not want to brush his teeth or shower…Ray Easterling…scoured the neighborhood for toppled trees to chop…Herschel Walker…played Russian Roulette…I got to go, Jovan Belcher said before pulling the trigger, I can’t be here…Hope, Darryl Talley’s daughter Gabrielle says, is not in great abundance right now.

“Something’s wrong with my brain,” Paul told Chelsea’s dad.

Sporting News via Getty Images

Above: Mike Webster, the first former NFL player diagnosed with CTE

Mike Webster — juiced up on a daily regimen of 80 mg of Ritalin — suspected his brain had been damaged too. Webster wrote long, rambling letters on yellow legal paper into the night. On one page, he wrote: “Not revenge, no sir. But reckoning.”

Reckoning: a noun, “the act of calculating;” “a bill of accounts;” “measuring the value of something.”

“Hey!” a voice calls out.

Two construction workers in hard hats appear in an aisle on the upper deck. The older one points in your direction.

“You know, you’re not supposed to be here,” he says, more tired than angry. “Who let you in?”

You try to explain, but what can you say?

“Sorry,” you say, and ask for a few more minutes.

The man in the hard hat looks down to the field and then up to you in the bleachers.

“Two minutes,” he says. “And then you gotta go.”

You nod, spend two minutes more, and then you go.

California

The pieces on the hardwood floor were marked Straight Track (ST), Curved Track (CT), and (CST) Curved Switch Track. Female (F) and Male (M) pieces, varying in shape and size, were clearly noted. The Bridge and Viaduct and Tunnel did not require notation.

For Thomas the Train Engine to chug to life on Christmas Eve 2014, all Chelsea Oliver had to do was follow the directions in miniscule font and assemble the parts. Near midnight, with the boys asleep, it was all she could do to stop crying.

“I missed him. I missed Paul.”

Chelsea doesn’t often catch herself in tears these nights. Not like that first year. In the weeks after returning from Georgia, she’d walk and weep alone at night on the beach. Sometimes she’d scream. Other nights, she’d sit silently under the stars and watch the tides. She’d always been best in crisis, but this registered somewhere beyond crisis.

So Chelsea rode the uneven swells of shock. Many days were simply so crowded with details, deadlines — the boys, bills, moving boxes — that she collapsed at night.

Other times, she couldn’t sleep and as night eddied into day, she couldn’t eat; she made herself eat; she threw up. Sometimes, without reason or rhyme, the scent of blood and smoke would drift back down the halls of memory.

She knew then that she needed help. She scheduled an appointment with a therapist.

“Now,” she says, “I’m better at anticipating and processing those moments.”

Under the blinking lights of the Christmas tree, Chelsea didn’t need a reminder that grief can go dark for a stretch only to circle back again. She also didn’t need an extended metaphor. She needed Paul.

Simeon and Silas sprinted into the living room that morning. She snapped pictures, sipped coffee, and made room for brand new Star Wars action figures, books and Legos. And in the corner of the room, Thomas the Train Engine hummed around the tracks.

The preschool teacher wasn’t sure of what to do. The class was making Father’s Day cards. She asked Chelsea what she should tell the boys, but Simeon took the lead. He told his teacher that his daddy was busy in heaven right now being their guardian angel.

Armed with a feather duster, Simeon Oliver, age 4, runs from his brother Silas, age 2, who wields a pillow. They dart from living room to kitchen, front yard, and back into the ranch home in Fountain Valley, a quiet middle class suburb of Orange County.

Jeff Young grills for the crowd of his four adult children, their spouses, 10 grandkids, and the stranger at the table. Herschel, a huge and happy German shepherd, follows Jeff, room to room. Dooley, Herschel’s companion, passed away a few years ago.

“Paul loved being a dad. That’s what he lived for.”

Climbing into his seat — pit stop — Simeon takes huge, uneven bites of his hot dog. The stranger compliments his appetite. Simeon smiles and says, “I am 4 years old. I grew up on my birthday. Now, I’m a big boy.”

After dinner, Jeff and Chelsea and the stranger speak in the kitchen as the cousins play.

“Paul loved being a dad,” Chelsea says. “That’s what he lived for. The boys.”

As she speaks, Simeon and Silas take turns jumping from the sofa. When Simeon jumps, he throws his arms and legs out in an ‘X’ as in here, here marks the spot.

“Paul knew something was wrong,” Jeff continues, “but he didn’t know what.”

Silas follows Simeon and copies the same fearless jump: Arms out, legs out.

The stranger notes the identical jump and the rock rising in his throat.

The mad dash of feather duster and pillow resume: circling the table, down the hall and back again. The stranger takes a knee and rubs Herschel’s belly and neck and scratches behind his ears as Herschel wags his tail.

The winded boys call truce and Simeon, not without ceremony, presents the stranger with the feather duster.

“Is this the secret sword of truth?” the stranger asks.

Simeon’s eyes grow wide and narrow.

“No,” Simeon says, in a tone that’s tender, “it’s a feather duster.”

I’m eating breakfast with Chelsea’s older brother Garrett Young at Dory Deli, near Newport Beach. Like his sister, Garrett has the presence and confidence of an athlete who’s grown up next to the beach. A one-time college baseball player, drafted by the Red Sox, Garrett will team with Chelsea later that morning to dominate beach volleyball. Garrett also works as a police officer in Newport and has another detail on Paul’s death.

Garrett doesn’t require many words to persuade. After volleyball at the beach, he’ll announce that we’re all getting into the ocean. I left my trunks in room 318 at Motel 6.

“Boxers, dude. C’mon.”

Across the sands of Newport Beach, I walk in my Hanes and wade into the chilly Pacific.

But at Dory’s that morning, as the big screen TVs on either side of us broadcast ESPN’s coverage of Broncos training camp, Garrett speaks deliberately:

“Paul first fired two or three shots into the ceiling. After that, he ejected the magazine. Now, Paul was not really Paul. With everything going on in his brain, he was raging and not in control. And he was also new to guns. If you are new to guns, you’re not really familiar with the manipulation of the weapon. So it wasn’t second nature for him to clear the weapon. A part of me thinks that when he put the gun to his head, he was trying to scare Chelsea. He might not have known that even if you eject the magazine, another round automatically chambers. And when the trigger gets pulled, it goes.”

Later that night, in room 318, I stare at the ceiling. One more in the chamber. I want this to anchor every other detail in Paul’s death, but it floats like another note in a sea of sadness that I can’t figure, file, or sort.

For Paul’s birthday on March 30, Chelsea buys the boys Paul’s favorite: Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches, waffle fries, and two large Cookies & Cream Milkshakes (no cherry, no whipped cream.) Then the boys write messages to their dad on white balloons. Together, Simeon and Silas walk into the front yard, stare up into the sun, and release the strings as their words fold into the enormous blue sheet of sky.

Photo courtesy Chelsea Oliver

Night falls, as I drive south down I-5. A sports radio show previews the NFC West. Oceanside, my destination, is an hour south of Room 318, where I can’t sleep.

The radio host details the 49ers offseason overhaul: the departure of Harbaugh, and the early retirements of Anthony Davis, Patrick Willis and Chris Borland.

Sedans, souped-up Silverados, station wagons, stretch Hummer limos, tricked out bikes with LED illumination, and SUV’s all hurl down the highway. I stay in the middle lane.

Borland’s name vanishes as the host segues into a sermon on the value of veteran quarterbacking. There’s no mention of Borland’s motivation. No comment on his commitment to maintain the integrity of his brain.

Michael Zagaris/San Francisco 49ers/Getty Images

Above: Chris Borland retired from the NFL over fears of long-term head trauma

On the shoulder, smoke rises from the hood of an Aerostar minivan. Hazards flashing.

Weeks earlier, back in Georgia, Tra Battle told me that when he moved California he intentionally refused to use his GPS when driving. He wanted to improve his powers of concentration and memory. Intention might be Tra Battle’s favorite word.

As a father of four, a full-time student with designs on medical school or hospital administration, Tra also works full-time as an anesthesiology operating room technician at Athens Regional Hospital. Tra intentionally fills his rare off-days with his four children. Luisa, his wife is from Venezuela, and the Battle home is intentionally bi-lingual. Intentionally, they don’t own a television. With intention, Tra told me, he wants his days filled with meaning and purpose.

In the spring of 2013, when Chelsea texted Tra about Paul’s confirmed diagnosis of CTE, Tra’s thoughts drifted back to the battlefields he shared with his friend. “Our playing styles were completely different. I was always the one to go in and just totally sacrifice my body … fleshbomb! So since then, anytime I get into one of those moods, I wonder: ‘How bad am I?’”

When his own dark moods arrive, Tra says, “I am much better at dealing with it because I am able to talk and share what I am feeling. Then it gets released. And I can do something to remedy the situation.” That remedy varies from working on his short game, doing CrossFit, or riding his road bike for miles and miles. “My endorphin release,” he says.

Motion, meaning, and intention: the values that shaped Tra on the field help him navigate now down a road that others, including Harry Carson, have traveled.

The hazy sea of traffic and lights come to a close as I pull off the exit and down the commercial area of Oceanside.

Before we parted that afternoon in Georgia, Tra asked: “Do you know what professional athlete I respect the most? More than Lance Armstrong coming back from cancer or an athlete competing with a prosthetic limb? Even more than say, Jackie Robinson?”

I told him I didn’t.

“Chris Borland, the linebacker with the 49ers. To make the conscientious choice that this isn’t worth my life. To walk away. To be taller than the game. That required courage.”

Harry Carson, the Hall of Fame linebacker, tells me: “Chris Borland is my hero.”

Carson says a parent would be crazy to allow their child to play football, yet when he and others say it, the words too often slip past without sticking. But a clear and certain logic takes hold when you substitute the name of the game we love with “car wrecks.” Would you allow your child to play car wrecks? A parent would be crazy to allow their child to play car wrecks. Knowing what he knows now, Carson says he wouldn’t play car wrecks again. Carson and Tra Battle, both former car wreck captains, now count heroic the man who walked away from fame, fortune, and years of future car wrecks.

Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

I steer through Oceanside, the former home of Junior Seau, a recent inductee of The Pro Car Wreck Hall of Fame, and turn around in a Jack-in-the-Box parking lot, under a line of palms. On the drive back, I silence the radio, roll down the windows, and listen as the traffic roars.

On most mornings, Chelsea Oliver wakes at 7 and gets Simeon and Silas their smoothies and then whisks them off to school. The drive to preschool isn’t far. It’s the same she’d attended as a little girl in Fountain Valley. Some mornings the boys linger. Other mornings they dart straight ahead without waving goodbye.

On this Sept. 24, she’s not sure what her day will consist, but it’s likely she’ll be at the beach watching the water. She does know exactly where she’ll be next March 30.  Chelsea plans to go skydiving.  She wanted to do it on the anniversary of his death, Sept.24, but could not find a babysitter, so now she plans to wait until his birthday.

Photo courtesy Chelsea Oliver

Paul told Tra, back in their UGA dorm, “I’ve found the one.”

“The one?” Tra asked.

Paul pulled up the UGA Volleyball Team website and pointed to Chelsea.

Tra laughed and said, “Good luck.”

Tra had seen teammates hit on Chelsea, ask for her number, throw wads of paper in study hall at her, and trip over themselves trying to open the door for her. Chelsea had a mantra: “I don’t date football players.”

Tra shook his head.

“We’ll see,” Paul said.

On their first date at Paul’s dorm room in the East Campus Village, Chelsea brought over Mr. and Mrs. Smith, starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Chelsea sat on the sofa and he sat on the chair across from her. Halfway through the movie, she could tell Paul was staring at her, “with those big eyes.”

“Do I have something on my face?” Chelsea said.

He smiled and said she didn’t.

“Do I look like an alien?” she asked.

Paul laughed and said, “I’ve never met anyone in my life like you.” Chelsea still wasn’t smiling. Paul tried to explain.

During the movie, she’d made fun of him. She cracked jokes. She cussed. She wasn’t demure like so many southern girls seeking their Mrs. Degree.

Now, Chelsea smiled. “OK,” she said.

He asked if he could come sit next to her.

“Sure,” she said.

Paul was 21. Chelsea was 20. And they were in love.

Two dogs, two kids, two cross-country moves, and seven years later, Paul and Chelsea Oliver sat on the sofa in their house in Marietta, Georgia.

Chelsea recalls Sept. 23, 2013 as a good day. During that last year in San Diego, she could count on a few good days each week. In Georgia, it was a few good days each month.

But that night, as Simeon played and Silas slept, Paul and Chelsea watched Boardwalk Empire and Paul’s favorite, The Food Network.

Putting down the remote, Paul inched closer to her on the sofa. He put his arm around Chelsea and pulled her close. “I love you incredibly,” he said.

“That was,” Chelsea tells me, “our goodbye.”

So next March 30, Paul’s birthday, as the small door of the plane opens, Chelsea will be high above San Diego and all these pieces of Paul and Not Paul. Depending on the haze, maybe she will spot Qualcomm Stadium where he intercepted the Raiders’ Carson Palmer in 2011. Somewhere below will be Arcadia at Stonecrest Village, the apartments where Paul made his “world-famous-down-home” spaghetti night after night for he and Tra. Beneath the clouds will be Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla where Simeon and Silas were born. Far up the freeway, closer to L.A., is the ridgeline of Big Bear Mountain where Paul spent an entire day sledding with his nieces and nephews in thick powder.

Winding their way up the sun-glazed mountain that winter morning, Paul rode the brakes and glanced out the window. He wiped his forehead, his palms. Chelsea finally asked if he was OK. Should they switch drivers? He told her not to tell anyone, but he was really afraid of heights.

I confess a similar affliction and ask Chelsea if she’s scared too. She smiles. “After everything that’s happened,” she says, “what’s left to be scared of?”

On Paul’s birthday, Chelsea plans to step into the sky and fall from 12,000 feet. Experiencing rapid changes in temperature and atmospheric pressure, she will plummet through the clouds. With the jigsawed landscape below rising, she’ll feel a jolt. Then, she’ll float. Sailing through the sky, under an impossible sun, Chelsea Oliver will glide gently back down toward solid ground.

Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images

Final Note: November 16, 2002

What would you do? Georgia is playing at Auburn with a chance to go to the SEC Championship. It’s been 20 years since Georgia won a SEC Title. Kickoff is 3:30 Eastern; 2:30 Central in Auburn; 1:30 Mountain, where you live. Your CBS affiliate is showing The Mountain West Conference Game of the Week.

On Monday you call the office of programming at KRQE 13, the local Albuquerque CBS affiliate. Sorry, they say. They encourage you to contact CBS offices in New York.

You call CBS offices in New York. They encourage you to contact your local CBS affiliate. You contemplate throwing your phone through the window.

On Wednesday, an owner of a local sports bar says your best bet is to head north past the border. Pueblo. Trinidad. Find a sports bar closer to Denver’s CBS feed.

On Thursday, you pack your bags to drive to Colorado to watch Georgia play Auburn. You feel sick. But you’re a graduate assistant, teaching basic composition. You’re broke.

The answer, a Hail Mary, arrives in the mail on Friday. You open a Discover Card^TM and purchase, in the great American tradition, what you can’t afford.

You call Eric, your Bulldog buddy in Athens. No answer. You call a hundred times. You repeat in voicemail after voicemail the flight information.

Delta: window seat. Flight time: three hours. You take off shortly after sunrise. You barely slept. Over Texas, you close your eyes, and pray strange prayers.

Eric pulls curbside at Atlanta’s airport, his pickup covered in mud. He smiles. You toss your bag in the back and can’t remember being so happy to see another human being.

Eric teaches at UGA in Religious Studies as an adjunct. He’s been mountain biking and camping in the woods since Friday morning. He needed solitude before kickoff. He couldn’t sleep. Nervous mojo. Something that morning told him to check his messages.

You stop at a Walmart ATM on the Alabama state line. Eric withdraws his last 200 dollars. The two scalped tickets will cost 150.

Across the plains, under a gray sky, you walk into the Auburn RV Village. A tailgate, booming Jimmy Buffett, calls you over. A foam tiger tail extends from their RV. A man with a gray goatee, camouflage overalls, and orange hoodie smiles while the thinner, more orange Paula Deen at his hip says, “Hey Bulldogs! Smile! Its only a game!”

You aren’t in the mood, but you will not be that guy.

“Forgive us, ma’am,” Eric says, “we’re just sick and tired of losing to Auburn.”

They laugh, you laugh. Everyone shakes hands. They invite you back after the game. Best tailgate in Lee County. Cooking a whole hog. Win, lose or draw! You and Eric make a thousand assurances to break bread with them and fully intend no such thing.

You aren’t fooled. This is, in the words of Larry Munson, total war. And that truth smacks your face and licks when you walk into the roaring wall of orange and blue. Guitar chords rip pure menace as the voice of Axl Rose welcomes you to the jungle.

You bypass your ticketed seats to hunker down in section 11, lower level, east stands, shoulder to shoulder with Georgia fans. The ball is on the tee. You find your radio headset and scan through static until the voice of Larry Munson rings hard and true.

And for the next four hours, the singular thing with a million variations, unfolds with the requisite violence and grace that borders on rhapsodic.

Erik S. Lesser/Getty Images

At halftime, Georgia is down 14-3. It’s cold. You can see your breath.

“Gotta get some goddamned points,” a man with a Mr. Clean shaved head turns and says.

Sparkplug built, he wears a game-worn white Georgia jersey from the ‘85 Sun Bowl. He says he played a little special teams back in the day. You’re prone to call bullshit on Mr. Clean, but when he produces a flask from under the jersey and offers, you count your blessings. Fireball. Canadian whiskey. Cinnamon.

Down four, with two minutes to go, Georgia drives toward the south end zone. Munson doesn’t always help with downs, distances, and substitutions. Sometimes you wish he was less Homeric Bard and more Syracuse or Missouri Journalism Broadcast School Smooth. He’s also 80 years old. You know your days together are numbered.

With a minute and 30 seconds to play, Georgia faces fourth-and-15 from the Auburn 19.

Crowd roars at us. Three wide outs. Man, we’ve had some shots today, haven’t we?

Munson’s resignation echoes the voltage of your own central nervous system. Back in ‘82, Georgia had to stop a late Auburn pass in the end zone. Then, Munson pleaded: If you didn’t hear me, you guys,‘Hunker Down.’ After Georgia halted Auburn’s final heave, Munson cried out:  Oh look at the sugar falling out of the sky, look at the sugar falling out of the sky … .

You lock onto Fred Gibson, Georgia’s lanky wide out, on the right side of the field. The snap to David Greene. So has Auburn. The safety help shades to the right.

There he goes to the corner again and we jump up …You follow an underthrown wobbly ball headed for the left corner of the end zone. You see Georgia’s Michael Johnson go up and you lose sight of what you can see next.

Several events happen separately and at once. The orange and blue shakers in the stands go limp. An official’s arms shoot up. The Georgia bench explodes. Larry Munson is screaming: TOUCHDOWN! OH, GOD A TOUCHDOWN!

Erik S. Lesser/Getty Images

And then the girders bend. The stadium falls apart. Mr. Clean military presses you into the air. (You go about 190.) You’re screaming, searching for flags. Mr. Clean, who played a little special teams back in ‘85, screams too as he spins you around.

A security guard, clearly from the correct side of the state line, jumps up and down.

Eric hugs David Pollack’s mother and extended family.

An old timer in a Bulldogs Santa hat places his hands over his face.

You’re screaming: “No flags you son of bitches! Throw no flags! No flags!”

Mr. Clean screams: “I swallowed my dip! I swallowed my dip!”

Georgia holds Auburn on downs. Georgia takes a knee. Georgia is going to the SEC Championship. Georgia is going to the Sugar Bowl. The clock shows all zeroes.

As Georgia people dance and cry, your hands tremble. Is this real? You check the scoreboard. Already scrubbed. You smile. A few rows down, jubilant Georgia players reach out to ecstatic fans. Fluorescent vested security maintains order.

Georgia students and fans stormed this field in ‘86 only to be sprayed by high-pressured water hoses. You were 10 and listening to Munson. The next year Auburn fans ripped Georgia’s hallowed hedges in revenge. That was the first fistfight you ever saw. Not a fight exactly, just frat-on-frat violence.

The crowd empties and Eric sits down. You follow. You will stay until you’re the last ones left or the lights go black or law enforcement escorts you out.

The divine electricity shines on the green turf below as the wind blows bits of stray tape and Powerade cups. Alone in that immensity, you won’t charge the field or vandalize shrubbery, but the moment calls for something.

And there, on the other side of the stadium, staring at us from behind the goal posts: The Great Seeing Eye with three famous blue letters against a yellow banner — CBS SPORTS.

The plastic banner comes down easily, folds, and fits securely under your arm.

Outside the brick walls of the stadium, you stumble upon the gate with Georgia team buses and Georgia Highway Patrol cars, blue lights blazing. Coach Richt emerges from the tunnel and we cheer. In a suit now, he waves and is whisked away by state troopers.

Families of players — little brothers, sisters, cousins, grandmas — wait for the team along with boosters: smooth faced cherubic men with unlit cigars dangling from their lips.

The players file out in black Nike warm ups to cheers. Calls of first names! Nicknames! Hugs! More hugs! Big hugs! You think: “This is just like a family reunion.” And then you realize it is. One booster, a fat man in red suspenders, smacks safety Sean Jones, the hero of the day (11 tackles, two INTs) hard on the shoulder. Jones nods, smiles, winces.

Eric spots Tony Milton, a reserve running back and a student in his Western Religion class. Up from poverty in Florida, Milton spent time in high school living out of his car. To call the odds he’s overcome significant is to understate the case.

Milton spots Eric, lowers his head, and walks over.

“Mr. Covington,” he says, “I can explain. It’s almost there. Almost finished.”’

They share a moment of confusion until Eric realizes that Milton’s talking about a first draft on his Protestant Reformation paper. He asks for a Monday extension. Eric pretends to ponder and relents. Monday, it is. Milton says thanks and extends his hand.

“Tony!” Eric says.

“Yeah?”

“We did it!”

The smile returns to Tony Milton’s face.

“Ah! Yes we did Cov, yes we did!”

Erik S. Lesser/Getty Images

They hug and with that you and Eric wander into the night. Bone-tired, you’re suddenly very cold and hungry all at once. You halved a Clif Bar that morning.

Walking across a parking lot, Eric stops and says, “Now, look at that.”

The RV with the huge foam tiger tail is still blasting Jimmy Buffett.

“Easier to show up now isn’t it?” the voice announces.

Red solo cups appear in your hands: Bourbon with a splash of Coke.

A big screen TV shows Ohio State and Illinois, but you join everyone else and watch kids in the parking lot in Cadillac Williams jerseys hurling NERF spirals.

The man with the gray goatee discusses his time-share in Destin with Eric as you’re handed a hot plate, piled high. Menthol slim Paula Deen slides next to you.

“Now, over in Athens y’all wouldn’t be like this,” she says.” Y’all sulk. Admit it.”

You blow on your plate and nod. You admit it.

“And Bama people — just as soon spit on you. Florida folks used to be OK. Then they started winning. And LSU people, can you even call them people?”

You sip your bourbon, their bourbon, and nod. Between bites of Memphis-style barbeque and brown sugared baked beans, you keep nodding as she regales you with stories from the past. You’re thinking of the future. Georgia has freshmen and sophomores at critical positions: contributors, leaders, nascent stars. More, you think. More sugar, endless skies.

And at that moment, your fandom — a hundred-yard Eden — holds nothing to doubt, no denial to parse, no burden of knowledge. To paraphrase an armchair general from those heady days: you don’t know yet what you don’t know.

You know only the ancient rush of food and fire from a vanquished foe.

“Good, isn’t it?” the man with the gray goatee calls out. Chewing, you close your eyes and nod as smoke drifts toward the stars over Alabama.

And at that same moment, in Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Medical Examiner’s office, the slides of Mike Webster’s brain tissue sit forgotten on the desk of the brilliant and brash Dr. Bennet Omalu — who won’t forget for long.

And racing out of Lee County on I-85, a long line of tractor-trailers speed past rows of pines and billboards for Bible verses and breast augmentation. Tearing across Georgia’s red clay border, the 18-wheelers howl for Atlanta. Heading up 285, the 40-ton machines rumble through traffic onto I-75 toward Kennesaw, where a high school student, a beautiful son named Paul Oliver, dreams of football with eyes wide open as the cars slide by, terribly fast, and do not touch.

Here’s how Sander Stroom from Estonia won the 2014 Settlers of Catan World Championship. Sander was stuck at nine points, one short of a win. Two other players — from Latvia and Japan — grappled turn by turn for the longest road, each a lucky roll away from the 10-point victory. The fourth finalist, from Germany, trailed in points, boxed in with no room to expand.

The German also had one development card — a special card worth either a bonus or the chance to attack an opponent — face down in front of him. Because he’d neglected to play it, the others assumed that card was worth a whole victory point — the most valuable of its kind, wasted on a player who was nowhere near the necessary 10 points. Every top player knows how many of those free points exist in the deck, and the leaders reasoned that the German possessed the last one, leaving available only cards insufficient to seal a win.

Sander saw something different.

He remembered the German player remarking that his chances of rallying were practically finished. He’d noticed him looking reluctant to interfere with the battle being waged between the true contenders. Sander suspected he was holding a Knight, but didn’t want to play it and face the choice of robbing one player, swinging the fate of the championship. The German was being sportsmanlike, not logical.

So when it became Sander’s turn and he didn’t hold enough resource cards to build something for that winning point, he decided to purchase one of the last development cards. Japan and Latvia were astonished, agreeing nothing left in the deck would get Sander the win. But there it was, flipped face up instantly: the final victory point card, long available for anyone to buy cheaply, yet unclaimed until Sander grabbed it to get his 10th point and become Catan world champion.

In a game driven by memorization and statistical analysis, Sander gained the deciding edge by reading an opponent’s emotions. He won a trophy and a free cruise.

You know someone who settles. If you’ve never played Settlers of Catan yourself, then I guarantee at least one of your acquaintances, whether that person is a game enthusiast or not, sometimes sits at a table or computer to roll dice, build cities, and trade sheep for wood.

Catan is having a moment in the mainstream. The board game just passed its 20th anniversary, and yet it’s only penetrated popular culture over the last few years; it was featured on The Big Bang Theory and Parks and Recreation, and the Green Bay Packers recently confessed their addiction to it. The fifth edition of Settlers, which is only superficially distinct from its predecessors, is among the best-selling board games on Amazon, while new expansions, themed versions, and Catan-related merchandise emerge every month.

The game is German, both in origin and style. It is German in that its creator, Klaus Teuber, is a former dental technician from Darmstadt who graduated from basement hobbyist to full-time gaming mogul when Die Siedler von Catan won the coveted Spiel des Jahres award in 1995, then found immediate commercial success in both his home country and abroad. Teuber’s Catan company remains partnered with its manufacturer, Mayfair, a game industry titan.

Catan is German, too, in that it typifies a school of design that emphasizes strategy over luck and commerce over conflict. Games get fierce, and you’re still relying on dice rolls, but a winning campaign demands constant analysis and cannot be accomplished without a degree of cooperation from your eventual victims. No player is eliminated until somebody wins, no player wins by lording over opponents.

People view Catan as the first board game of its kind to achieve crossover success outside Europe, attracting hobbyists and relative non-gamers alike. It led a wave of popularity that’s still producing German-style hits today: If you’ve recently tried Carcassonne, Puerto Rico, or Ticket to Ride, you played something gamers consider finer than the simple, cutthroat games that dominated the American market’s previous century.

Catan is like Monopoly in that you build properties — settlements (worth one point) and cities (worth two) connected by roads — at the junctures of 19 hexagonal tiles associated with resources and collect an occupied tile’s resource (in the form of a card) when someone rolls its associated number. You then spend the resource cards you’ve acquired to build more properties, which bring in more resources, and so forth. You get rich and expand your civilization.

What’s different about Catan? Everything else. The tiles are shuffled into the game board and randomly assigned dice-roll numbers between 2 and 12, producing a unique map each game, with each game producing a very different economy. You roll two dice, so if a particular resource, say lumber, has all its tiles clustered into a corner of the map, or if all its tiles end up associated with low-probability dice rolls like 2 or 12 (rather than a high-probability number like, say, 8), one player might monopolize it, or it could become rare for all players.

Every player needs every resource, but no player starts the game with reliable access to all of them so everyone must barter and steal. This is where Catan is like poker. You want players to trade you resource cards you need. You don’t want them to block your resource production or steal from you, which anyone who rolls a 7 or buys a development card called a Knight can do. Staving opponents off requires tact, fair distribution of attacks, and even bluffing — convincing your adversaries you are not a threat, or at least not the biggest threat at the table.

The game is won when a player scores 10 victory points through any combination of city settling, road building, resource card cajoling, or development card accruing.

I picked up Settlers of Catan in college when a friend brought it on a weekend vacation to Vermont. I hardly went outside that whole trip. I don’t like board games at all, but something about the chattiness of the game and the fact that I got pretty good at it pretty fast made it appealing. We played regularly throughout the rest of school, and after graduating I played online (under the name KeyshawnJohnson. Opponents sometimes didn’t steal from me because they thought I was him.) until it became too frequent a procrastination vice and I kicked the habit. I’ve gotten my girlfriend and a few friends and family members hooked on the game, and still play the tabletop version whenever three or four of us assemble.

At some point, while checking to see if people ever meet up with strangers to play Catan, I found that not only is that the case, but there exist local qualifier tournaments all over the country. Those feed into a national tournament held in August at Earth’s biggest tabletop game convention in Indianapolis, which feeds into a USA team that plays the SETTLERS OF CATAN WORLD TOURNAMENT held every two years, half the time at a fucking castle in Germany. I wanted in.

I had to know: What is a national Catan tournament like? Who are the competitors in those tournaments? How good can you really be at Catan? How good am *I* at Catan?

I wanted to compete, but there were just months until the Catan National Championship (CNC) at Indy Gen Con, and the only remaining June regional qualifier I found was in Milwaukee.

So I flew to Milwaukee.

MILWAUKEE

Ghostbusters play giant Jenga in the lobby of a Milwaukee airport hotel

Summerfest is amazing. It’s the largest music festival in the world, with huge acts playing 11 stages over 11 days in mid-summer, the absolute best time to spend beside shimmering Lake Michigan.

The Nexus Game Fair is not part of Summerfest. While the rest of the city enjoyed all-day performances and streets lined with food trucks, hundreds of people spent a long June weekend in the air conditioned conference rooms of the Crowne Plaza Milwaukee Airport hotel.

Everyone looked delighted. Rows and rows of men, children, and the occasional woman test-played unfamiliar boards and cards or played pick-up games of old classics.

Gray-haired men prodding tiny artillery around turf battlefield tables occasionally burst out in cheers.

Adults, some in costumes, circled with scripts in hand around castles made of wood and styrofoam, living out RPG scenarios.

Special guests, which is to say hobbling old guys with ponytails, commanded the magnetism of celebrities, but were kind and approachable to the quivering fans in their midst.

I pushed a closed door to peek at five people clicking at computer monitors in pitch darkness, muttering about coordinates while a sixth person paced back and forth issuing orders, studying some sort of cyber spacecraft on a projection screen at the room’s front.

Game salesmen occupied booths in one “dealer hall,” or they traveled the hotel lobbies stopping attendees to make a well-rehearsed pitch: “You like Cards Against Humanity? Well, what if it had PICTURES!?”

Outside the door of something labeled The Pathfinder Society, a teenager in costume asked a staff member to scoop popcorn for him because he couldn’t get the door of the machine to work.

In the corner of one hall, behind a table of old folks playing out a 10-hour-long Battle of Hannut, was the Catan tournament. Fifteen people at the Game Fair joined me for the final play-in day of the regional qualifier.

I arrived to find a state of minor controversy. Daniel Ashburn, the IT guy and game collector running the tournament for Nexus, was visibly chagrined to deliver the bad news that competitors who’d participated in either of the two prior play-in days were not eligible to play another, that their scores were set.

Heads hung. Chris Massey, a recent University of Oklahoma graduate who’d driven 17 hours to Milwaukee from Fort Worth, Texas (“The other qualifiers were during school.”) told me with eyes shut and face flush how he’d mailed in his performance in some previous games because he wasn’t feeling well, and was now disappointed to find that those scores were locked in.

“Initially, they said basically you could sign up for as many days as you wanted. You could sign up for Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, or all three, and just try to compete a lot to get into the final.”

So he registered for every day, believing his best score would be the one to count, like taking the SAT multiple times. Then, days before the qualifier, Mayfair officials visited on behalf of the CNC and said they’d withhold their official blessing if the tournament was run that way.

“There was poor communication,” Massey told me, “and they were kinda trying to rush to make things fit the schedule and the rules they’d just gotten the week beforehand.”

This was Milwaukee’s first regional Catan qualifier — Nexus is just two years old, as Milwaukee hosted the massive Gen Con itself until 2002 — so some growing pains were expected and eventually understood. Frustration settled and the games began.

We each played two four-player games, all settling the same arrangement of resource tiles and numbers, with our scores added to form standings from which the top eight players from all three days would advance.

My first game was among kids, two of whom came from a crew of five frattily-dressed college guys who’d driven up from Kenosha and Madison. I had the win in hand when one of the Kenosha crew, a feathery-haired rising Northwestern sophomore named Nick Trimark, swooped in and bought two development cards the turn before me — both of them victory points to get him from 8 to 10 and the win. It was a Hail Mary, and it worked. Nick smirked and high-fived his bros while I seethed.

Afterward, I asked Trimark and company if they frequented such tournaments. In fact, it wasn’t just their first experience with organized board gaming, but their first ever convention, and Catan was the only present game in which they had interest. They weren’t used to this crowd, and chuckled a bit at their own affinity for settling.

“Sometimes I’m ashamed to ask people if they play Catan because I don’t wanna seem like I’m nerdy. And then if they don’t know I’m like ‘Oh it’s nothing.’ And if they do I’m like ‘YEAH!’ It’s like instant brotherhood.”

The guys agreed that they didn’t fit in at the convention, but nodded along with the assertion that everyone was “really cool and friendly.”

I felt the same. The mountain of games I’d never heard of and scores of gamers wearing costumes I didn’t recognize, excited about things I didn’t understand, were overwhelming. Still, at least in the Catan corner, people seemed friendly and, excepting the guy who flossed right at his table and another guy thumbing away at a PlayStation Vita in the middle of our game, pretty … well, normal.

My second game included two Catan veterans. Mandy Sanders, an IT project manager from Peoria, Illinois, learned the game from her husband in 2001, and went on to compete in several national tournaments at Gen Con in Indianapolis. Michael Tobin, a teacher from Grayslake, Illinois, embraced the game upon its introduction at a convention in 1995, when the rules were still written in German. He won the first official CNC out of a dozen or so people, receiving an expired $10 gift certificate as his prize.

Chris, Mandy, Nick, and a fourth player, Joe, place their initial settlements in the Milwaukee semifinal

Mandy won our game swiftly, and we talked shop around the table while the other games took longer to produce a winner on identical boards. She remarked that she didn’t recognize a single person at Nexus, but usually knew half the people in any Catan tournament.

“You eyeball the room and you know who’s been there before and who’s good. It becomes part of the meta-game, too. You’re like, ‘Oh that person is really good,’ so the first time you roll a 7, all else being equal, you’re going after that person.”

I noted that there also weren’t many women in the room. Mandy said it was the same at all tournaments, but didn’t seem to mind.

“I think the mix is probably about the same as it is here. There’s always a few women. It doesn’t bother me. I don’t really notice to tell you the truth.”

Tobin offered that the games had been nearly all men in the ’90s, and that more women were entering each year, “although I do see almost all white.”

With no wins and low points in my two games, I didn’t advance to the eight-player semifinals. Nick and Mandy, each with a win, did. Chris did, too, despite his concerns over the last-minute rule change.

Both Nick and Mandy made it to the final four-person game, a battle that lasted hours because the proctors had saved one of Mayfair’s cruelest pre-mapped board designs for last. The resources weren’t mixed at all — all the lumber spots were clustered in one corner, adjacent to a strip of wool spots, which sat next to all the ore spots, and so forth. Players open by placing two free settlements, and in this situation, no one could start the game with access to all the resources. Trades were essential from the start, but players were nervous to oblige opponents with a trip to the CNC at stake.

Daniel and William Cress, his good friend and a volunteer at Nexus, grinned over the players’ exasperation at the extreme board.

“It’s brutal.”

“That’s why we chose it.”

Once trades happened and the game got moving, Nick’s red pieces consumed the map. He reached a winning 10 points despite one player basically devoting her turn to building a road longer than his, aided by the players trading her the necessary resources, allied in hopes of delaying their collective demise. Roads connect settlements, and the person with the longest continuous road on the board adds two points to their score — those points change hands throughout the game, but couldn’t ultimately be kept away from Nick.

After Nick posed for photos with his trophy and filled out the information for his all-expenses-paid trip to the CNC at Gen Con in Indianapolis, I asked him to describe his first competitive board gaming experience.

Nick poses with his Nexus Game Fair Catan trophy, friends at his side

“It felt pretty professional. It was a good environment to be in, just being around people who like Catan and like playing. Everyone was pretty good.”

He wasn’t sure which of his dudes to bring along as the free plus-one at Gen Con.

I returned to New York disappointed I would have to cover the national championship as a spectator, not a participant, until I realized how completely wrong I was. Milwaukee was the last regional qualifier, but the day before the nationals in late July, the biggest and best qualifying opportunity would take place right in Indianapolis. Anyone at Gen Con could play in the Catan Open, a tournament with around 120 available seats that would fill 16 of the 48 slots in the CNC quarterfinals. Meanwhile, Nick was the only one of 20 at Nexus who qualified, and the larger regional qualifiers I saw had even harsher ratios. I shouldn’t have gone to Milwaukee at all.

So I signed up for the Open and convinced Max, one of my best and smartest friends, and the player who wins roughly half our group’s Catan games, to join me as well. I figured he was my ringer.

INDIANAPOLIS

After a night spent in Charlotte because of bad weather and flight delays, Max and I drove straight from the Indianapolis airport to the Indiana Convention Center downtown, sprinting through thousands of lolling cosplayers to one of the arena-sized halls. A Mayfair representative was already handing out table assignments for the first games of the Catan Open. If not for a brief disagreement over whether a Canadian player was allowed to qualify (he was not), we would have been too late.

Around 30 boards, some pushed onto the long “open gaming” tables outside the cordoned, carpeted section reserved for the tournament, sat ready for us, each bearing resource tiles and numbers arranged in the same positions. The people inside the pen sat at special Catan tables with felt holders for each player’s settlement pieces around a hexagonal inset for the board.

Once again, I was toppled from the precipice of victory in my first game. I had the grain and ore in hand to build a city for my winning point, just waiting my turn, when Martin Smith, a crew-cut actuary from northern Illinois, bought a development card that ended up being a full 10th victory point. His 10-year-old son approached the table moments later and squealed “WOOOO!” when he found out dad had won.

Martin, like Michael in Milwaukee, had known the game since the days of translating it from German 20 years ago. Martin told me he attends three or four conventions a year, and plays Catan at a couple of them as a break from the more serious stuff, enjoying the game’s more “slice of life” crowd.

Bob's Burgers cosplayers battle with foam swords

“I think it’s a much wider draw than almost any other game. I’m used to the war games with all the hardcore grognards. There’s stereotypes about those guys and the D&D guys have stereotypes, too. I don’t want to denigrate anybody, but: beer belly, big beard, maybe not as socially active. That’s the stereotype, not necessarily always true. It’s not at all true of Catan.”

Another player at our table exuded palpable Chill Dad vibes in his tie-dyed Moody Blues T-shirt. A retired Pepsi salesman and professional prom DJ from Chicago, Brian Cummings had picked up Catan just a few years ago when a fellow disc golf player told him about it. He now plays with some buddies and their wives, summoned weekly by a group text. He burns mix CDs and they all hang out and try new games, of which Brian seemed to prefer Catan for the “sneaky” and “evolving” nature of gameplay, and the level of emotion it stirs.

“I’ve seen a guy lose 50 bucks in a poker game but when he loses this board game he gets more pissed off.”

I didn’t come close to winning my other two play-in games. My final table was a bit of a joke. Three of us mentioned we’d lost all hope of qualifying, and the fourth, a young and disarmingly polite Seattle software developer named Justin Woo, mopped us to get a crucial second win. Looking at the standings later, I realized an older Australian man at my table had been fibbing; he had a win under his belt and would have advanced to the semifinal with another.

Another failure was disappointing, because I was surprised at how casual the competition seemed — players joked and gossiped so much that I wondered if they weren’t taking the tournament seriously. I’d come into each game on edge, but relaxed into the patter of the table, only to find an opponent placing her 10th point before I’d even started keeping count.

Max had won one of his three games, but didn’t amass enough points in the other two to rank among the top 16 advancing to the quarterfinal. When we reunited after our defeats, Max was most excited to have lost to the 2014 national champion, a shaggy, smiley 2015 DePaul graduate wearing the frayed garb of a skateboarder who, Max heard, was attending Gen Con with his identical twin. He’d only revealed his prior year’s glory after winning the present game. His name was Chris Broderick, and I had to meet him.

Meeting him was very easy, because Chris and his stockier, mustached duplicate, Tim, loitered among the tables well after they’d finished dominating the Open — Chris third and Tim eighth among the advancing 16 — hugging and chatting up other players like old pals.

Max and the Broderick twins survey a board

Chris told me that hobnobbing was part of every Catan event, not just because tournament veterans become acquainted, but because it’s beneficial at least in the early stages to gather some bright minds and survey the best settling spots on the board as a small group.

“I’m friends with a bunch of quote unquote ‘top players’ — really good players — so we all just sit around and talk and we argue about what we think is best. And usually there’s a logical decision for each position and we can plan it out and once you play it out before the game the settling process is really simple.”

He recalled fondly his first overseas journey, traveling to Berlin for the World Championships — winning at Gen Con is how you get on the USA team — and didn’t hesitate to explain the circumstances of his “meteoric rise” from neighborhood player and “lucky” regional tournament winner to national champ.

“I didn’t expect to do anything, which I think helps with this game because if you go into a game and you’re super arrogant and think you’re great, people aren’t going to like you, and that’s a huge part of the game.”

So that explained why Max had no idea he was sitting with a Catan great until after the game. It was a calculated decision. Chris kept his history to himself and, he said, made sure to be really sweet with everyone at the table. This helps when a 7 gets rolled, or a Knight card gets played, and it’s time for your opponent to pick someone to rob.

“Even if you’re ahead, they don’t want to ruin your day because they like you! So they’ll steal from you but block a lesser spot of yours because they actually like you and they don’t want you to not like them after the game.”

The niceness seemed to come naturally to Chris, who’s just a gregarious sort, but that couldn’t be his whole game, right? He must count cards — that is, memorize every resource card every player picks up — or be able to calculate complex odds on the fly or practice constantly or … something.

Chris assured me he knew the basic probabilities and favored certain strategies, but no, he utilized neither special mathematic brilliance nor much training beyond his regular games with friends.

“I think it’s just about relaxing. You have to be confident. It’s better when you’re having fun, and it’s much more convincing to the other players when you’re actually having fun that you’re not pulling a fast one on them — even if you are pulling a fast one on them, it’s much more convincing. You’ve got to have that balance.”

Max and I paced the room as games wound down. Maybe a quarter of the participants were women. At one table, a player who insisted on being called Mongo was about to win, playing with special black building pieces he’d brought himself. Fans sidled up to greet Eric Millegan, erstwhile series regular on Bones and beloved Catan community member, a patriarch of what Columbus, Ohio’s Emily Brodbeck described to me as “kind of a weird family network” who meet a few times a year to catch up and settle.

Once the Open wrapped, everyone left to drink.

Saturday, Max and I arrived early and finally enjoyed the opportunity to explore Gen Con a bit. The convention’s reported attendance was a record 61,423, just a hair under the capacity of the Colts stadium the convention center adjoins. Where the Milwaukee crowd and its playground stuffed into a few hotel ballrooms overwhelmed me, the vastness of Gen Con felt like a universe beyond my comprehension.

Adrift in a sea of geeks, and at one point literally barricaded by a costume parade, we visited only one other hall. It contained an acre — really, an acre — of paired-off men flipping Magic: The Gathering cards in advance of a high-stakes tournament in which professional players would participate. Several Catan players had told me Magic tournaments are far tenser and more serious than their own competition because of the money involved. When I saw a booth selling a $1,200 card — a piece of cardboard bearing a picture of a tree — I believed them.

Nearing 10 a.m., we returned to the tiny Catan district of this airy indoor city. Winners from all the regional qualifiers were rolling in, along with the 16 best players from the previous day. Nick from the Milwaukee tournament arrived without any of his college crew, but with his grandfather, Jim. I wondered if Jim, a pharmacist (and of the dozens of people I interviewed, the only person who told me he reads SB Nation regularly), knew about the game. He said he’d only heard of it two weeks prior, when Nick, whose parents insisted he not make the drive from Kenosha alone, found all other family members busy and figured grandpa would enjoy the trip.

“He said ‘Catan’ and I said ‘what the blue blazes is that!?”

They’d listened to “Nick’s music” on the way to Gen Con — classical, because the 19-year-old is a double major in engineering and concert piano and making me feel inadequate. Grandpa Jim vowed they’d listen to Frank Sinatra the whole way back.

Nick rolls dice while Grandpa Jim looks on

Nick and Grandpa were in for a long day — the top 15 out of 48 would advance, their scores from four straight games determining rank. Games can last as short as half an hour, but with so much at stake, and not enough Mayfair reps around to institute a three-minute turn clock, trade negotiations and calculations ran unchecked. Four games with breaks in between to pee, eat, and study the next board added up to an eight-hour Catan session.

It was exhausting just to watch, but it gave Max and I time to appreciate the wonder of 48 players — 38 men, 10 women — settling identical boards in foursomes, a dozen parallel universes unfolding at once. The same map that one player conquered in 30 minutes took other tables over two hours. Slight variety in initial settlement positions, plus the whims of the almighty dice, were enough to produce such divergence. It was like watching the same Super Bowl played 12 times in the same conditions, but with one substitution or tweaked play call spiraling each into a wildly disparate result.

After one of the more protracted games ended in his shocking defeat, Justin from Seattle seemed almost giddy with despair. Someone lucked into three victory point development cards in a row. Just like my very first loss, but even more improbable.

“It’s literally like a hail mary in football. You throw the ball and you pray for God. That’s what he did and he got it.”

I mentioned to Justin that the previous day at our table, he’d been almost outlandishly nice, congratulating each of us every time we built anything on the board, and that I’d noticed the same behavior in this quarterfinal. He may have been emulating other top players he observed.

“You need to be nice or they’re gonna screw you over. People are gonna get you. You see all the good players, they’ll go up like ‘Hey how’s it going?’ They don’t give a shit! They don’t care, but the good players will be like ‘Yeah man, how you doing? Oh, so nice to meet you.’”

Justin waved his arms and pitched his voice to mock the top players.

“You switch on the social stuff. You’ll be like ‘Yeah, hey, how’s it going? What’s up? What’s up?’ and then after that, like ‘Fuck you, man.”

Justin unwinds after a surprise defeat

Like Chris Broderick, Justin is outgoing, and must come by some of his table presence honestly. He wasn’t so sure about some of the charmers he met in other games.

“I’m not saying all board game guys are introverts, but we’re not like MC Hammer or something. We’re not like those type of people. We’re board game people. We stay home and play board games.”

Justin falling short of that win proved fatal, as it was his only shot of grabbing enough points to reach Sunday morning’s CNC semifinal.

Nick, too, was toast. With his grandfather observing from outside the pen — except for one of the middle contests, which he skipped to nap back at the hotel — Nick found himself in consecutive three-player games, a situation of questionable fairness that everyone hates, but one that couldn’t be avoided when tired competitors dropped from the tournament without notice. On both those wide-open and easily unbalanced boards — one player always seems to end up with all the space to expand — Nick faltered. He called the whole experience “fun” but “pretty bogus.”

Even the defending champ fell just short of the top 15. Chris told me afterward he’d been targeted for theft by other players even when he wasn’t in the lead, probably because his cover as reigning champion had been blown.

His twin brother, though, gutted out a couple wins at tables full of older guys with decades of experience (One of them described to Max and me his game at the 2012 World Championships in photographic detail. It took 20 minutes). Tim ranked third, earning the right to pick a seat in his semifinal — a crucial choice of position in the snake-style draft for the initial settlement placements. Chris, meanwhile, fell to 18th, just short of the cut.

I told Tim I’d been hoping he and Chris would face each other in the final, the only possible way they’d meet, since Mayfair officials avoid putting family at the same tables to avoid collusion. Tim sounded disappointed, too, because as close and supportive as the brothers are — they live together and spent the Indianapolis weekend sleeping together in the family van to save money (“Terrible, but doable.”) — they are also each other’s fiercest competition. He fancies himself a better settler than Chris, “but statistics prove me wrong over time, obviously.”

Tim looked forward to his vanquished twin’s presence on the final day, not just for the company, but because they play similar styles — lots of development cards left face-down longer than necessary to keep a low profile and sneak up on opposition in what Catan vets call the “stealth strategy” —  and could appraise the board together before the game.

He echoed Chris on the value of understanding people over constant statistical analysis, though he professed more skill for reading faces than fooling others with his own.

“People count the [resource] cards. They know what everyone has all the time. They count the dice rolls. They know the probabilities in the back of their head. But I think that’s kind of distracting. I like to look more at what — like, if people draw a [development] card — what they look like, kind of like reading people in poker.”

For Sunday’s semifinal, the carpeted pen was cleared but for four tables, each playing a game producing one winner to reach the final later that day. Max and I arrived early and immediately noticed an unfamiliar face: a tall, goateed, Kangol-wearing man wheeling a suitcase, like he’d come directly from the airport. At once, it struck us that 15 people advancing yesterday constituted an odd number — one short, and our confusion was soon answered by the other semifinalists grumbling about the new guy in their midst.

Conventions are big money. It’s the ideal setting to pander to gamers, and companies plot carefully to determine which “cons” are worth staging their biggest releases, best sales, and official tournaments. Such presences dictate the success of each convention. For instance, the Origins Game Fair, now located in Columbus, Ohio, used to be the supreme of its kind, but now everyone agrees it’s well below Gen Con on the gaming totem pole, probably because of diminishing participance from Wizards of the Coast — makers of Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon — after the mega toy corporation Hasbro purchased them.

Mayfair still casts a big footprint at Gen Con, Origins and the like, but they just started their own convention, too. CatanCon 1 was held over a weekend in late April at a resort in Nashville, Tennessee, and it included a regional qualifier tournament notable for a major distinction: Unlike other qualifiers, the winner of that tournament advanced straight to the semis, bypassing Saturday’s grueling, four-game, 48-player quarterfinal. One way to get people to show up.

So yeah, the guy who came from Nashville had a target on his back Sunday morning. He proved a worthy competitor, but didn’t advance.

Tim and Chris Broderick chat after Tim went down in the semifinals

Tim, meanwhile, went down fast in his semifinal game. Bafflingly fast. Chris looked on with mouth agape and shoulders fixed in a disbelieving shrug as Scott Scribner — an Ohio State University grant manager and previous national champ who’d qualified at CharCon in West Virginia — turned apt starting positions, a carefully timed road-building development card, and some devastatingly lucky dice rolls into a sudden longest road, then plopped a settlement right where Tim was about to build for his 10th point. It was the quickest victory I saw all weekend, a peaceful act of municipal construction that stung like an ambush.

For several minutes after the game’s conclusion, the Broderick twins bowed over the board, staring down Scott’s surprise build that dashed their dreams of a zygotic dynasty. The freshly defeated Tim looked in much better spirits than his spectating brother. Chris still held his face in his hands when I left to watch another table.

One of the longer semifinal games went to Shiv Chopra, an FDIC technology program manager from Silver Spring, Maryland. As a competitor in several prior national-level championships, he’d been invited to Catan Masters, a special tournament at the beginning of Gen Con to which only the very best players were admitted. He placed third in that tournament, only to learn that that whole final foursome — each of them fixtures in this community — had earned seats in Saturday’s qualifier and advanced, him now all the way to the final table.

I’d first spotted Shiv on Saturday, when he frazzled a younger player with assertions that she’d short-changed the bank while swapping cards in to purchase a city. (She hadn’t, but it took five exasperated minutes for her to prove.) Shiv later described his greatest Catan skill as “perseverance: Grinding it out in the game — seeing little opportunities and taking advantage of them,” adding that along with that grit and the necessary analytical ability, “25 percent of the game is social.”

He named Mandy Sanders — my old friend and adversary from Milwaukee — as a paragon of that 25 percent, someone who convinces the table “these are not the droids you’re looking for” no matter the situation.

“Everyone’s nice, but she just exudes this aura of niceness, and so even when she’s crushing you, there’ll be people who won’t attack her.”

The final table stood dead center in the pen, surrounded by cameras and wired with microphones. We dozen or so spectators couldn’t make out the game’s details, a deliberate set up so no one could peep cards and communicate secret signals to any finalist. We watched a “shadow table” in the corner, a matching board updated each turn by a Mayfair staffer to reflect the most recent turn. She laid development cards in front of empty chairs and placed building pieces of all 4 colors around the map. It’s like sitting so far from a basketball game that they add another court next to you, on which actors recreate each possession moments after it happens.

The final table surrounded by live-streaming equipment, with spectators surrounding the "shadow table" at right

Behind us, older guys who’d been eliminated from the tournament — “Catan legends,” whispered another spectator — recreated the final map themselves, and played it out as a pick-up game. Deeper into the “open gaming” section, a Catan Junior tournament took place alongside adults testing Star Trek Catan.

The prophylactic distance between us and the CNC final hardly mattered. Once it’s all on the line, the players don’t need help knowing their opponents’ hands. Especially later in the final, even the mellowest players track every roll and watch every resource card their rivals collect, appraising each other’s building capability turn by turn.

Under such tight mutual surveillance, that “stealth strategy” is favored — development cards are drawn blindly, inspected, then stashed face-down until use. Others are left to guess how many of your development cards are worth whole points, how many can be used to pillage, and how many will buy you resource bonuses. That’s where all that physiognomy and bluffing comes in.

Ironically, all four players — Shiv, Scott, and two other men named Robert and MJ — played that strategy, which ultimately foiled the whole thing. We at the shadow table realized, moments before the finalists did, that not only had every single development card been bought, but all of them that weren’t victory points had been revealed and played. Every player knew exactly where everyone else stood. The win came down to position and luck — hardly any more strategy, and no more of the poker that helped Sander shock the world in 2014.

With all cards quite literally on the table, Scott’s orange civilization prevailed. Unlike his sudden production in the semifinal, this was a long-dreaded feat of outlasting his adversaries once they’d exhausted nearly every piece the game box had to offer. Scott exhaled and reached for handshakes while the others dropped their resource cards. Shiv half-seriously thrust an index finger at MJ to hector him for missing an opportunity to stymie Scott a few turns ago.

Scott, whose hometown friends introduced him to Catan as a diversion following a “negative life-changing event” in 1997, reflected that he was far less nervous than during his previous trip to the final, “loose” in the face of “some tension between players” at that high-stakes table. It was satisfying just the same.

“It is an awesome feeling to know that your kung fu is strong.”

Scott represented the USA in Germany after his first CNC win 2006. He won’t travel far this time, as the next Worlds in Fall 2016 will take place stateside — rumor has it in Colorado.

Max and I want to be there, too. When we finally departed the frigid caverns of the Convention Center, squinting under mid-summer daylight, we turned back to face the building and vowed to return next year. We want to compete again after all we’ve learned, and when I added that I’d like to see these Catan folk again, Max agreed.

“I want to be friends with these people.”

Credits

Photos & Text: Seth Rosenthal

Editor: Elena Bergeron

Gifs: Jon Bois

Design & Development: Graham MacAree

The sun has only just risen over the San Gabriel Valley. Already, the gym is alive with sound.

In Los Angeles, on South Fairfax Ave., below where it meets Wilshire Blvd. in the city’s west end, sits the Orthodox Shalhevet High School, a three-story brick and glass private school. Class is still out one morning late in August, but summer’s window is closing. Even before 7:30 a.m., school staff and maintenance workers filter in and out to prep for the new year. This early in the day, they exchange few words between them.

The most noise, and certainly the most action, is found inside two sets of double doors by the school’s rear entrance. Hip-hop pulses through portable speakers set on the gym’s bleachers, and basketballs echo as they pound the floor again and again. Soon, intensity will escalate. Sneakers will squeak on the hardwood. Breathing will become labored. By 7:40, shirts are dotted with sweat.

Photo: @Kicknit_

More than a half-dozen ball players mill about the gym in various roles, one directing drills, others participating as placeholders in them, and others still observing the action. They all exist in the orbit of one man, 25 years old then by exactly four days, wearing the lone piece of NBA apparel on the court.

This is Seth Curry. Not Steph Curry, the better known of the basketball playing brothers, and that is kind of the point. The NBA’s reigning MVP, champion and media darling surely trains hard in the offseason, but there is no way his workouts will ever again be quite like this. If it were Steph Curry inside Shalhevet High School on this morning, there would certainly be more attention paid to what is going on in the gym.

Instead, with little curiosity from those nearby, Seth Curry goes through the drills he must perfect to be considered in the same conversation as his older brother. At first glance, they are similar in likeness, their dark hair cropped short, their faces sharing many features, even their names easy to confuse.

But the brothers are not the same. Steph is much more polished, more outgoing. “Seth is very much to himself and very independent,” Steph says. Even their jumpers, a family hallmark, are launched from different angles; Steph’s beginning low, often appearing as if flicked from his hip, Seth’s release more traditional, shot from up top, high near his head.

In the school’s gym, Seth cuts quickly left and right with the ball, mimicking game situations where he will be challenged to create his own shot. He wears a Sacramento Kings team T-shirt, and there is meaning in that. Curry was a great star in college, an explosive guard and prolific scorer who played much of his NCAA career under Mike Krzyzewski at Duke. His future appeared set … after college, Seth would follow his brother to the NBA, who himself followed behind their father, Dell, a legendary shooter that played 16 seasons with five NBA teams.

Seth’s story, however, is not so linear. Injuries and lost opportunities sent him in revolutions around the NBA, circling the league, even touching down for a time or two, but never sticking the way it was long presumed he would. One day he would be lighting up the NBA’s D-League, so much better than his opponents he didn’t seem to fit in. Then, upon promotion to teams like the Memphis Grizzlies, Cleveland Cavaliers and Phoenix Suns, he would disappear and never see the court. As soon as he arrived in the NBA, sometimes even on the very same day, Curry was always sent right back down.

Photo: Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images

L-R: Seth, Stephen and Dell Curry

It seemed he could not live up to the family basketball legacy. But he would whisper barely a word about what many who observed him wondered, how he was handling it, always being compared to that brother, to that dad. The weight of expectations, they thought, must be unbearable.

He swore he was making his own way in life, that he would succeed in the sport at his own pace, and indeed this summer he has lived up to his word. Following two years journeying through the far reaches of professional basketball, in July Curry signed his first guaranteed contract in the NBA. After he dominated in yet another season at pro basketball’s lower levels, this time a performance so impressive it earned him a spot on the All-NBA Summer League team, the Kings offered Curry a two-year deal worth $2 million.

On the professional scale, it isn’t much, but for Curry it is altogether something different. For the first time he will be afforded the chance to claim his own stake in the NBA, to prove that he belongs and that he was always meant to stay. It will be the truest way he can shake the comparisons, of people rarely measuring him without doing so against the basketball stars, past and present, that share his last name.

Curry often said it never bothered him, that being discussed in the same breath as Steph or Dell was something to cherish. But Curry was always quiet, too, a homebody who liked to keep to himself. How could you tell if it got to him, anyway?

“Being around Seth and how he carried himself, you would never know if it was hard for him or not,” says Curry’s sister, Sydel. “To this day, I still don’t know how he really felt about it.”

Growing up, the games always seemed to end the same on that court, the two buckets behind the Curry home in Charlotte, North Carolina. Steph, older and stronger, would beat on his little brother in basketball, their games spilling into arguments and a familiar routine: Seth, often infuriated over what he felt was his brother’s cheating, heaving the ball far off into the distance. Sometimes, he grew so incensed he would grab the ball and instead bring it into the house in protest.

The two boys were the oldest of three children born to Dell and Sonya Curry, a prominent couple that had set their roots in the Tar Heel state. Dell, who spent a decade of his long NBA career with the Charlotte Hornets, had met Sonya at Virginia Tech, where they were both varsity stars - basketball for him, volleyball for her. Following his retirement, Dell became the color man for Charlotte’s NBA broadcasts, while Sonya ran the Montessori school she and her husband founded years earlier in nearby Huntersville.

Photo: Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images

Above: Dell Curry holds Seth, 1993

Steph was born two years before Seth, who was followed four years later by Sydel. By now, you know the family well. Had you turned on most any of the Golden State Warriors’ playoff games last year, there in the stands, always in the focus of network cameras, were the Currys, today’s first family of basketball, relishing Steph’s fairytale ride to the NBA title.

It was the culmination of nearly three decades of firm parenting by Dell and Sonya. They provided their children every opportunity in the world to thrive, but made certain they earned each success along the way.

Seth was the quiet kid of the bunch, piping up most often to crack wise before shying away around those he didn’t know. He was a natural in school, good grades coming easy to him, though his parents always asked him to do the things that were never simple. If he studied just 30 minutes more each day, his mother told him, he could turn his impressive report card into an exemplary one.

He was incredibly perceptive from an early age, always finding the angles in life but sometimes, also, the shortcuts. “If he wanted to do something, he was very determined,” Sonya says. “But he had to be shown the benefit of things. He gave you just enough but wasn’t going to give you that extra.”

As a boy, he developed a competitive streak, and of course there was no greater antagonist in his life than Steph. When Seth would storm away from the court following those games that turned into screaming matches, Steph would have to acquiesce to his younger brother. “It was his way of trying to get under my skin, and it usually worked!” Steph says. “I’d have to give in and give him the (foul) call or whatever he wanted so we could keep playing.”

By high school, Seth was a standout guard at Charlotte Christian, scoring more points in a season than Steph had when he passed through a few years before, but even then it was not easy to escape his older brother’s shadow. One game in 2008, against rival Charlotte Latin, came following Steph’s breakout spring at Davidson, where he captured the attention of the sports world during March Madness with one high-arcing three-pointer after another. The underdog Wildcats stunned their way to the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament, losing by just two to eventual champion Kansas. Steph had officially arrived on the national stage.

Back in Charlotte, Seth was left to hear the jeers. His coaches always noticed that Seth loved to play when the crowd was into a game, though on this day the opposing fans chose to narrow their gaze on him. “You’re not Steph-en!” they chanted. “You’re not Steph-en!” Over and again, the words came down on the younger brother. “You could see Seth like, ‘OK, I’m gonna get this going’” says Charlotte Christian coach Shonn Brown. “He didn’t get frustrated; he didn’t say anything. He hit four or five threes on consecutive possessions and he was just looking at the crowd.”

He could score, there was no question about that. But Curry also was, by his own admission, not quite ready then for the next level. “I was a bit of a late bloomer,” he says. “Honestly, I wasn’t that good. I wasn’t one of the best players in the country.” Though he was an offensive force in high school, the rest of his game had yet to mature. Like his brother before him, who went lightly recruited and ended up at a mid-major college, Curry failed to attract interest from the biggest programs in the country.

But he did not go completely overlooked. When Curry was a junior, he was shooting one day in a back gym at Charlotte Christian, pulling up from 28 and 29 feet and letting it fly. He didn’t make every bucket, yet the display caught the eye of Ritchie McKay, the head coach at Virginia’s Liberty University. McKay watched for about eight minutes before he had seen enough. He approached Brown. “I’m offering him,” McKay said.

Curry’s senior season came and went, and while he excelled, leading the Knights to a 21-11 record, scouts and recruiters derided him as the dreaded “tweener,” not a true point guard and too small, at 6’2, to be a capable shooting guard. Only three other schools offered him a scholarship - William& Mary, the Air Force Academy and his brother’s university, Davidson - but Seth chose to stick with the program that had first shown interest. “I thought we were getting a steal,” McKay says.

Curry arrived at Liberty in the fall of 2008 and was an immediate success. He scored 20.2 points per game, most in the entire nation for a college freshman, even though defenses tried every gimmick available to stop him. Opponents doubled Curry, designed entire game plans to deny him the ball, and on many occasions even tried the box-and-one, a so-called “junk” defense created to focus almost entirely on a single opposing player. Nothing seemed to work.

Photo: Sandra Mu/Getty Images

Above: Seth Curry represents the United States in a U19 Basketball World Championships match

The Flames went 23-12 that season, good for the second-most wins in the Big South, and in Curry the program had a star to build around. But what Curry needed then to reach his true potential was stronger competition and a bigger stage on which to shine. Since its founding in 1971, Liberty has reached the NCAA tournament only three times, and in fact no Big South team has ever won more than a single March Madness game.

McKay caught wind that Curry was considering a transfer from one of his assistants during the final game of Liberty’s season. Once news broke nationwide, McKay must have received a hundred calls from coaches at major schools across the country, many of them the same men that had paid Curry little mind when he was an upperclassman in high school. “Hey, can we talk to Seth?” they asked McKay. “Can we get his number?”

Suddenly, the decision of where to play was his. Curry chose Duke as the school to finish his college career, because it was close to home but also because the chance to play for Krzyzewski in such a storied program could not be passed over. Curry sat out a season under the NCAA’s transfer rules, returning to game action in the fall of 2010.

At Liberty, he had been the face of his program, but in Durham every player had the potential to become a star, and Curry found others ahead of him in the pecking order. During his first season, when the Blue Devils went 32-5 but failed to reach the Elite Eight, Curry was passed over on the depth chart in favor of guards Kyrie Irving and Nolan Smith. Although he shot nearly 44 percent from deep, Curry averaged only nine points per game, and most of his playing time arrived when Irving was out with an injury.

On campus, other students knew Curry because he was on the basketball team, but this was Duke, an elite private school that churns out CEOs and other prominent alumni with great regularity. Despite his standing in sports, he could live a normal life at school, free from screaming fans trailing him to the cafeteria. For Curry, this often meant laying low, returning after class or practice to his room to watch movies or television. “I’m not really someone who’s always out on the scene going places,” he says. “I’m a homebody. That’s just who I am.”

As a junior, with Irving and Smith both in the NBA, Curry became a starter, splitting backcourt duties with Austin Rivers. He learned quickly how the spotlight shined brighter at Duke than it ever could at Liberty, especially so once the Blue Devils were famously bounced by 15-seed Lehigh in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Curry had a rough game, scoring only seven points on 1-of-9 shooting from the field, “When you’re winning, (Duke) is the best place you can be in the country, by far,” he says. “But when you’re losing, you’re having a bad year, it’s one of the worst because all eyes are on you. There’s pressure.”

Photo: Chuck Liddy/Raleigh News & Observer/MCT via Getty Images

Still, as a senior, Curry was pegged to become the program’s top option on offense, though even this didn’t come easy. He had been suffering from shin splints, and a month before the season began doctors found he had developed a stress fracture in his right leg. Rather than lose the year on a medical redshirt, he decided to play at partial capacity, sitting out many practices to preserve his body for game action.

Even with his ailing legs, the Blue Devils leaned heavily on Curry; he logged more than 32 minutes per game, mostly at shooting guard. Unlike his brother at Davidson before him, Curry was tasked less with distributing than with putting the ball in the hoop, handing out just 1.5 assists per game but also leading the team with an average scoring mark of 17.5 points. “If he wasn’t hurt the whole year,” Krzyzewski says, “I thought he might have been the leading scorer in the country. That’s how good he became.”

Photo: Chuck Liddy/Raleigh News & Observer/MCT via Getty Images

Duke lost to Louisville one game shy of the Final Four, Curry scoring 12 points in his finale, but worse than that Curry required an operation after the season to correct his leg injury. He was already considered undersized for the NBA, but now GMs grew unsure how he would recover from surgery. Ahead of the draft, Curry was unable to work out for teams. His stock was falling, a surprise to those nearest him. “I saw him as someone that could immediately score in the NBA,” says Ryan Kelly, the Los Angeles Lakers forward that played three seasons with Curry at Duke. “I was thinking, ‘Man, some team’s gotta want him as someone to put the ball in the basket.’”

Curry watched the 2013 NBA Draft at home with his family, talking to his agent, Alex Saratsis, throughout the night. The first round passed, and suddenly it was getting late into the second and final round without Curry’s name being called. His recovery notwithstanding, Curry was certain he would be chosen, that picks 45-60 absolutely would not pass without his selection. “I felt like I proved all year I was one of the best players in the country,” he says.

The draft ended, and yet his name was not called. Curry had not been picked, old questions about his size asked again and new ones, about his health, asked for the first time. It was another slight, once more he had been overlooked as a player with a future at the next level of basketball. But it also instilled in Curry a resolve he has been forced to confront at every turn. Nothing in this sport would be given to him. There is no birthright to an NBA career.

He set out as an undrafted free agent, searching for any opportunity to show his worth. “I thought I was an NBA player,” Curry says. “I was going to have to prove myself when I got on the court.”

He could not have known then how long it would take.

Of all the places, of course it would be Oakland. Two months following the draft, after he had been passed over by each of the 27 NBA teams that held a pick in 2013, Curry signed a non-guaranteed deal with the Golden State Warriors. The team was led by a player that was surely no coincidence, Seth’s brother, Steph.

It was a marketing lay-up, the Curry boys united at last, those backyard dreams come to life, but the transaction also placed Seth again in the shade of his older brother.

Rocky Widner/NBAE via Getty Images

As teammates, the Currys would not last. Seth received little playing time in the preseason, and for a scoring guard his 2.6 points per game did not satisfy Golden State. On Oct. 25, just before the regular season began, Seth was waived and sent to the nearby D-League team, the Santa Cruz Warriors.

With the guidance of his father and Saratsis, Curry designed a plan. He would give himself two years to reach the NBA, laboring in D-League outposts for little respect and less pay, honing his skills, before he would consider changing course. If he didn’t secure an NBA guarantee by the fall of 2015, he would take the money available overseas, accepting one of the many lucrative offers he’d received to join clubs in Russia, Spain or any number of other top foreign destinations for American players.

He scored 36 points in his first game for Santa Cruz in 2013, and after just a month he received his first 10-day contract, with Memphis. Curry thought finally he had found a home in Tennessee, a place he would play out the rest of the year and then survey new opportunities after the season. Yet the reality was much more cruel. Curry made his NBA introduction on Jan. 5, 2014, against Detroit, played four minutes, attempted zero shots and recorded no other statistics. The very same night of his debut, the Grizzlies waived him.

Back in Santa Cruz, coach Casey Hill wondered what he would see from Curry upon his return. For every D-League participant, a call-up is the dream. Yet when the NBA doesn’t work, each player has his own response. Some turn off, defeated. Others come back determined, but gun only for their own numbers.

Curry returned to the Warriors during the 2014 NBA D-League Showcase in Reno. Up next on the schedule for Santa Cruz was the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, the much-discussed affiliate of the Houston Rockets that ran teams off the floor with high scores and three-pointers to spare. Curry scored a team-high 27 points, but did not do so at the expense of his teammates. He also dished out eight assists, and Santa Cruz won by 12. “It was like he hadn’t even missed a beat,” says Hill.

Tim Cattera/NBAE via Getty Images

So it went for Curry, who would continue his dominance in the D-League without achieving satisfaction in the NBA. Steph would drop him a line on big game days, making sure his brother knew he and the family had his back, but the encouragement could not change his basketball fortune. In March, the Cavaliers summoned Curry on another 10-day contract offer, and in Cleveland Curry scored his first NBA bucket, a three from the corner against Houston. Yet that was all he would do. The Cavs treated Curry more like a temporary roster fix than a prospect toward its future. His contract was not renewed, and it was back to Santa Cruz once more.

If frustrations boiled over for Curry, if he could not come to terms with his fate just shy of the NBA, he let it show to precisely no one. His parents offered advice. His mother urged him to keep perspective, to know that, no matter the doors it seemed man was closing to him, it was all part of God’s will. “He does internalize his frustrations, but I think they come out in very healthy ways,” says Hill. “He’ll get in the gym, shoot extra shots. Basketball seems to be a very soothing thing for him. Basketball seems to be his equalizer.”

It continued in 2014, when Curry, since traded to the D-League’s Erie (Pa.) BayHawks, flourished again. He averaged 23.8 points per game, and buried an absurd 48.4 percent of his field goals, including 46.7 percent on three-point attempts. “It baffled me that a guy could shoot 46 percent from three and not be in the NBA,” says Kelly. “I don’t care - the (three-point) line’s the same no matter where you are.”

All over again, he was presumed by most to be headed soon to the NBA, never to return to play on the shores of northwestern Pennsylvania. During the spring of 2015, another 10-day contract came, this time with the Suns, and once more it led nowhere. Those short-term contracts began to seem to Curry like an unwinnable game. By the middle of the season, many NBA teams practice as little as possible to conserve energy, and so the chances to learn a system and earn the respect of new teammates and coaches are almost zero. “You get in for a minute, two minutes at the end of the game,” Curry says. “If you play well, it’s the end of the game, so it doesn’t really matter. If you don’t play well, you kind of look bad. It’s a tough situation, but that’s what you sign up for.”

By the end of the season, offers kept pouring in for Curry to play abroad, to make a comfortable six-figure salary and leave his non-glamorous D-League lifestyle behind. He was in a peculiar spot. Curry still felt he had NBA skill; that he never doubted. But he began to wonder whether he would ever get the chance to show it.

Jack Arent/NBAE via Getty Images

With only months left until he would consider overseas bids, Curry suited up once more, this time for the New Orleans Pelicans team in the NBA’s summer league in Las Vegas. He had played in summer league before, a year earlier in Orlando with the Magic, but for his final showcase he came equipped with enhanced skills.

Dogged for years with concerns over his ballhandling, in April Curry began work with Johnny Stephene, a prominent dribbling coach who also happened to be Curry’s former teammate at Liberty. Stephene had worked out NBA stars like Kevin Durant and DeMar DeRozan, though with Curry he had a pupil much smaller in size. Rather than have him wait on the wing or trail a fast break to get open looks, the challenge for Stephene was to improve Curry’s ability to create space on his own. Once he could free himself on the court at the NBA level, he could unleash his deadly jumper.

In gyms across L.A., up to four times each week, Stephene and his crew ran Curry through drill after drill, dribbling off the pick and roll, creating efficient ways for Curry to shift and slide into the paint, always toward the hoop. “A lot of players, there’s a way they want to practice,” Stephene says. “Seth wasn’t one of those players. He never gave me any excuses. He just came into the gym and trusted me.”

Armed with a new handle, Curry broke out in summer league. He received plenty of minutes (33.1 per game), and also the chance to dribble the ball more than he’d had in the past. He darted in and around screens, he found the lane. Once in the paint, he would launch his own attack at the basket or find an open teammate on the perimeter. Oddly, it was his three-point shot that failed him - he shot just 8 of 36 from deep in Las Vegas - but the rest was proof he had rounded out his game. Curry averaged a team-high 24.3 points over six games, and led New Orleans to the summer league semifinals.

Curry was showing the skills NBA teams have never coveted more - the ability for shooters to spread the floor, but also handle the ball and slice to the net. He emerged as one of the brightest offseason stars, and after summer league a handful of teams, including the Pelicans and Warriors, sought Curry’s services.

But another club swooped in at the last hour. In Sacramento, the Kings’ new GM and vice president of basketball operations is one of the franchise’s most beloved players, former center Vlade Divac. Divac made his name in the Californian capital on the great Kings teams of the early 2000s, but before that he played a long career elsewhere. For two seasons in the mid-’90s he was a member of the Hornets, where he played beside a veteran wing named Dell Curry.

Rocky Widner/Getty Images

Above: Vlade Divac with Dell Curry

Divac marvelled at the notion, that Seth, who Divac remembered as a baby brought by his dad to practices in Charlotte, was now grown and on Sacramento’s radar as a possible signee. Divac called his old teammate to relay his intrigue, and Dell passed Divac along to Saratsis. Divac had no interest in playing games - he had a need for a third guard, someone to come off the bench and create space behind a backcourt that already included Rajon Rondo and Darren Collison, talented, crafty players but, especially in the case of Rondo, not exceptional outside shooters.

Divac could offer two years at a rate the team could afford. More importantly, he could offer Curry a guarantee. Not more than a half-hour later, Divac’s phone rang. Curry was glad to be a Sacramento King.

He allowed himself a small moment of reflection, though as usual the real emotion of his signing was displayed not by Curry but by those closest to him. His friends and family rejoiced. “I was so excited and proud of him,” Steph says. Sonya found her eyes welling up for a full two days after, no matter if Seth kept true to his form, sharing with her the good news but only doing so by text message. “I still can’t talk a lot about it,” his mother says. “My voice is getting kind of shaky now.”

The comparisons are not likely to stop because Curry has captured his NBA dream. They can only become more pronounced now, more direct, the line more easily drawn between Curry’s accomplishments in a league in which his father and brother have produced so much.

And yet the truth has always been this: it all matters little to Curry. He has forever been able to block out the pressure, to retreat within himself whenever outsiders wanted to stack Seth up against Steph or Dell. “I never compared myself to what my dad did or what Stephen did,” Seth says. “I’m just me. I know the opportunities I have. I know what I want to accomplish.” Adds Krzyzewski: “Seth is his own man. Seth is very comfortable with Seth.”

That doesn’t mean there is nothing left to show. If the real work in basketball started following his final season at Duke, it is amplified now, the expectations attached a guaranteed NBA contract realer than what Curry has ever faced before. “He’s finally recognized for his work and talent,” says Divac. “Now, he has even more pressure to prove it.”

On the Kings, Curry will start the season as a reserve, learning his NBA craft in limited minutes. Those that have played alongside him expect Curry to be hungry. “This isn’t like an, ‘Oh, now I’ve made it’ thing,” says Mason Plumlee, the Portland Trail Blazers center and another teammate from Duke. “He’s looking to make an impact with the team. He’s a guy that’s always onto the next thing. He’s never satisfied with where he’s at.”

Every game will mean plenty to Curry, but of course there will also be circles on his calendar. On Nov. 23, Sacramento plays Charlotte in North Carolina, where Dell will sit courtside, calling the action for the Hornets’ broadcast. Seth always got a kick when Dell would call his brother’s games in years past and refer to Steph as “Curry” on the air. Seth forecasts no favorable treatment in his dad’s analysis of him. “He won’t rip me,” Seth says, “but he’ll be honest.”

For the Curry family, the biggest date this fall will be seven games into the year, when the Kings host the Warriors for the teams’ first matchup of the season. It’s hardly a far trip - Seth’s new rented townhouse in Sacramento is just 75 minutes or so from Steph’s home in the Bay Area - but it will be the end of a much longer journey. For the first time, after so many childhood scraps and epic H-O-R-S-E matches, Seth will suit up in real competition against his brother.

Already, relatives have begun chiding Steph, teasing that they will show up to the game wearing only Kings gear in support of Seth. Never before has the boys’ grandmother, Dell’s mother Juanita, visited California to watch either grandson play. But on Nov. 7, she plans to be in the stands in Sacramento.

It will be a special matchup. For Seth, it will also be an incredible challenge. At times, he will have to guard his older brother, the owner of what may be the NBA’s best handle and what is certainly its best shot. “I know everything about him,” Seth says. “But that’s still tough, obviously.”

Photo: Steve Yeater/NBAE via Getty Images

Their bond has never been stronger. These past few years, as Seth has supported Steph as he rose to superstardom, and Steph has supported Seth as he grit his way toward the NBA, have especially drawn them closer. They are forever brothers, but they have also developed into great friends today, too. “We talk a lot,” Steph says, “and mostly it’s about things other than basketball.” Seth will sidestep comparisons to his brother and father on the court, however he will not run from them entirely. For the Kings, Seth will wear No. 30, just like Steph, just like Dell before him.

Back in Los Angeles last month, Curry is shown footage of his morning workout, which was filmed for a documentary being produced on his work with Stephene. Curry’s trainers and associates whoop and roar with delight over the visuals, each ‘round-the-back dribble or up-and-under lay-in more dynamic than the last. Curry smirks, but otherwise sits unmoved as the video plays.

They are, after all, techniques he must use with regularity in the NBA, where size and speed will be against him. It is a league in which he is still unproven, but he has at least shown he is still not satisfied with his game. During shooting drills on this morning, Curry is such a perfectionist that even three misses in a row is occasion to curse himself out.

Past the double doors, in the lobby of the school outside the gym, a curious few gather. An older man in slacks and a yarmulke cranes his neck to peer through the glass windows that lead to the court.

Word has spread that the brother of Steph Curry, the NBA’s most valuable player, is in the gym training. The man cups a hand to his eyes to better his view, scanning the floor where a group of tall, athletic men hustle about.

“Which one is he?” the man asks.

Seth Curry has arrived in the NBA. Now it is time to make himself known.

I was a sick kid.

I was born with an enlarged heart, had virtually every childhood disease by the age of two and thereafter was never well for long. My mother complained that at birth I didn’t cry, I coughed, and she lost track of the number of times she put me on the school bus healthy, only to get a call from the nurse an hour or so later that I had a fever of 103 or 104 and that she had to come and get me immediately. Throw in an eye operation, a bone disease, unexplained searing headaches, five or six bouts with pneumonia, poking and probing by specialists and all sorts of other unexplained afflictions and accidents — falling on a stick and having it pierce the roof of my mouth, crashing through a glass door, a coma after a tetanus shot, losing my front teeth in a car accident, a broken arm, a torn rotator cuff, crushed bladder, a half dozen concussions, mysterious hives caused by cold water, chronic bronchitis, mononucleosis and so on — and, well, I missed a lot of school. At the end of the year, when other kids bragged about their grades, I boasted about how many days I missed. I once set a personal record just shy of 50, and always, always missed at least 20.

It made for a strange life. I think I fell part way into myself at an early age and have never climbed completely out. I was ruled by my imagination, the only constant, escaping the hospital or sick bed by embracing the fever dreams and fantasies and shadow plays on the wall of my room as I’d be woken to take a breathing treatment or eat ice chips or swallow a pill or give my temperature, a humidifier spitting in the background and mentholated oil percolating through quadruple layers of clothes.

Confined, too much, and cut off from anything much beyond the bed-ridden, mind-stripping wasteland of daytime TV (Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Merv Griffin), words saved me, pages of paper I lowered over the bedrails to escape to another place. I didn’t just read words, I consumed them and allowed them lead me away, never questioning their value, utter faith in whatever place they took me. I didn’t learn to read books as much as I did occupy them, to wiggle into the crevices of language and characters and stories and then be swept away, or carried elsewhere. Those places often seemed more real to me than where I was, buried under quilts, and even today my dreams are not often of where I am, but ongoing chapters of stories and scenes that unfold without end. I am not in my dreams as much as they are in me.

At a certain point, as I grew older, I began to realize that some of those words that captured me were more potent than others, the connections stronger, more immediate and emotional, making me feel in ways nothing else ever did. That words could do that seemed like some kind of magic, an utter mystery of invention.

I can remember the moment. I was 13 years old and my English teacher gave us an assignment to create a collage to illustrate a poem. A poem? What’s that? My older brother handed me some anthology and I read “Suicide’s Note” by Langston Hughes: “The calm / Cool face of the river / Asked me for a kiss.”

That’s it, the whole poem. Twelve words that knocked me on my ass and changed everything.

How was it possible? How could writers do that? How could someone, with words alone, ink on paper, make me feel so much, so deeply? How could words teach what life had not, and articulate thoughts and feelings I’d never before uttered but now, once articulated, were unquestionably mine. How did they get in there? And then, eventually a question even more important for me to ask: how can I do that?

I followed the usual path of a young writer, one both completely common and entirely my own, unconscious of its near impossibility — voracious reading from piles of library books, secret notebooks and surreptitious screeds, writing for the school newspaper and then off to college on scholarship for creative writing, coupled with a headlong search for experience, sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll but also pouring concrete, driving cross country, serving the rich and working one crap job after another — janitor, security guard, painter — trying to get old fast, and get past the awkwardness of the young writer to become just the noun itself. I was aware enough to know that I had to jettison and write out all the bad sentences and pretentious ideas and rules-ridden construction and then, every once in a great while, I could see — actually hear it spoken from my own mouth when reading my own words, something I unquestionably wrote, that worked. Then, of course, came the challenge: figuring out why and how to make it happen again, to do it more or less, if not on command, at least often enough to know it was no accident.

Twenty-five years ago, I was somewhere on that path, at the start, making the transition from young writer to writer, when stewardship of this book improbably happened. As a favor to a friend, despite my lack of kitchen skills, an agent of cookbook authors had taken me as a client. An editor at Houghton Mifflin asked whether or not she knew an agent who might have a writer who could serve as series editor of another Best American title, a nonfiction sports collection. She didn’t, but she suggested me. At that point, I’d published a handful of magazine stories for Boston Magazine, and was freelancing while working at the Boston Public Library.

I was asked to put together a sort of sampler, recent stories of the kind I would seek for this series. It was easy enough to cull through contemporary magazine anthologies in the stacks, find some sports stories and pretend I had ferreted them out my own. I also made use of a brief meeting with David Halberstam, fresh off the sports best-sellers The Breaks of the Game and The Summer of ‘49. I had helped him with some research and when I met with my editor to discuss the project, I said I knew Halberstam and thought he might agree to serve as guest editor for the inaugural volume. That was a push, but he remembered me and agreed, and that sealed the deal. From the start, I could envision an entire shelf of this book, my name sharing the spine, some small part of me realizing I was meant to do this.

What I did not anticipate was what was really important. Selecting material for this book forced me, for the first time really, to take the why and how of writing seriously. I wasn’t just fooling around anymore, and what worked and what did not were no accidents. Now it mattered. My take on what was good or bad would be tested every single year, not just by the readers of this book, but by my peers, other writers, all of whom, I was certain, were far smarter and more qualified than I.

To paraphrase poet James Wright, fear is what quickened me. I believed from the start that even though the subject matter of this book would be “just ” sports, that sports reached into so much of the world that it could include the full dimension of our experience, that the writers would prove that and all I had to do was uncover the evidence. The fear came, not from the worry that the work did not exist, but that I would not find it, or recognize it, that I would miss the essential and end up collecting the arbitrary. I was afraid the subject would be seen as “just sports,” and nothing else, an accounting of who recently won or lost and nothing more.

The writers, of course, saved me. They did so not only with their words, but their competitiveness, the kind that makes us both share discoveries with others and curse ourselves for not writing it first, or doing it better. In this way the best forced its way into this book, and with each passing year I began to have a better idea, not only of what writing worked, but why.

A big part of that was due to the first decision made in regard to this Series, and perhaps the most important. When it was still in the talking stages, I suggested that we call it The Best American Sports Writing, two words, rather than the compound “sportswriting.” From the start, I think, this made the book larger, more inclusive. It wasn’t “just sports.” It was just writing, and the influence of that adjective became not absolute and narrow, but expansive, wide and ever searching.

I recently had a writer ask me how to find stories “that have that larger, human, beyond-sports resonance.” I think the answer is in that first decision. Sportswriting tells you the score, the essentials, who won and who lost and why. The work represented in this book tells you everything else — why you care.

Unburdened by an exclusive definition, the series was able to evolve into ever more interesting places. While there has always been room here for “sportswriting” — the columns, game stories and shorter features of the daily press — over the past 25 years the media landscape has changed dramatically and profoundly. The daily press, rather than being essential to the genre, at its center, now shares that place not only with other print products, but with an increasing number of online outlets.

Over these years, as the medium changed, so did the content. New formats freed writing from constraints of both time and space. Reporting and reaction need not wait, or have to fit a predetermined hole. Over time, the possibilities of what writers could do expanded. And, ever so slowly, after a transitional period of massive contraction in the print world, the outlets for such work have expanded as well.

This series has bridged perhaps the most volatile era in journalism. I published my first magazine story in 1986, also my first written story, period, about the 1907 suicide of Red Sox manager Chick Stahl. To do so, I had to spend days poring over microfilm, work that in some cases could be accomplished now in only a few minutes. I found a book written in the mid-’60s that told me how to pitch a magazine story, and the advice was not yet outdated. I sent out two pitches by mail. The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine rejection came by way of a mimeographed form letter. The next day, Ken Hartnett, the irascible old-school editor of Boston Magazine, asked to meet me. Despite the fact that I had hair down to my ass, wore a suit freshly purchased from Goodwill that still smelled of mothballs, and had exactly no clips, after talking to me for an hour he still took the story on spec. Over the next week or so I slept about three hours a night, wrote the first, second, third, fourth and fifth drafts out in longhand, and then had to sneak into work early to type it up on an electric typewriter, using the same five fingers I use today — inexplicable nerve damage makes it impossible to touch type. Suffice to say, things have changed since then, but I’ve never been without an assignment, and I type at the speed I think.

David L Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Above: David Halberstam guest edited the first edition of Best American Sports Writing

The first edition of this book, published in 1991 and guest edited by David Halberstam, included only stories from print, nearly half from newspapers and newspaper magazines. Online journalism did not exist. Not until the 2000 edition did the book feature a story from an online source (for the record it was Pat Toomay’s “Clotheslined” from Sportsjones.com, also, I think, the first online story in any Best American collection). The online behemoth of ESPN did not crack the pages until 2002. (Gene Wojciechowski’s “Last Call” from ESPN.com)

This evolution has been a good thing. As that sick kid, in a house with no money and parents who did not have the luxury of time to read, most magazines were out of reach — the budget didn’t allow for Sports Illustrated, much less the New Yorker(As I flipped through the pages in the doctor’s office one day I remember thinking, Who would ever readthat? There are no pictures and the cartoons aren’t even funny.) I had access to only a single newspaper, the boosterish Columbus Dispatch, which worshipped Woody Hayes and the Republican Party as if a single entity. Sports writing from elsewhere mostly lived on a single shelf at the local Library, 796.M365 in the old Dewey decimal system, where the old Best Sports Stories series, which began in 1944, mostly collected dust.

Now of course, almost everything is available, as most print sources also appear somewhere online and the online world has proliferated and grown — in the past few years, at an astonishing rate. As a result, the nature of sports writing has inevitably changed, evolving in ways that were impossible to predict even a decade ago. But it has always been this way.

Sportswriting, the compound word, initially took shape as the score and the game report, soon supplemented by the notes columns, which gave birth to the true columnist. Features, at least the kind of work we recognize today as features, were exceedingly rare before the 1920s, the start of the age of the magazine, and really did not proliferate until after World War II. And there it sat, sports writing encompassed in but four forms: notes, columns, gamers and features.

By the 1960s, due to the influence of writers like Gay Talese and the need to provide something the lumbering presence of television could not, the nature and character of the features began to change, becoming harder, more demanding and ambitious. When the stray issue of Sport or SI found its way into my hands, or a copy the Best Sports Stories with a byline by W.C Heinz, I was mesmerized. Over the next day or two, I was not confined to bed, but freed.

Over the next few decades, this kind of work really began to flourish, both in the daily press as what became known as take-outs, in newspaper Sunday supplements and in magazines — not just Sports Illustrated and Sport, but also in the late lamented Inside Sports and the hybrid National Sports Daily. General interest magazines took note and sports-themed features and profiles — already occasional guests — became ever more regular staples, not just in men’s magazine like GQ, Esquire and Playboy, but in regional and general interest magazines and even more literary publications such as the Atlantic, Harper’s and the New Yorker. When this series first launched, these are the places where sports writing lived and flourished.

Change, of course, is inevitable. As the online world began to develop, the print world, through a combination of pure economics, greed and one misstep after the other, began to shrink, as did, for a time, the amount and kind of work the guest editors tend to select for this book. Fewer pages in print sources meant less room, which led to fewer stories and stories shorter and often less ambitious. The Sunday supplement magazine all but died off (there were nearly a hundred when this series started), and the 3,000 or 4,000 of 5,000 word take-outs or serial features became both more rare and more predictable.

And when work of any kind becomes predictable, produced by the same impulses and written and edited by the same people according to the same criteria, it suffers. Ambition can ossify into the formulaic. If writing has an enemy it is predictability, and if there is one thing I decry after two and a half decades of wading through this bottomless word bog every day, it is work that is safe and smug and satisfied with itself, the “good enough” story that checks off all the boxes and then goes to lunch. That’s one of the reasons this series features a guest editor, to ensure it never stays the same. This year, it is ESPN’s Wright Thompson.

If writing has a savior, however, it is the individual writer, usually unattached, hungry, ambitious and necessarily more creative. As the online world began to flourish, unconfined by the material and economic restraints of print, the scope of the genre began to expand again. In the last decade — really, the last five years, another form has thrived, filling the space between the decline of the newspaper and the shrinkage of magazine advertising on one side, and a similar contraction in the book world, leading to the near abandonment of the nonfiction mid-list by major publishers. In between was left an appetite unfulfilled.

Leave it to the writers to fill it. We all know it when we see it, but it goes by many names: narrative journalism, creative non-fiction, deep reads, longreads, or the handle that seems to raise so many hackles bound to the past, longform. (Let’s just get this out of the way early — if the name bothers you, call it anything you want.)

It was always there, only now there was a place designed to support it. If there is any material difference in this kind of work, it may be that traditional print features and book-length narratives tend to rely on the reader’s pre-existing interest in the subject. The best longer features overcome this, just as the best poems and best fiction do; the “subject” does not matter and is secondary to the execution of the form, the creation of an interesting narrative of characters. That is part of what makes longform so attractive to writers, the inherent challenge to write something engaging regardless of a reader’s pre-existing interest. Yet at the same time, these same longform stories need to respect the reader who is already interested in the subject. This means you never dumb down; you write up. It is an engaging, exciting place to be. Once upon a time, I regularly heard from younger people who wanted to know, “How can I be a sports writer (or sportswriter)?” I don’t get asked that question much anymore. They tell me, “I want to write longform.”

Here’s the thing. The skills and craft required to produce good work — good sports writing, of any length — have not changed. If I have realized anything over the last 25 years, it is this. Length is only a consequence of the time and care spent reporting, writing and editing. As many stories are killed by being too short or underreported as are by being too long — witness the formulaic and deadly dull “news feature,” that populates the newspaper. Every story in every circumstance can be told in any number of ways. That might mean a story of 1,500 or 3,000 words but it might also mean a story of 15,000 or 30,000. Every story, regardless of length, must feel as if it is organic and just as long as it needs to be.

After 25 years of professional reading, not to mention nearly 30 years as a professional writer, from my chair the best stories, whatever name you want to give them, share a few qualities — that is one thing that has not changed, as true today as in 1920, or when I was swaddled in my bed as a 10-year-old. So what do I look for when seeking out “the best?”

I believe the best work features thorough reporting, and has a defined shape, a structure and a backbone and an architecture and a music all its own. The stories I wish to read again are organic, written from within, from the material outward rather than plugged into some pre-existing template or journalistic equivalent of verse, chorus, verse. They are confident from the first word — and certain, sounding as if they already know the end of the story from the start, as if every word is predetermined from the first syllable. I once heard Bill Heinz talk about how important it was for him to find the opening chords, for they define all that can follow. The best stories allow the reader to identify characters by revealing something universal, something authentic we share. They unfold, they answer questions before the reader asks them, they create three-dimensional pictures that play out over that fourth dimension, time, they let the reader to create an internal movie of what is happening, they play to the senses, and involve the senses.

All the parts can be in place, but in the end, I think it is the SOUND of a story that buries it in the reader’s mind and makes it matter. I mean a literal singular sound that, even if never uttered aloud, is distinctive, its pace and tone seductive, a rapt voice whispering in your ear. Just as one need not know the singer’s language to appreciate the song, the sound of a story should be just as engaging. I don’t read for the stories in this book as much as I listen for them.

The really good story provides an experience that approaches the book experience, it takes you from one place and by the end, leaves you in another, changed. The lede is important, of course (why else continue?) but the end is no less so. Stories should not just finish and stop from exhaustion, but allow the experience of reading to continue for a moment, to stop the reader cold, to force he or she to relish the experience, and want to share it. The best close makes the reader pause and allows the momentum of the story wash over like a wave, like the water that runs up the sand and then sinks and disappears, leaving a trace behind. That is what first carried me away from my sickbed and still does so today.

I believe the goal of reading and writing is to change lives in ways large and small, and when the water recedes, the reader must know something has changed. This is the payoff for time spent listening to words. This is why we bother. You emerge at the end almost without breath, transformed, and you want to read it again.

Here is what I listen for more than anything else: to want to read it again. After 25 years of this, if that was not the case I do not think I could read another word. The last thing I want is for this book to come out and not want to read it again myself. This has not often happened. Amid all the false starts, the hundreds and thousands of stories I start to read then stop because, well, I discover I don’t even want to read them once, the rare story that demands to be read again and again keeps me at it.

That’s the dirty little secret of this series. Many readers have already read some of the stories collected in these pages each year, and now it is easy enough to find virtually all of them online. Yet it is just that — the desire to read a story again, to re-experience its craft and drama, that provides the rationale for this series. Discovering work you’ve never encountered before is great and essential — but so is becoming re-acquainted to work you might already know, this time stripped down to its core, just words, on a page or a screen, your eyes, mine, and the writer, all sharing something saved.

And in the end, that is the justification and logic of bothering with any of this at all, as an editor, a writer or a reader. We hope to be taken away — to share, through words, and become more than we are. If you give yourself to something, long enough and completely, it gives you something back.

So I have learned from the words in this book.

LAKE OSWEGO, Ore. — Damian Lillard has a story to tell. Its origin is rooted in the one you’ve heard before about the under-recruited kid from Oakland and mid-major unknown who became Rookie of the Year, guided by an irresistible ethos of hard work and disarming confidence. All of that is prologue for a natural storyteller who understands when a narrative has run its course. He’s done with the point guard lists. He’s over his frustration about the All-Star Game snub.

"I’ve always been driven by the odds," Lillard says. "My story that everybody talks about, being counted out from Day One, people put me at a disadvantage. I wanted to work hard enough to rise above it. I’m at the point where I’ve accomplished so much just from working hard. I’ve seen the results. Now I’m just trying to be my best self."

Sam Forencich/NBAE via Getty Images

"Now I’m just trying to be my best self"

It’s a week before training camp starts on an impossibly beautiful day in the Pacific Northwest with a high sun overhead and gentle breezes blowing off the Willamette River caressing the city in a warm embrace. Everyone in the city is outdoors enjoying the late summer glow. Lillard is here at the Trail Blazers’ practice facility getting his work done.

That part is not unusual. He lives nearby, just a short drive from the gym. He gets to work early, laying the foundation for the new-look Blazers for whom he is no longer merely an important cog in a machine, but the entire engine itself. With four starters gone from a team that won 105 games the last two seasons, Lillard is establishing the standard. He flew to Las Vegas — in coach, no less — to sit on the bench during summer league games. He organized workouts both here and in San Diego where he and his new teammates bonded over lifting sessions, team lunches, and a Padres game.

The goal of the California trip, Lillard says, was not so they could know each other as basketball players, but so they could understand one another as people. He wanted to know them on a first-name basis and they, in turn, to know what they could expect from their point guard. "Now that they know me from that trip," he says, "They’re going to know that everything I say comes from a good place."

This is Lillard’s team now, a transition that happened suddenly over a few weeks in July when the Blazers’ core scattered to the free agent winds, but has been building steadily over the last few years. He was a unanimous choice for Rookie of the Year, a two-time All-Star and a third-team all-NBA selection, but those are just words in the bio. "He clearly has the game," general manager Neil Olshey says. "He has the resume. But it’s the other things that he brings to the table."

Olshey had scouted Lillard for several years as GM with the Clippers before landing in Portland in 2012. He loved Lillard’s shooting ability and the way he carried himself. He had been in town barely a week when Lillard arrived for his pre-draft workout. The two went out to dinner and promptly got lost, which gave them a chance to really talk. Olshey was impressed by what he called Lillard’s "gravitas" and "composure." He had seen the same qualities in Chauncey Billups during his final season with the Clippers, and he saw them in the 21-year-old point guard.

Andrew D. Bernstein

Lillard in his capacity as Special Olympics ambassador, with Glee actress Lauren Potter

"By the time I got to the restaurant," Olshey says. "I knew he was our guy."

This is a story about a basketball player, but it’s not really about basketball. The points and assists will happen, just as the wins and losses will inevitably follow. As his coach Terry Stotts says, "The ball’s going to be in his hands but I don’t see how he could score more, take more shots. It’s much more the intangibles, which are difficult to measure."

This is about a 25-year-old man, no longer a kid, who is entrusted with the future of a franchise. His team may be underdogs in the hyper-competitive Western Conference, but that time is over now for Dame. He’s the franchise player for a team that’s starting over. He’ll be responsible for all of it, the good and the bad, and his teammates will look to him to set the tone and establish the expectations.

He’s used to this kind of pressure. He was the franchise player at Weber State, where he put the school on the basketball map. He’s a franchise player for adidas, one of their signature athletes with his own shoe line. He’s a franchise player for the Special Olympics and for an anti-bullying campaign he founded upon entering the league. He’s the franchise player for his hometown, where he carries the Oakland mantle proudly.

"I mean, I am," Lillard says. "People say stuff like, he’s not a franchise player or this guy is a franchise player, but the franchise makes that decision. I didn’t make that decision. The franchise did. It’s more than being the best player on the team, especially with a young team like the one we have. You’re the example and the standard is here."

In Terry Stotts’ office there is a photo of the five: Wes Matthews, Nic Batum, LaMarcus Aldridge, Robin Lopez and, in the middle, Dame. They were a special group in the team’s history, the one that restored pride for a franchise that had lost its way amid such doomed ventures as the notorious Jail Blazers and the late 2000s Dynasty That Never Was. These Blazers appeared out of nowhere, a fully-formed unit that complimented each other’s games and rekindled the city’s love affair with the team.

The 2014 Blazers were a revelation. Led by the starting five that played the second-most minutes of any group in the league, they won 54 games and knocked off the Rockets in an epic six-game series. That series win was their first in 15 years and was punctuated by the precocious Lillard draining a game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer. The 2015 Blazers may have been even better. In early March, they were 41-19 and cruising to a potentially deep postseason run when Matthews, the Iron Man, tore his Achilles.

"Everything hinged on Wes’ Achilles," Stotts says. "That skewed everything. We were playing very good basketball. Depending on matchups and everything I thought we could have a good run. Not just that year, but moving forward."

Cameron Browne/NBAE via Getty Images

That night was the beginning of the end. The Blazers went 10-12 down the stretch and were easily dispatched in five frustrating games by the Grizzlies. Afterward, it was noted by people in the organization that Lillard stuck around the locker room and answered all the questions about their collapse and his own sub-par performance. During their run there was a tension that bubbled underneath, imperceptible much of the time, but present nonetheless. From the moment Olshey arrived, drafted Lillard and hired Stotts, Aldridge’s free agent clock was ticking.

"We didn’t inherit the happiest player on Earth in LaMarcus," Olshey says. "To LaMarcus’ credit we asked him to give us a year. We couldn’t turn it around day one. He was the best player on a losing team and we were asking him to be the best player on a losing team again. We had a three-year plan with that group. We couldn’t ask LaMarcus to be in a long-term rebuild, so we had to make a decision."

To Olshey, the organization was working on separate, but parallel tracks. There was the veteran core and the development group. To the former, he added free agents on short-term contracts that were set to expire at the same time as his starters. To the latter, he drafted players like Meyers Leonard and C.J. McCollum. On draft night, Olshey added center Mason Plumlee, who he felt could play with both Aldridge and Leonard. The Blazers could have gone either way. Everything hinged on Aldridge’s decision.

Whenever a star player leaves a good team, there will be whispers of discontent that follow in his wake. There are those who felt that Aldridge was bothered by Lillard’s popularity and those who feel that any rift was overblown. Yet, both players have downplayed any issues between them and they clearly thrived together on the court.

"Our relationship was fine," Lillard says. "Me and LA never had an argument. People are searching for something that’s not there. When you have two All-Stars on the same team and one of them decides to leave, it’s automatically, ‘They didn’t get along.’ We had back-to-back 50-win seasons. We both made the All-Star team. We played through him and after that it was me and that was that. We played well together. We never had an issue."

Right up until the very end when Aldridge chose San Antonio, the Blazers felt like they were in the mix. When he left, the team’s transformation really began. Where once they were experienced and dependable, the Blazers are now young and unformed. A third of their players are working under their rookie deals and another third are recent second-rounders and undrafted players. Even the vets are young. In the wake of Aldridge’s departure, Olshey asked his new franchise player if he was comfortable with the direction they were going to take.

"This was not done without Dame’s participation," Olshey says. "If he was at all reticent, if he said it would be great if you could get me another vet to help out, we would have gone out and found a couple of other guys to take the pressure off of him. He’s not that kind of kid. He embraces it. He thrives on it."

In March, a Weber State professor named Vel Casler traveled to Portland. Lillard had left Weber a few credits shy of earning his degree in professional sales and he continued to work toward its completion. Prof and student worked for several hours on an off day. Lillard had taken Casler’s Senior Capstone course and the pupil had made an impression on the teacher. "A lot of students have to take some number of classes, so they’re in your class but they’re not really there," Casler says. "Damian was interested in learning."

Lillard had a 10-page paper to write on all he had learned as an undergrad that would prepare him for a post-graduate career. For his final project, Lillard wrote about using lessons from a class on negotiation to secure a reported nine-figure deal with adidas. Lillard had made a promise to his mother Gina that he would finish college, but he also made a promise to himself to actually earn his degree.

"I spent those four years going to class," Lillard says. "I wasn’t just some basketball player that knew I was going to the NBA. I went, I learned. If we weren’t on a road trip I never missed class. I felt like I owed it to myself to finish."

In May, Lillard went back to Utah for his graduation. During the ceremony, the university president, Charles A. Wight, called on various groups in the graduating class of over 5,000 students to rise. Then Wight turned to the stage and asked, "How many of you were Rookie of the Year and a two-time All-Star?" The arena erupted in cheers as Lillard addressed his fellow grads in an impromptu speech that thanked many who had helped him, including Casler.

There were other memorable moments from this past summer, including an adidas-sponsored tour of China, Japan and France, where Lillard met fans who did their own version of #4BarFridays in their native languages. He also went to great lengths to secure gyms to get in workouts. One was a glorified cafeteria with bent rims. Another was so hot that a fan was brought in along with a giant block of ice that melted all over the court.

adidas

In late July, Lillard attended the Special Olympics in Los Angeles as a global ambassador. He marched with the U.S team into the Coliseum and spent a day at the aquatics center for a swim meet. As a freshman at Weber, Lillard was struck by the athletes he met at a team-sponsored event and vowed to continue working with the organization when he made it to the league. "That was one of the best experiences of my life," he says. "Every opportunity that I get, I’m in."

Lillard also worked on his music, recording tracks for as-yet unreleased EP. He starts with a beat and then comes up with a concept for his verses. He writes everything down, often in his phone. His stories are personal and drawn from his own experiences.

"I don’t think people can deal with somebody that gives you the real them," Lillard says. "They see so much artificial stuff that’s what they’re used to. When I didn’t make the All-Star Game and I said how I felt about it, it was, ‘Oh he’s whining and he’s crying,’ instead of accepting this is how I feel about the situation. I take pride in writing my story, how I feel about stuff, and I make it into music and I put it out. Instead of them accepting the fact that this how I’m expressing myself they say, ‘Oh, he want to be a rapper.’"

Lillard shakes his head. You can almost hear the beat forming and the verses starting to flow.

"They say I want to do all this for adidas and I want to peddle shoes. They say that instead of saying that he wants to put out a quality product. That should say more about who I am, that I want it to be the best it can be. The first thing I do every day is come to the gym at 8:30. That’s the first five hours of my day," Lillard says in his typically measured monotone. "I’m going to be no good to this organization if I leave here and go somewhere else and shoot somewhere else. At some point I’m going to go home and watch more basketball. If a person has one job — a regular person with a regular job — if they get another job, they applaud them for working two jobs. They’re working hard. If I play in the NBA and I put out some music then I’m wrong for doing something else. It’s weird."

We live in the age of branding, where one’s personal value is rooted in some vague notion of authenticity. Social media has brought us all closer together and it has also raised the stakes. The old ways of pitching a product or creating a persona can vanish in the time it takes to send one ill-considered message or be caught in an unflattering moment. Lillard’s appeal is that he is entirely normal. From his music to his endorsements to his social media presence, what you see is what you get.

Sam Forencich/NBAE via Getty Images

"It’s not a facade. It’s not me trying to play a role," Lillard says. "I’m just being myself. I can be comfortable because of that. There are people who really know me that can vouch for everything I say when I’m rapping. I have people ask me all the time, ‘who does your Instagram, who does your Twitter? You should let us do your stuff.’ I’m like, ‘That’s me.’ Personally, I think that they believe that athletes aren’t smart enough to handle themselves right on the Internet or using social media."

The same dynamic that attracted Olshey to Lillard as a basketball player is what captivated Chris Grancio and adidas. What’s striking about their descriptions of Lillard is how closely they parallel one another.

"When we had a chance to get to know him, he just carries himself with a demeanor that you can read that he’s going to be special," Grancio, the head of global basketball operations, says. "You knew he had the work ethic. He has a special dynamic in terms of how he wanted to engage with his fans, which is really special. He just had that IT factor."

Or, as Olshey put it: "Why are there hundreds of guys and girls in Los Angeles and they all look identical and one’s a movie star and one’s a waiter? At the end of the day you go, ‘I see IT.’ With Dame, he made it much easier to see than some other guys."

Lillard’s partnership with adidas is instructive. He wore the company’s shoes in college and elected to stay with them after turning pro. Lillard’s a loyal guy, but he and his agents are also savvy and they bet big on his abilities. The Goodwins had a clause in the deal that allowed Lillard to opt out if he reached certain performance-based parameters, which he did following his second season. Word of a major new deal became public just before he made his playoff debut against the Rockets, a series that was ended by Lillard’s 3-pointer at the buzzer. It was the biggest shot in a decade and a half for the Blazers, and proof that yes, Dame had IT.

"Dame’s got a special part in our brand," Grancio says. "He is absolutely one of the three or four guys that we plan on building our business around in the future."

Lillard’s branding essentially involves telling his story. It began back in college when he was injured during his junior year and the Big Sky Conference lent him a camera to record a project called, ‘Dame’s Diary.’ During the pre-draft process, he and his representatives from the Goodwin agency worked on another video series called, ‘Licensed to Lillard,’ that chronicled his rise from under-recruited guard to big-time prospect. By the time Portland called his name on draft night, he was no longer an unknown but a fully-formed character with a relatable tale.

"Damian is an incredibly hard-working, honest, genuine person," Grancio says. "That’s a real easy story to tell. Yes, he’s a fearless and intense competitor. That’s also an easy story to tell. When we talk about how do we bring Damian’s story to the public, it really writes itself. That’s not a disservice to our marketing folks, but it does give us a chance to tell really honest, clear stories about his point of view, his journey, coming out of Oakland, playing at Weber State, getting drafted sixth, coming to Portland. He’s always been on a journey to prove a point."

His endorsements are many, but he and his agents choose them carefully. In addition to sneakers, his name is attached to everything from Coach to State Farm, with video games (EA Sports), basketballs (Spalding) and headphones (JBL) in between. "The word, ‘Authentic’ comes into play again," his agent Eric Goodwin says. "We sit down and talk to him. What do you like?"

In September, Lillard released a line of gear and an adidas shoe collaboration with Oaklandish, a local brand that began as a public art project. "I wear their stuff all the time," he says. "Everything I do with adidas I try to tie it into something that’s a part of me or from my past. That’s my roots."

Lillard has another story to tell. Last summer he was home for a BBQ when a cousin asked him to take a photo. He was tired and begged off. The cousins joked about it, but word got back to his father who called him over. "My dad is no-nonsense," he says. "He was like, ‘We don’t do that fake stuff.’ That’s where it comes from."

There’s a seriousness about Lillard that belies his young age. He doesn’t talk trash on the court. He texts his former professors with well wishes and his shoe company with design ideas. He’ll carry Oakland with him forever — proudly — and yet he loves the slow pace of life in the Pacific Northwest. He’s become a national presence in a small market tucked away in a far corner of the country, but treats the everyday people who work for the Blazers the same way he did when he was a rookie. He makes a ton of money and likes not spending it.

Lillard carries himself throughout his day with the same self-assuredness that allows him to take over games down the stretch and handle the pressures and responsibilities of crunch time. It’s in those moments that his character is revealed and put on display for millions to see. He’s unhurried, calm, confident. It’s impossible to separate the man from his game.

"I want people to know that I’m a very unbothered person," Lillard says. "People don’t really know me, but they think they do. You can’t bug me. It takes a lot to piss me off. I want people to know that, because they feel like I get bothered by stuff more than I do."

He will be tested this season with an unproven supporting cast, but he wants the challenge. If they fail collectively, the burden will fall on his shoulders. That’s the cost of being so open and accessible, but realness demands accountability. That’s how he built his brand. That’s how he lives his life. "I can handle it," he says. "I’ll be fine."

Damian Lillard has a story to tell and he doesn’t mind sharing it. His journey has taken him this far, fueled in part by the doubts of others. Now as he assumes his most important role, being his best self and the franchise player the Blazers need, Lillard’s motivation comes from within.

Gregory Shamus/NBAE via Getty Images

Credits

Lead Photo: adidas

Editor: Elena Bergeron

Design & Development: Graham MacAree

On a Monday night in Greenville, North Carolina, the fever of high school football archrivalry sweeps over a field in the country. Almost everyone will lose their minds at some point over the next few hours, all except one man. J.H. Rose High School’s football team, after a 30-minute trip from Marvin Jarman Drive in central Greenville here to D.H. Conley High School, steps out of their buses wearing emerald-green pants with bright blue piping and carrying their white jerseys, Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” playing over the loudspeakers, the grass turning muddy under the rain. “This place smells,” one Rose player says.

The sky is thick with clouds that keep growing darker, and the wind snaps the American flag on a pole beyond the far end zone. The teams warm up, and even in the rain, the stands fill.

The game opens conference play and puts a year’s worth of pride and shame on the line. When one of the Rose coaches recently went to the grocery store, his cashier, a Conley football mom, cussed him out. Another Rose coach, who lives on the Conley side of town, makes sure to run his errands elsewhere.

The schools in Greenville, a city of 90,000 in eastern North Carolina, integrated in the late 1960s, but on nights like tonight, the area’s lingering undercurrent of racial tension swells closer to the surface. Rose students come dressed as rednecks to mock Conley, wearing hunting fatigues and overalls and straw hats and, in the case of one unfortunate young man, Daisy Dukes. Many Conley students wear all white, though they have, in the past, dressed as gangsters, mocking Rose’s more urban student body.

One Rose fan screams, “I’ve waited my whole life for this!” and he’s not even playing, just a team manager in khaki shorts and a green polo. Rose head coach Dave Wojtecki, a big man you wouldn’t take for a runner, sprints 50 yards to midfield to lead drills. Later, moments before the game starts, he dry-heaves on the sidelines.

Photo: Katie Holloman Sneed

But one man on the Rose sideline moves with a certain different rhythm. Like the other coaches, he wears a black polo shirt with white piping, “JHR Football” stitched on the breast, and a black-and-white mesh JHR hat to match. He has white hair and a military crew cut, thin on top under the hat. He hates the rain and wears a big green raincoat most of the game, even when the rain slows down. He also wears white orthopedic nurse shoes, already so weathered and dirty they are almost brown. By the end of the night, they’ll be caked in grass and mud, but he will pay them no mind.

His tongue often pokes through his lips, and he cautiously looks out at the world from under thick eyebrows. He’s tall, and has a bit of a belly. He walks with a slow, steady plod, heels dragging, shoulders hunched forward, head down more than up, his neck a constant curve toward the earth.

He’s never not moving, always pacing, but he’s also never moving particularly fast. He ambles up to Wojtecki and, without a word, holds out a stick of Juicy Fruit gum. Wojtecki takes it without looking away from the field, and gives a quick little nod. “Thanks, Marv.” Marvin nods back and then he moves along, almost in slow motion. He gives out deliberate, quiet high-fives and pats on the back and hands out piece after piece of Juicy Fruit. On this night, he will go through seven packs.

As Marvin passes the sidelines and the fringes of the end zones, he hears his name again and again. Marvin! How you doin’, Marv! Hey, let’s go, Marv! Every single time, he turns and raises his head just enough to find the source of the voice, then lifts his hand in a slow purposeful wave. Sometimes a fan comes up and high-fives that wave.

This makes him smile, his eyes squinting, his head lifting a bit, his mouth opening in a way that looks like he’s about to laugh. This comes from people wearing Rose colors, sure, but also from many dressed in Conley’s navy and gold. However they feel about each other, no one cusses this coach out. Everyone on either side smiles when they see Marvin. He quietly offers everyone from either school a piece of gum, simply holding it out for them to take.

The game starts, and Rose scores on their first touch of the game: Star wide receiver Cornell Powell, who has a scholarship to Clemson, runs a punt back 98 yards for a touchdown. The guys on the sidelines and the fans in the stands behind them react as though Jesus Christ himself just appeared before them.

Photo: Katie Holloman Sneed

Not Marvin. He doesn’t change, even when everyone else is screaming themselves hoarse and going half-crazy. He carefully pumps his fist and he gives out high-fives, but they are the calmest fist pumps and high-fives ever. For each one, he raises his head just enough, lifts his hand just enough, hits the players’ hands just enough.

Same goes for when Rose flounders in the second half. As they fumble and stumble and people get mad at the quarterback, who struggles to hang onto the ball and make decent throws, at times Rose fans react as though, well, they would like to see a few players taken out and crucified.

Marvin? He just lifts his chin and scratches it, and every once in a while shakes his head slow and mumbles something so quiet that even he probably cannot hear it in all this noise. Players and coaches bump into him and scream across the field in his ear, and he barely reacts. Mostly he walks, back and forth, up and down the sidelines, never flinching, quietly patting players on the shoulders, only looking up when there is something to see.

Only once does he change. The quickest he moves all night is when a runner is headed his direction. He dances away from the sideline, calm as can be, shockingly spry.

Final score: 37-14 Conley. It’s a bad day for Rose. The Conley students storm the field. Marvin shakes his head. “Ahhhh,” he mutters. “Now they gon’ brag about it. That the way they are. Not the way to be.” It’s by far his biggest reaction of the night.

He plods around the crowd and to the end zone, where he meets a gray-haired, clean-shaven man about his age, wearing khaki shorts and white sneakers and a green T-shirt under a yellow poncho. It’s Ronald Vincent, Rose’s baseball coach, known to everyone around here as RV. “Time to go, Marv?”

“Yaauhp,” he says, speaking slow, drawing out the words, as if his tongue has to remember where to go and loses track along the way, sometimes making him a little hard to understand.

It takes 10 minutes to make the short walk to RV’s white Honda Pilot. People keep calling out to Marvin, and every time, he turns and raises his eyes and, when he finds them, gives his long, slow arc of a wave. “Like the dang pope,” RV says. The lot isn’t that big, but it’s crowded, and everyone, whether from Rose or Conley, wants to say “Hey” to Marvin Jarman.

Photo: Katie Holloman Sneed

“There’s a reason,” RV says, “we call him The Legend.”

One of the many reasons Marvin is called The Legend and has a street named after him is that he has been to every single Rose football game since 1972, and he only missed one in 1972 because he got his schedule mixed up and was late to the team bus. That broke his heart. Now he gets to the school an hour early, minimum, just in case. The closest he’s ever cut it? Ten minutes. Before the Conley game, he was at Rose by 2 p.m. even though the bus didn’t leave until 5:20.

Then there’s basketball: He hasn’t missed a game since 1966, home or away. Now he has missed a few baseball games, but that’s only because basketball playoffs get in the way and even legends cannot be two places at the same time, though he would if he could.

Marvin’s life follows the Rose’s seasonal sports schedule. He is all football until football’s last game, then all basketball until basketball’s done, then all baseball through the spring, first with Rose and then, in the summer, with RV and the Greenville Recreation and Parks Department, until the first week of August. Then football practice starts again. He has his own wardrobe for each team and each season and he also works every morning till noon with Rec and Parks, picking up trash at Elm Street Park, home of Greenville’s pristine Little League field, and the playgrounds around it.

When they’re finally in the car and on the road, RV asks, “So, what’d you think, Coach Jarman?”

“Ahhhhh.” Marvin shakes his head and holds up his hands, his tongue sticking out just a bit. “Best just fuhget that game. Sometimes, you lose.”

RV shakes his head and laughs. “Yep.” It’s exactly the gentle, blunt honesty RV and the many, many people who know Marvin have come to expect from The Legend over the past many, many years. This, too, is why he is The Legend. He is always kind but never dishonest. He just tells the truth.

Photo: Katie Holloman Sneed

“Marvin, honestly, truly, never lies.”— Grant Jarman

“Wooz is wooz,” he says. Rules is rules. The people who know Marvin are used to the way he speaks, and they listen close, knowing he has trouble with his R’s and L’s and few other letters. They may mimic him, but never in a mocking way — in a loving way, as though they want to echo his words, to somehow make them as meaningful from their mouths as they are from his.

“Wooz is wooz.”

“Marvin, honestly, truly, never lies,” says his brother Grant, younger by 14 months. “He’s never smoked. He’s never cussed. None of it. None whatsoever. Never drank in any way. Whatsoever. Now, I had no problem drinking or smoking. If I got in trouble, I’d lie my way out of it. Marvin never has a wrong answer. It might not be the answer you want. But it’s never wrong.”

Grant says he got into all the same sort of shenanigans as most normal teenage boys, and Mama Jarman would ask Marvin about them, and Marvin would just shake his head. “No, no. Don’ make me lah. Don’ make me lah.”

And he never does, except, maybe sometimes, when he talks about himself, and how he was born.

Marvin was born Jan. 13, 1947, in Sterling, Colorado. It’s hard to say when the family realized Marvin was different. The only one still around is Grant. Back then, nobody knew much about kids with special needs or challenges, or what to do about them. To this day, nobody knows quite what Marvin’s condition is — was it a birth defect, an illness, a quirk of genetics, an accident? Does he have Asperger’s? Is he autistic? Marvin can read and write and has a better memory than just about anyone you’ll ever meet. He’s never been given a diagnosis, and it doesn’t matter to anybody anymore. All his family really knew was he just wasn’t born right.

What is clear, however, is that Marvin’s mother did a wonderful job raising him, of teaching him right from wrong, and how to be polite and take care of himself. How to be kind, how not to lie. He still follows her commands up to and beyond the letter. He loves anything sweet and once ate practically a whole chocolate cake and got sick. Afterwards, Mama Jarman told him not to eat that much chocolate cake or he’d get sick again. He hasn’t had a bite of chocolate since.

Marvin’s father was from eastern North Carolina, and the family moved back when Marvin and Grant were around 6 or 7 years old, first to Richlands, and eventually to Greenville. One of the best and hardest things Marvin’s mother did for him, though, was send Marvin back to Colorado, to a school for special needs kids. She could find nothing like it near Greenville, so for a few years, every year, Marvin, all by himself, boarded a plane at the end of summer and flew across the country to live with his grandmother or an aunt, and go to school. His mother cried every time he left.

She had bad asthma, and one year the whole family returned to Colorado for the air. While Grant went to a big high school in Sterling, their mom thought it would be better if Marvin went to a smaller high school where an aunt was a teacher and where there were fewer students.

“They didn’t understand him,” Grant says of the students. “They were tough on him.” Girls called him ugly. Boys bullied him. Some stole from him.

“Not nice,” Marvin says.

Photo: Katie Holloman Sneed

Even Grant, as a child, had a hard time knowing how to deal with Marvin. “I did not want him to be around my friends,” Grant says. “Marvin had a lot of challenges.” He pauses. His eyes go wet.

He says, “I used to always question about Marvin. About why he couldn’t be like everybody else. Used to bother me real bad. And I probably used to …” He pauses, shakes his head, coughs. “I don’t know if I could go so far as to say blame God, but maybe I really did.”

Marvin easily could have been forgotten, too different for anybody to notice, or care for, and ended up alone or institutionalized. But the family moved back to Greenville, and they never left again. “Wawmer,” says Marvin. “Moh fwiends.” He likes Greenville best and has only been back to Colorado a few times since then, and never without RV. “He knows I’m coming back,” RV says.

Marvin’s parents worked with horses and had a stable right across the street from a baseball complex. Grant started playing baseball at around 8 years old, and Marvin soon became obsessed with the game. “All we did was play ball,” Grant says. Marvin always tagged along. He tried to play. He wanted to play. “But,” he says, “I just woh’n that good.”

But that’s how he and RV met when they were both about 15, and RV became Marvin’s best friend. “Nice to me,” Marvin says. Eventually, Marvin would spend all his summer days with RV. Grant says, “The best thing that ever happened to Marvin in his whole life, is Ronald.”

Marvin went to Rose, called Greenville High School back then. After RV graduated in 1965, he started driving Marvin to and from the games, which turned into eating dinner together and just hanging out. Marvin stayed in school until he was 22 and graduated in 1969, the same year J.H. Rose integrated.

Photo: Sandy Jarrett

Marvin remembers black kids beating a white kid with a pipe in the bathroom, and white kids beating up black kids. At one point a campus-wide riot broke out, the school shut down for a week, and the National Guard came in, and police patrolled the halls the rest of the year.

But Marvin never cared about race. He knew what it meant to try to find your way in a strange world where everyone thinks you are different, are lesser. Black or white, he treated all students the same way he treats all the players, which is the same way he treats everyone — like human beings.

Ask him why, and he pauses for a long time. He likes to think things through first, to make sure he gives you a right and honest answer, like he’s been taught. “Doh’n matter. What matters is if you ack right.”

As upsetting as anything else to Marvin was that the racial tensions caused a football game to be canceled — hate ruined even the one thing that seemed to bring people together. Because in sports, Marvin found a connection with other people in a way he did nowhere else. “That’s what I like,” he says. “I doh’n like to be somewhere I doh’n know nobody, nobody know me.” And when Marvin is on the sidelines, everybody knows him.

By the time Marvin graduated, everyone saw him the way RV first did. As a senior, the school named him “Mr. School Spirit.” When his name was called and he went to accept the award, people urged him to make a speech. He paused for a long moment, thinking, then he leaned down to the mic and said, “Thank you.”

It was around this time that Grant stopped blaming God for the way Marvin was born. “One day it just hit me,” Grant says. “I’m worried about all the things that Marvin isn’t, and really, I got the most special brother in the world.”

But even then, he had no idea Marvin would become The Legend.

People around Greenville say Marvin has never stopped being Mr. School Spirit, and a local newspaper feature years ago called him “The Best High School Sports Fan In The Galaxy” — but that’s not quite accurate now, and hasn’t been for a long time.

He’s not just a fan anymore. He is a coach, Coach Jarman. That’s how he sees himself, that’s what people call him, and that’s how everyone at Rose treats him, staff and students alike. “We say he’s in charge of Rose High,” says athletic director Tommy Peacock, who’s been working at Rose since 1982. “He’s the foundation here. He’s going to stick with you thick or thin, win, lose or draw. I probably see him every day around here. Rain or shine, he’s here every day with a smile on his face. And every high school we go to, someone’s always asking, how’s Marvin?”

And it’s not just Rose that Marvin loves, but all Greenville sports. On any given day if Rose isn’t playing you’ll find him at a Little League game or an East Carolina University football game — ECU is in Greenville and he goes to all the home games with RV — or anywhere else sports are played. If there isn’t a Rose varsity football, basketball or baseball game, he’ll go see a JV team play, or a volleyball match, or a swim meet. “That always means a lot to those kids,” says Peacock. “It means Marvin deemed their event important enough to attend. Kids want to play well for Marvin.”

When Marvin is there, it means that even the kids whose parents don’t come, or maybe don’t even have a parent, or maybe never leave the bench, know someone cares, that someone is there to see them.

“Some of them don’t even have a place to stay at night. Never know where their next meal is gonna come from unless we’re feeding them at football games or after games,” says Wojtecki. “Sometimes that’s all they eat, is here with us. They don’t have a lot of stability at the house.”

Marvin, however, is the definition of stability. He has not only been to almost every football, basketball and baseball game since 1966 — he’s been to almost every practice, too. He doesn’t even take off for his birthday on Jan. 13. Coaching comes first.

Photo: Katie Holloman Sneed

That began in earnest in 1973, when RV returned to Rose as a baseball coach. RV saw Marvin’s deep love for the games, his beautiful and kind heart, and kept Marvin by his side, a constant at every game and practice. No matter what, he never said anything negative about how the players played or how the teams did, even at their worst. Never. He would be honest, sure. Defense, bad, he’d say. Offense, struggle. That sort of thing. But he never insulted anyone personally. Not a gweat pwayer. But gweat puh-son.

Now Coach Jarman has a role with every team. For the football team, he manages the practice clock. He used to grab the kicking tee during games, but he recently retired from that duty. “By the time I got it now, it’d be deway of game.”

On the basketball team, he’s the free throw coach. He knows proper form perfectly, and tells you when you are doing it wrong, even if his own form is not quite so good: Sometimes coach James Rankins has Marvin shoot free throws to determine whether or not the team runs suicide sprints, so Marvin spends a lot of time practicing, shoving the ball away from his chest with both hands, making sure he’s ready when Coach calls his name and the whole team is behind him cheering. During games, he tracks rebounds, and he never misses even one. One year, Rankins had a four-star recruit who was certain Marvin was losing track. Rankins met with the boy one Saturday in private, so as not to embarrass Marvin, and they reviewed game film and counted the rebounds themselves — and they counted exactly as many as Marvin.

During baseball season, Marvin keeps the pitch count, and during practice, he umpires scrimmages. He’s not the best at that. He is often half-asleep. Most close calls go in favor of whoever yells first. “Everyone gives him a hard time about it,” RV says, “and he says, ‘Wayl, they awnly mad ‘bout it cause they lawst.’”

And for all the teams, no matter what the sport, he’s a reservoir of information, a history book. Marvin has an astonishing memory. All those games he’s been to? He can tell you almost anything about almost all of them — who won, what the score was, and all about the big plays. He’ll remember what a player did in an at-bat two years ago. He remembers players making plays and getting hits from 50 years ago. In 1999, floods from Hurricane Floyd destroyed parts of Greenville, and Elm Street Park, which had to be rebuilt. The first game back in the stadium was an emotional one for anyone who’d played Little League. Former Rose athlete Griff Garner’s son Gray had the first at-bat in the new stadium. He got a hit, then got thrown out trying to stretch it into a double. Years later, Garner asked Marvin, “Hey, can you tell me who got the first hit in the new Elm Street Stadium?”

Marvin grinned. “Yauhp,” he said. “Gway.” Then Marvin said, “An he made the first out, too.”

“Like a computer,” Rankins says. “He was our Internet before there was Internet.”

Now he sees old players’ children’s children, and tells them stories about plays their grandparents made decades ago. And when a kid needs a reminder of how good they are, Marvin will tell him about a great play he once made. He remembers more than most people forget. He gives people something most of us deeply, quietly crave: With Marvin you feel seen, even significant, because to him, you are. What you did 20 or 30 years ago matters. And when he knows you, he is like Google for your life. “He’s like Rain Man,” Grant says, “except not with numbers, but with people.”

And Marvin’s great memory goes beyond Rose sports. On long bus rides, players try to stump him on all kinds of sports history, smartphones in hand, Google at the ready. They almost never do. And you can quiz him on any U.S. president, too. And their extended families. One of his favorite facts? William Howard Taft was the fattest president. “Got stuck in the tub.”

In this Moneyball age, it’s easy to forget that no amount of data or strategizing can compensate for what a player really needs to play well. If a kid can’t keep calm, comfortable and confident, nothing else matters. That’s harder than ever. Never has there been more pressure, or more scrutiny. Never has it been easier for a tornado to tear through the things that hold young men together.

Photo: Katie Holloman Sneed

Marvin has a way of calming the winds, of making those storms be still. Screw up, and you can’t get but so mad with Marvin there watching you, always calm, and usually patting you on the back. “It’s awright,” he’ll say. “Juss keep goin. Life will anyway. Go on with it.”

“That’s so crucial,” says RV, who has become a legend himself in the state of North Carolina, with more wins than any other high school baseball coach, 866, and six state championships. “That’s probably one of the things that’s really helped over the years, with having Marvin around. Because you know he’s not gonna get so uptight, he’s not gonna get so down.”

“I can’t tell you how much he has helped RV,” says Tiffany Vincent, RV’s second wife. The life of a high school coach is tough. People are always telling you how you’re doing them or their children wrong. There’s a lot of negative feedback. “You might see Marvin frustrated, but he doesn’t ever talk about people or grumble about things or complain about things. RV needs somebody that’s positive, and Marvin is definitely that.”

He treats substitutes as kindly as most people treat the stars, and he has a knack for knowing what a player needs to hear and when. He’ll make his jokes. He’ll bring up silly errors to make you laugh. One time Wojtecki asked him to say some words to the team before a big game. Marvin thought long and hard, then simply raised his fist and pumped it. The guys went nuts.

Marvin keeps the boys straight, too. Some guys on the Rose baseball team recently were suspended after they posted pictures of themselves online drinking and smoking and whatnot. Of all the punishments they received, the one from Marvin probably hurt the worst. He gave them the cold shoulder for days. “Wooz is wooz.”

After every baseball practice or game, Marvin gets in the middle of a team huddle, everyone’s hands raised together, and sends them off with, “Ro High!” Every Friday afternoon, RV asks Marvin to give the team some sage advice going into the weekend. He always says the same thing: “Stay outta twubble. And doh’n kiss ugly women.”

The Rose baseball team practices and plays at Guy Smith Stadium about a mile from campus — across from where his parents used to have their stable — and sometimes players are late or don’t come at all because, they say, they couldn’t get a ride. RV will point to Marvin and tell them how if Marvin can’t get a ride, he walks. “He wants to be here,” RV says. “It’s simple as that.”

“When it comes to high school kids, consistency is huge,” says assistant football coach Rusty Compton.

“He’s a security blanket,” Wojtecki says. “A lot of these kids, their home lives are so wishy-washy, up and down, they don’t have any structure. Not a lot of them have a father figure at home. A lot are raised by their mother, grandmother. A lot of them are from homes, live in foster care And Marv is, to them, almost like a father figure, some of them. Marv’s here. He’s always here. And they know he’s gonna always be here.

“Now, if one day he didn’t show up, these kids would probably lose their damn minds.”

Visit Greenville for a few days and it’s likely you’ll be asked if you’ve met Marvin yet. Stay a few days longer and you probably will. Marvin doesn’t forget very many people, but the same is true of the people Marvin meets. Very few ever forget him. His legend has long since spread beyond Greenville, to all corners of the country. One time Grant took Marvin to an Atlanta Braves game, but their seats were in the nosebleeds, and Marvin doesn’t like heights. Marvin asked an usher if they could get better seats because they knew the umpire. The usher went to the umpire and told him about this crazy upper deck person named Marvin Jarman asking for better seats and saying he knew him and —”Marvin Jarman?” Joe West said. “Yeah, man. Give him seats right behind home plate!”

West, known as one of baseball’s gruffest and most confrontational umpires, graduated from Rose, where he played baseball and football. He’s not exactly someone you expect to speak of people with great affection, but that’s exactly how he speaks of Marvin, with the tenderness of a man eulogizing a dear brother. “He’s a special person,” West says. “I mean, he is special. And he knows everything. He can tell me more about my statistics than I can. I mean, he knew I was the first base umpire for Nolan Ryan’s fifth no-hitter. It’s amazing.”

In 1982, Marvin and RV and longtime friend Randy Phillips went to a Yankees game. Even in Yankee Stadium, people came up to them and said, “Hey Marvin!”, recognizing him by the bright green Rose jacket he wears everywhere. And then afterward, as they were leaving and they passed the locker room, where a crowd had gathered to get autographs from the team, a voice called out: “Marvin Jarman! Come here, man!” It was Yankees manager Clyde King, from Goldsboro, some 40 miles from Greenville, cutting through the crowd to hug him. “My God!” Phillips remembers thinking. “Who are we here with?”

Photo: Allison Mallison

Former Greenville mayor Don Parrott once told RV he was glad Marvin never ran for office, because Marvin would win in a landslide. Any given moment, you’ll see Marvin walking the streets, though that doesn’t last too long because someone always gives him a ride. When people from Greenville caught wind of a writer’s Facebook post saying he was writing a story about Marvin, they “liked” and shared it more than 2,400 times within a week, and left more than 300 comments, story after story after story. The writer’s email inbox was flooded. His phone rang and rang. Wherever he went in Greenville, people, unprompted, told him how Marvin moved them. All Marvin had to say about that? “Some people care, some people doh’n care.”

Like most of what Marvin says, that is technically true, but far more care about him than don’t. Tiffany Vincent says, “When Marvin dies, it’ll be the biggest funeral in Pitt County.”

Marvin seems almost too good to be real, or even human for that matter. Compared to the rest of us, he seems like he’s come here from some different dimension, or as an emissary from a kind alien race. Clever, then, of the aliens to make him entirely too human in other ways. For one thing, Marvin’s coordination isn’t the best. It’s why he just wasn’t good enough to play sports. From time to time he’ll trip, or spill something on himself, or drop a plate or a glass. A few years ago during a party after a big football win, he fell off the side of a patio and broke his left wrist, moaning like a wounded puppy. At the hospital, when the doctor told him to wiggle his fingers, Marvin fluttered the fingers on his right hand. “Your other hand, Marvin,” the doctor said. Marvin stared at his left hand, thinking, then used his right hand to lift the fingers on his left hand and wiggle them.

And don’t even try to take him on vacation. He can tolerate maybe about an hour at the beach before he’s fidgeting and pacing. “Bored. Bored.”

“The worst thing that can happen to Marvin is not being able to get out,” RV says. “If he had to stay home all day, if he could not get out and see people.”

Christmas, for example, drives him nuts. “Maybe his least favorite day of the year,” RV says with a laugh. All that sitting around doing nothing, no practices or games to go to. “Ahhhh. Boorrrreeeddd.”

That’s just what he said about his mom’s funeral.

He was confused when he got home and all the lights were on and there were lots of people in the driveway and the house, because he was certain he had locked up behind himself. Mama Jarman told him to do it once, so Marvin did it always. Then he walked inside and Grant was there telling him that Mama was gone. RV was there, and Randy Phillips, there to comfort him. But it was Marvin who ended up comforting everyone else.

“He misses her and all,” RV says, “but it’s just a fact to him. ‘It’s the way it is.’ And he deals with it. We all worry about what’s going to happen to Marvin, what’s going to go on. And he’s just — ‘It’s the way it is.’ That’s how Marvin does it. I mean, yeah, he was upset. But more like, ‘Well, whatta ya gonna do?’”

“Like, ‘Let’s carry on,’” Phillips says. “Just keep doing things, out of regularity. ‘Let’s carry on. Let’s take the next step.’ It wasn’t so much that he said it. He just did it. I got so much out of that.”

Photo: Katie Holloman Sneed

Marvin remembers that “having all those people over meant not going to pwactice.” He missed a football practice because of the visitation, that is. “But the funeral was better,” he says. “I could go to pwactice after.” He was back where he wanted to be, out of the house, with people. As he tells the boys on his teams: Life goes on. Might as well go with it.

That was 24 years ago. Not too long after that, he helped RV’s life go on, too.

RV hates rainy days as much as Marvin. Can’t go anywhere, can’t do anything. One Saturday this past September, East Carolina University had a football game, and it was pouring down rain, and RV and Marvin both still went to the game, because they always go. “Can’t stand just sitting around the house,” he says. But about a decade ago, RV felt very, very different. There was a time he didn’t want to leave the house at all.

First, cancer took RV’s younger brother Charles, who got Marvin his job with the Greenville Recreation and Parks Department in 1969, and after whom Grant even named his son. Then, three years later, in June, RV’s mother died of heart failure after a long sickness. One month later, RV’s wife, Marcia, lost a long fight with leukemia.

And all RV wanted to do was sit around the house, stay inside, and mourn.

But Marvin is a man of routine. And well, Marvin has quite a few things he has to do every day at a certain time. Otherwise, Ahhhh. Gotta go. Ahhhh.

Photo: Katie Holloman Sneed

Marvin lives in a big gray house with Grant and Grant’s wife Brenda, who make sure he has money for the day and that his medical needs are kept up. He has his own corner of the house, a big bedroom with articles and trophies and plaques all over the walls, all with his name on them. Right Hand Man Award. NCHSAA Special Person Award. Outstanding Alumni Award. Kiwanis Youth Worker Of The Year. Civitan International Citizen Of The Year. And so on. There are trophies and certificates and articles from the local papers: “RV, Jarman Share Memories on the Diamond,” reads one from 2003, when RV set the North Carolina record for most wins by a high school baseball coach. “1,100 and counting,” says another published last January, about Marvin’s streak of attending consecutive basketball games. The headline of an article about his 50th birthday reads simply: “Marvin!”

Every morning, Grant drops Marvin off at his job keeping the parks clean. And every day at 10:30, local Little League commissioner Brian Weingartz, Marvin’s boss, takes him to a nearby gas station for his break, where Marvin usually gets two Diet Mountain Dews and either a honey bun or pack of Nabs. Then Marvin works for another hour, and RV picks Marvin up for lunch.

Photo: Katie Holloman Sneed

Above: Marvin and RV at Elm Street Park

For a long time, RV didn’t really want to do much of anything. But since Marvin’s never let him down, he didn’t want to let Marvin down, so even on the darkest days, he got up and helped Marvin keep his routine.

The lunch spots sometimes change, but usually on Monday it’s McAlister’s Deli, Tuesday it’s a burger joint called Cubbies, Wednesday it’s a local Mexican place called Chico’s, Thursday it’s The Met Deli, and Friday it’s a local bar called Professor O’Cools. Then RV or sometimes someone else will take Marvin back home.

But Marvin’s only there long enough for a shower and a change of clothes. Then, during the schoolyear, Marvin goes to Rose — but RV’s worst times weren’t during the school year, they were during the summer, when he had more time alone. Still, every summer afternoon, Marvin kept showing up at RV’s house, just like always, and RV simply couldn’t turn him away. So in Marvin came, every day, and went straight to the fridge, as always, for a Mountain Dew, even if he was already carrying one. “Marvin!” RV would say. “You already have one in your hand!” Marvin would shrug. “Thirsty.”

Then Marvin parked himself on the couch and turned the TV to ESPN or a channel showing a Western movie — his granddaddy rode with Buffalo Bill — and he would fall asleep until it was time to go to the ballpark, where his friends coach and where the children of boys he’s coached before play. Marvin has to check in on all of them, so RV had no choice but to get up and go out every day. RV couldn’t take time off from being a coach, because that may well mean Marvin would have to stop being a coach, too, and RV couldn’t possibly be responsible for that.

Photo: Brandon Sneed

And then, every day, after a practice or a clinic RV would run, it would be, “Gotta eat, Wonald.” So every day RV took Marvin to dinner, almost always at O’Cools.

Marvin being Marvin, everywhere they go, a half-dozen or more people come up to him and say “Hey” and ask him what he thinks of such and such game, or try to stump him with a question or something.

Marvin didn’t let RV off the hook come Saturday, either — then as now, Marvin spent all morning at Boulevard Bagel, visiting with everyone who comes through, then he called RV to see what they were doing for lunch. That’s a bit more flexible on the weekend. RV didn’t even ask about the afternoon — as always, Marvin just came right over for sports and/or Westerns and a nap again. Except when football season came — then it was time to go to ECU home games. Then it was O’Cools for dinner again.

And Marvin would not only get RV out of the house, he’d get RV laughing, too. You can’t not laugh at his “Marvinisms.” When he sees a newborn baby he smiles and says “Hey, how ya doin,” and then — with permission — he holds up his hand over their head. “Welcome to tha wohld,” he says. It’s beautifully dramatic. “Like the papal blessing,” RV says. And when RV’s trying to find somewhere to park at McAlister’s on Mondays, where the lot is always packed, he’ll sometimes say, “Marvin, ain’t no parking spaces.”

“Always a pahking space,” Marvin says. “You just gotta wahk fuhther. Pwenty of pahking spaces. The whole wohld’s a pahking space.”

Day in and day out, except for Sundays — when Marvin goes for a long walk on Greenville’s “greenways,” walking trails looping from downtown past Elm Street Park and throughout the city — Marvin was there, even though all RV wanted to do was sit around the house. “And I needed that,” RV says. “Someone, something, constant, steady. ‘Ready to go.’”

If RV hadn’t had Marvin, if he had just sat around the house, he may have never found Tiffany. A friend was having a birthday party at Cubbie’s, and RV didn’t really want to go. But, “Gotta eat, Wonald.” So it was on to Cubbie’s. RV and Tiffany met, had a nice conversation, and when he asked her to go to dinner she said yes. Of course, when she showed up, Marvin was there, too. “Oh, I didn’t even ask,” RV said apologetically, “but I guess it’s OK if Marvin comes?”

Tiffany laughed. “Of course it was,” she says. She married RV about a year later, and, she says, “He’s been on just about every date since then. It was like marrying RV and Marvin.” Which she’s perfectly OK with. Now she cooks dinner for the both of them almost every night, one of her favorite things, because eating good food is one of Marvin’s passions, and cooking for people is one of Tiffany’s — especially when it comes to Marvin. It’s one way she thanks him for how good he’s been for RV.

Photo: Katie Holloman Sneed

And really, the way Marvin is so good for RV and all the kids at Rose is also how good he is for for Greenville on the whole. He’s a treasure, a constant, a reminder of something in all of us that sometimes feels lost. All those who know Marvin can’t imagine what Greenville will be like when he’s gone. Who will bring everyone together, give out high fives, bless the babies, and hand out gum?

That day almost came a few years ago. As he was walking out of downtown after lunch at Chico’s, crossing a busy intersection between a McDonald’s and a Sheetz, Marvin got mixed up on the light changes, and then he was stuck in a swirl of cars. He ran, and then he fell. Cars honked and swerved, and it was a miracle nobody hit him.

Still, he was hurt. By the time RV saw him, his arm was in a sling, and his face was a bloody, swollen mess.

“Sometimes,” Marvin said, “there’s just too much taffic to cwoss the street.”

“You break anything?” RV asked.

“No … Well. Pavement.”

It was one of Marvin’s worst falls, and in those moments when Marvin is in pain and worried that his routine has been changed, that he might miss a practice or a game, and might not have some Juicy Fruit when someone reaches out their hand for a piece, RV is there, his oldest and dearest friend. At those times, he asks a simple, caring question. “Marvin, what happened?”

Then Marvin, who always tells the truth, says something that clearly isn’t true at all, something that he always says and yet no one who truly knows him believes, even for a second, not really.

Marvin looks up and says, “Just woh’n born wight.”

“I’M HYPE AS HELL!” yells Marvin Moore, No. 77, as he runs out on to the soggy practice field. “LET’S GO!”

It’s Friday, Oct. 2, and it’s raining hard in Princeton, New Jersey. Hurricane Joaquin is threatening. Soon, the storm will take a sharp right, and drift harmlessly out to sea. But there’s no way to know that, given the present conditions. It’s cold, and windy, and damp. Just a nasty day.

You’re a sprint football player at Princeton University. Sprint football. Your friends and family don’t even know what that is. “Spring football?” They ask. No, sprint football. It’s exactly like regular football. Four quarters. Eleven man sides. Same penalties, same timing, same everything.

There’s only one difference between sprint football and regulation football. In sprint, each player must adhere to a 172-pound weight limit, everyone from the quarterback to the nose tackle. One hundred seventy-two pounds. Not an ounce more.

Beverly Schaefer

That number, 172, is constantly hanging over your head. You see it in your sleep. You’ve got to make 172 twice a week in advance of a game. And you might walk around at 180, which means you’ve got to drop 8 pounds in a very short amount of time. You do this by “cutting,” just like boxers do, or jockeys. You progressively decrease your water consumption, and lay off the salt and carbs in order to get to the magic number.

And if you’re still a little bit over, you pull out the scissors.

“Last year (before a game), I stepped on the scale at 172.2,” says Max Skelly, a Princeton captain. “I shaved my head and my beard, and I literally made weight. That made the .2 pound difference.”

Sprint football originated in 1934, created by University of Pennsylvania president Thomas Sovereign Gates, who wanted to give smaller kids a chance to play the sport. Michigan, Rutgers and Villanova once fielded sprint teams, but no longer do. Princeton has played since the very beginning. Right now, nine schools, all based in the Northeast, participate in the Collegiate Sprint Football League. But recently, the sport has gained some traction with smaller schools. Since 2008, four have joined the CSFL, and more are considering it.

President Jimmy Carter played sprint, then known as “lightweight football,” at the Naval Academy. So did Vice President Joe Biden at Pennsylvania, and Patriots owner Bob Kraft at Columbia. George Allen, the Hall of Fame coach, began his career as a sprint assistant at Michigan. Still, most people have never heard of this game you bust your ass playing.

On top of the cutting, your body aches. A number of your teammates are sitting out practice due to injury. The sideline was basically a MASH unit during the last game. Many on the roster play both ways out of necessity — wide receivers become DBs, guards become linebackers. As a result, you’re all gassed in the fourth quarter. You’re in great condition, but your body takes a pounding.

Brian Hoffacker

As if that isn’t enough, you’re sacrificing damn near every minute of your free time — not that you had that much to begin with. After all, you’re carrying a full course load at one of the toughest academic colleges in America. On top of that, there are job interviews to prepare for, crucial internships to land. Not to mention your social life. A date would be nice every once in a while, you know?

“For sprint, there are certain hours you have to put in every day,” says Kris Garris, a standout junior who plays guard and linebacker. Just like the varsity squad, there’s practice, mandatory workouts and meetings. “Less priority on sleep is pretty much how it works out.”

And here’s the thing: This team that you’re making all these sacrifices for — this team for which you are giving up your body, your Friday nights, your hair — this team hasn’t won a game in 16 years. That’s right. Sixteen years. Zero victories. The Tigers have lost so many games in a row that everybody has lost count. Ninety-eight?  But what about forfeits?  That would make it 102, or maybe 103.  Truth is, no one counts consecutive losses as closely as consecutive wins.

And forget winning: scoring is a hard enough chore most weeks. Last season, the team put up a grand total of two touchdowns. Two. That’s equal to the number of games forfeited. The season highlight film showed those two touchdowns from every conceivable angle — and every other play of merit — set to the requisite, moody Friday Night Lights music.

The final scores aren’t pretty. You played Army last week. Got your ass kicked, 86-0. Could’ve been much worse. They emptied their bench. Fair-caught almost every punt. Probably could have returned many of them for touchdowns if they wanted to. Their special teams are really good. Yours try hard.

It’s not your fault the score was so lopsided. Army and Navy are, perennially, the best teams in the league. One of them has won at least a share of the league title 15 of the past 17 years. They specialize in finding great, undersized athletes, and get a fair number of hard-nosed guys who could compete at a higher level somewhere if they chose to.

Really, the team is not without talent. Although a few have never played before, most players on the roster have a football background, and many were very good high school players. Lack of depth is the problem. Army played 50 cadets in the game. Your team, on the other hand, played 25 walk-ons. Every other team in the league recruits at least a few players to their teams. Not Princeton. Your school chooses not to recruit. Academic standards are not relaxed.

No one feels sorry for you. It’s Princeton. In a few years, you and your classmates will run the world. Yet here you are, in the midst of one the biggest losing streaks in the history of college sports. Varsity athletes are supposed to be rock stars: You’re a campus joke. The college’s student paper, the Daily Princetonian, once wrote that to get a win the team should schedule “the Princeton Powderpuff All-Stars.”

But you practice anyway, in these dreadful conditions, working towards that long elusive victory. You’re not fired up to be out here, but you’re here nonetheless. An inch and a half of rain will fall on the Princeton area by day’s end. A few hundred feet away, the lights above Princeton’s 27,800 seat football stadium are on. The varsity football team, the “heavies,” as you call them, will take on Columbia in a couple of hours.

The team is milling about, warming up individually and preparing to organize. You introduce yourself to a man you don’t recognize on the sidelines, and shake his hand.

“Are you a new coach?” You ask.

“No,” the man says. “I’m a writer.”

Your guess was based on the fact that assistant coaches are always coming and going. That’s just the way it is around here.

One of those coaches is John Wolfe. He started just two weeks ago, right before the first game of the season. But Wolfe is not a stranger. This is the seventh straight year he’s been with the team in some capacity. He played for five, including an extra year on a medical hardship waiver. Now, he’s coaching his second season as an assistant.

He’s got the look of a hotshot coordinator: Clean-cut. Youthful face. Energized. If this were, say, a MAC school, he’d be the type of guy you’d expect to get poached by Alabama or one of the other big boys. He’s just 25, but he moves around the field with a commanding presence, totally at ease around this team. Above all, he absolutely loves busting chops.

“Do you want an umbrella?” he asks. Before you can answer, he screams, “NO YOU DON’T!” loud enough for the whole team to hear.

You shake your head. Fuckin’ Wolfe. You still can’t get over the fact that this goofball is actually a coach now.

Head coach Sean Morey approaches. He looks like an athlete, 5’11, muscular, strong-jawed. Everything about the ex-NFL Pro Bowler oozes football. He is, clearly, where he belongs. His head is totally uncovered. No hat. No umbrella. He’s getting soaked. And the man is wearing shorts. Shorts! It’s barely 50 degrees. The 20 mph gusts of wind make it feel substantially less. And this maniac is out here in shorts, without a hat.

He stops when he reaches you, and leans in.

“Are we gonna get better today?”

There’s only one answer. Yes sir, you tell him. He’s the coach. What are you going to say? And besides, this man is worthy of respect. He lasted nine seasons in the league as an ace special teamer. Won a Super Bowl in 2006 as a member of the Steelers. Played for Belichick in New England. This team could use some of that winning aura.

He’s also the most one of the most relentlessly positive people you’ve ever met. For the life of you, you can’t figure out why. Coach Morey is very sick. He suffered dozens of concussions over the course of his career. Now, he has post-concussion syndrome, which often makes it hard for him to function. Dizziness, loss of focus, headaches. All are a constant part of his life. It’s a wonder he can make it out of bed in the morning.

He pats you on the shoulder. “Let’s get better,” he says, and walks away.

“Thinking about the streak, and how long it’s gone, and how much longer it will go, is a really trying process. But there’s an opportunity to do something historic … and prove that all the hard work that all my friends and all my coaches put in over the last five, 10, 20 years will have paid off.” — John Wolfe

Princeton’s season opener takes place on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania — 15 miles north of the Liberty Bell. It’s Sept. 19 — a day two years in the making for Chestnut Hill College, a tiny Division II Catholic school in Philadelphia. This is their first ever sprint football game, and first ever football game of any kind, in fact. A crowd of 737 people, mostly seated in the bleachers behind the Chestnut Hill sideline, actually paid five dollars each to watch, cheer when prompted, and generally seem excited.  For home games, the Princeton Tigers are lucky to draw 50 fans, and admission is free

Brian Hoffacker

The Tigers enter the game with the historic losing streak at somewhere just north of 100. In Chestnut Hill, many see a golden opportunity to finally break it. But when asked if the Chestnut Hill game is circled on the schedule because of a perceived better chance for a Princeton victory, Wolfe explains that this is a common query — and one that he doesn’t really like.

“Every year, people find the new team that they think is the worst,” Wolfe says. “And they ask us, ‘You guys excited for that game?’ We don’t appreciate that. For us, the most important game is always the next game.” Despite their record, he says this with total conviction.

Chestnut Hill passes for a touchdown on its first possession, converting a fourth down on the drive’s final play. They tack on another touchdown with 2:34 remaining in the opening period. Already, the Tigers are deep in the hole, down 14-0.

Princeton’s sprint team has very little going for it. But one thing it does have is that its best athlete plays the most important position on the field. Junior quarterback Chad Cowden is extremely fast, with a strong arm, and good instincts. He is lean (naturally), and at 6’2, tall by sprint standards. He’d play both ways, too, but Morey can’t risk losing his quarterback to injury.

Following Chestnut Hill’s second score, Cowden gets hot. He hits a 32-yard pass play for a touchdown to put Princeton on the board with 0:52 left in the quarter. He follows with some positive plays in the second. Though they trail, Princeton is not overmatched. They are moving the ball on offense, and holding their own on defense.

Brian Hoffacker

On third-and-8 from the Princeton 40, Cowden prepares to take the snap from the shotgun. He drops back, passes to his right, and is picked off by a Chestnut Hill defensive back. But Cowden stays with the play, and forces a fumble.

In regulation football, a scramble for a loose ball usually features little guys at the bottom, and big guys piling on trying to inflict some damage and pry the ball loose. Well here, they’re all little guys, fast and agile, but small. No one’s really big enough to stand out. The nose tackle and safety are the same size.

Think of an NBA game in which all of the players are guards. Imagine Stephen Curry spending the entire night posting up John Wall in the paint. That’s kind of what sprint football is like. Here, 172-pounders are tasked with watching the quarterback’s blindside, trying to stuff the gap on a fourth-and-1, and many other things normally done by players twice their size. A lot of skill position players in high school find themselves playing on the line for the first time.

“It’s the purest form of the game, I really believe that,” Wolfe says. “Everybody has to be an athlete. They have to play different positions. They have to be versatile. It’s really based more on skill, technique, and on speed than it is on pure size.”

Nick Barnett emerges with the ball, to the delight of Princeton’s sideline, but they fail to capitalize. Later, Chestnut Hill connects on a few deep passes — one a 58-yarder, and they run out to a 28-7 advantage just before the half.

A good kickoff return, and a 51-yard strike down the right sideline gives Princeton a chance to cut into the lead before intermission. They stop the clock with 0:07 remaining, leaving them time for, perhaps, two plays. As Morey and Cowden discuss the play call, the familiar chorus of Kanye West’s “Stronger,” blasts through the sound system.

“N-now th-that that don’t kill me. Can only make me stronger.”

The Tigers need a touchdown to keep Chestnut Hill within reach. After a long offseason to ponder the streak, this is not the first half that they were hoping for. They had 16 grueling practices before the first game. Hours upon hours of film study. Meetings, team lifts, walk-throughs. All in an effort to get better.

Yet here they are again — desperate to stick one just to keep the game close.

Cowden drops back and throws a fade to receiver Manraj Singh in the left corner of the end zone. But a Chestnut Hill defender breaks up the play. There’s time for one last shot. Cowden, this time, locks in on one receiver, and when he sees him covered, is forced into a desperate heave, which falls incomplete. The half is over.

Brian Hoffacker

Morey tries to encourage his squad as they head for the locker room, but there are already slumped shoulders and long faces among them. They know they’ve let this one get away. They also know, deep down, the streak will last at least another week.

At Princeton, narrow losses are recalled like big victories for other teams. It’s been a while since the last truly close call, since they pulled defeat out of the jaws of possible victory. In 2012, on the road against Ivy League rival Cornell, Princeton fell behind by 20 in the first half, but closed the margin to 22-15 in the second half before a failed onside kick attempt with 1:42 to play marked the end of the rally.

It was a tough loss, even by Princeton sprint standards. The games against Cornell and Penn, the two other Ivy League schools playing sprint, always mean just a little more than the others. The locker room was devastated, particularly the seniors.

Skelly, then a freshman, went to take a shower. He remembers seeing Wolfe in tears. Wolfe gave an intense look and then delivered a message that Skelly has carried with him throughout his Princeton tenure.

“Don’t you fuckin’ leave this program,” Wolfe said. “Don’t you quit. Play this all four years. Promise me that you’ll play all four years. Bring a win to this program.”

On the rare occasions that he’s questioned why he’s here, Skelly has remembered those words.

“I can’t walk away after that,” Skelly says. “To feel that raw emotion coming out of somebody is the single-handed reason why I’m still here.”

The following week, Princeton managed to lose even more painfully. In a home game against Post University of Waterbury, Connecticut, the Tigers drew even, 26-26, with 10:45 left in the fourth on a 27-yard touchdown reception by Wolfe, and a successful two-point conversion. That was the last score in regulation. Princeton got the ball first in overtime, and kicked a field goal to go up 29-26. All they needed was a stop — one lousy stop — to get the long-awaited W.

Word spread around campus that the sprint team actually had a chance to win. People wanted to see it. All over campus, students stopped studying and abandoned kegs and raced to the field. A crowd of 25 or so at kickoff grew to more than 500 for the final moments.

Post completed a 23-yard pass to get down to the Princeton 2. But on first and goal, Wolfe forced a fumble. The officials unpeeled the pile, one by one. On the sideline, in the crowd, they were hoping — pleading — for a favorable call. A Princeton defender emerged from the pile with the ball. ECSTASY! The players rushed the field. The day had finally come.

But the referee gave the ball to Post. None of the Princeton defenders were ready for the next play. On second-and-goal from the 5, Post walked in for a score. The streak lived.

The players, coaches, and fans were all stunned.

“I swore we won that game,” says Mulay Sarbanes. “I think the ref messed up.”

“Every player that was on the team then is still salty about it,” Skelly adds.

For Sarbanes, then only a freshman, it was only the fourth loss of his career. He didn’t yet have a full appreciation of just how difficult it was going to be to break through. Three years and 19 defeats later, the close call against Post stings that much more.

“That feeling, to be robbed of that …” Sarbanes’s words trail off, his eyes look for an outcome he can only imagine.

But he has not quit. Neither has Skelly, Cowden, or most of the others. They have an opportunity that many Princeton students don’t often get— the chance to learn about themselves, not through success, but through failure. Maybe that will be the key in creating the next Bob Kraft, or Jimmy Carter, or Joe Biden.  After all, “the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton,” right? No Princeton grad has occupied the White House since Woodrow Wilson. Maybe that which hasn’t killed this team, and these young men as individuals, will make them stronger.

It’s a nice idea, anyway.

Brian Hoffacker

The Tigers come out flat to open the second half against Chestnut Hill. Playing both ways takes a toll. Princeton gives up scores on their opponent’s first two possessions of the third quarter, and they go on to lose 48-13. In three hours, Chestnut Hill has exceeded Princeton’s win output over the past 16 years.

“At times in the game, we had too much emotion,” says Kris Garris. “We were too ready for the game … That manifested itself in little things — like not finishing drives in the red zone.”

It’s another disappointing outcome for Princeton sprint. A game that seemed to offer a reasonable chance for a victory ended in a lopsided defeat.

“You know how awesome it’s gonna be when we win?” Max Skelly says with a smile. “That’s why I come out here every day.”

And two days later, even though he has a broken collarbone and can’t play, that’s why he’s still back at practice.

“When I explain to people that I was a nose guard, and I weighed 175 pounds, they laugh.” — John Wolfe

One by one, the black helmets of the Army sprint football team emerge from beneath the Princeton Stadium tunnel.

“Uh oh,” Piper says to her mom, Sean Morey’s wife, Cara. “Uh oh.”

Six-year-old Piper Morey, Sean’s daughter, already knows the Princeton Tigers are in trouble. The cadets take the field like the military unit they are, a highly organized group who outnumber the ragtag Princeton group by more than two to one. They look focused and determined. They appear well conditioned. They eat nails for breakfast.

It’s Friday, Sept. 25. And it’s going to be a long night for the Princeton sprinters. Sometimes, against opponents like Chestnut Hill, outside observers who are rooting for this bunch can talk themselves into believing that they could win. But when Princeton takes on one of the service academies, not even the die-hards can operate under any such delusion. Army and Navy rule sprint football. Princeton doesn’t have a chance. It’s like the US Army invading Liechtenstein.

Fifty players will see the field for Army before the night is done. None will have to play both ways. Half that many will see action for the grossly undermanned Tigers. Many of them, including four starters, will play both offense and defense.

If Princeton can even last all four quarters tonight, it will be a victory. Last season’s contest was forfeited due to Princeton not having enough healthy, active players on the roster.

Princeton’s offensive highlight comes on its very first play. Cowden hits wide receiver Peter Shu for a 20-yard completion, and hearts momentarily soar. Then Army counterattacks, relentlessly, with overwhelming force. Princeton will end the contest having gained a net total of just 2 yards — 81 yards passing, minus 79 yards rushing (most of those coming on eight sacks). Two positive yards for the whole night, an average of 18 inches per quarter.

Beverly Schaefer

As Army substitutes waves of fresh personnel, Sean Morey rotates the same tired bodies. He likens it to changing lines in hockey. He’s got to try and have his best players out there for as many of the key plays as possible. They just don’t have enough guys.

Identifying a potential sprinter is not easy. They must be athletic, and weigh less than 172 pounds (or be close enough to where they could come in under that number, with training). Not many of the approximately 2,700 male undergrads at Princeton qualify. In order to spot the ones who do, the captains must keep their eyes open at all times.

“We always joke that, when we go out on the street, we check out the guys and the girls,” Skelly says, laughing.

Finding a prospect is hard enough. Convincing one to play is even harder. Some have never played football before and don’t want to. Others have, but worry now about concussions. After all, they are at Princeton to exercise their intellect, not their bodies. It is up to the guys already on the team to articulate the reasons why they should give up most of their free time, risk injury and suffer the humiliation of playing for an outfit that hasn’t won a game in almost two decades.

One attractive talking point, according to Kris Garris, is Morey himself, who joined the team in 2014. The Princeton sprint team has never before had a coach with such an extensive football background.

“I think the sales pitch has been made easier by the arrival of Coach Morey,” Garris says. “The kind of football knowledge he’s been around, and he possesses himself, is intense.”

“It means a lot, honestly,” Chad Cowden adds. “Here’s this guy, played in the NFL, has all these accolades, and he wants to help us — this team that’s never won before … . He just cares about us as people. And he’s here for us regardless.”

Mostly, though, the pitch reverts back to the camaraderie surrounding the sprint football team. Because of the losing streak, this is an extremely tight bunch. It’s them against the world, a very big world.

Beverly Schaefer

“(Sprint) gives you an unbelievable friend group,” John Wolfe says. “Guys that you’ll be really close with. Guys that you’ll be close with for the rest of your life.

Wolfe is Princeton sprint football’s beating heart. He can be a little over the top at times, but he is beloved by the young men who were once his peers and are now his charges. He’s been with the team for nearly half of the losing streak. And one of the lessons he’s learned during that time is that the final score is only one metric by which to judge performance. Yes, the goal is to win. Always. But sometimes … .

“If we obsess over the outcome of everything we do, we might as well not do it,” Wolfe says, convincing himself, sounding wiser than his years. “A lot of times, the outcome is out of our control. And the really important part is what we do in the meantime … . It’s really about, ‘Can I be proud of the effort I put in? Can I be proud of the way I conducted myself?’”

Against Army, the answer is still yes. Down 37-0 with less than five minutes remaining in the first half, Princeton continues to fight on every down. Despite the score, the players are so excited they repeatedly cross the sideline boundary onto the field. Keith Harper, the team’s strength and conditioning coach, has to keep the players back so they don’t draw a penalty.

“GIMME THAT LINE!” Harper yells repeatedly. “I NEED THAT LINE!”

It’s second-and-12 for Army at the Princeton 14. The Army quarterback drops back to pass and it’s broken up on a nice play by junior Marvin Moore.

“LET’S GO, MARVIN!” Sarbanes says, clapping his hands.

Now it’s third down. Army looks to the end zone to convert, but the pass is too tall for the receiver. The Princeton sideline is fired up, not giving Harper that line.

Beverly Schaefer

Army tries a 31-yard field goal. The kick misses wide left. The Princeton sideline erupts. They’ve made a stand. They STOPPED ARMY. There are fist pumps and high-fives as the defensive players return to the sideline, then turn right around to play offense. Usually, such a reaction from a team trailing by more than five touchdowns would appear inappropriate. But in this instance, the celebration is perfectly justifiable. The team kept their heads up, kept fighting, and earned the right to enjoy the moment.

The final is 86-0, but Princeton can take a measure of pride in the fact that they finished the game and collected a few more small victories over the course of the night. They lost, but they did not surrender.

Wolfe heads to the handshake line to congratulate the cadets. He’s close to wrapping up his coaching career. He’s just taken a job as an editor at a news website for college students — based in Brooklyn — and will be unable to return next season. After seven long years of sprint football, Wolfe is down to his last three games.

“It’s really difficult to picture my life without sprint,” he says. “And I think even after I graduated … every opportunity that I’ve had to come back and help in some capacity, I’ve taken advantage of. I really think it is the most rewarding endeavor I’ve taken on to this point in my life.”

“Often times, mostly when I’m suffering, I ask myself why the hell I’m coaching football, a career that caused me disability, and affected my family. I come away telling myself that the educational experience is benefitting the students I coach.”- Sean Morey

One day after practice, Morey and his four assistant coaches return to their shared office, located in a forgotten corner in the bowels of Princeton’s athletic complex. Here, they will upload the film of the session and analyze it.

On a bookshelf in the disheveled office, one title stands out: “League of Denial,” the 2013 book by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru about concussions in the NFL.

The coaches sit down at their desks and get ready for their post-practice work. Before they start, they take a moment to bust each other’s chops.

Gene Lower/Getty Images

Above: Sean Morey blocks a punt against the Dallas Cowboys

“Let me ask you, Coach,” Wolfe says. “Did you ever block a kick?”

Morey smirks. Wolfe is fully aware that Sean Morey blocked a punt in overtime of a game in 2008, when he was with Arizona, resulting in the first and only time in NFL history that a game was won on a blocked punt in overtime, teammate Monty Beisel running the block in for a score to beat the Cowboys. A wide receiver, Morey primarily made his living as an all-world special teamer, a missile on target. Peter King of Sports Illustrated named him special teams player of the decade for the 2000s.

The coaches, pleased with the intensity of practice, tell stories from their own careers, clearly missing those days on the field. Several indicate their desire to strap on the helmets again. Not Morey.

“Didn’t you feel like going back out there?” Wolfe asks the head coach, a rare serious query.

Morey pauses. The room goes quiet.

“Not even a little,” he says, in a whisper-soft voice. “Not even a little.”

A heavy silence follows.

“You know how they say, ‘I left it all out on the field?’ I left it all out on the field.”

Sean Morey is in conflict. Football has given him a lot. But he has given the game a lot more. Winning a Super Bowl is nice. Going off on random, explosive tirades in front of your wife and three young daughters is not. He appreciates what football did for him, and what it’s doing for his kids on the Princeton sprint team now. But the aftereffects cause him to question whether it was all worth it.

He has good days and bad. On the good days, he jumps around on the field, and provides a spark to the whole team. On the bad days, it takes everything he has just to function. And the bad days are way too frequent. They cripple him, and require him to pare down his schedule to the bare bones. Due primarily to his headaches, Morey was forced to postpone an interview for this story six different times over the course of a full week.

Even on the good days, he has lapses in conversation, long pauses as he searches for words. He frequently goes on lengthy tangents. His mind seems continually to alternate between going everywhere and nowhere.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

He claims that, over time, he has been improving.

“I’ve gotten botox,” Morey says, referencing drugs used to treat his symptoms. “I’m taking gabapentin. I’m taking the right medications. And I feel like I’m managing it the best I can.”

Following his retirement from the NFL in 2010, Morey, a Brown graduate, studied the science behind brain injuries in football. He served as head of the Mackey-White Traumatic Brain Injury Committee for the NFL Players Association, then broke away to become an independent advocate. A vocal critic of the NFL’s $765 million class-action settlement with the players, he joined six other NFL retirees in formally protesting the agreement.

Now, Morey is doing what he can on the collegiate level. As coach of Princeton sprint, he’s vigilant in his attempts to diagnose and treat concussions. Yet Morey says that one of his players sustained a concussion during the game against Army, the result of a blindside hit, one he did not know about until after the game. He feels like he failed.

“He shouldn’t have been playing,” Morey says. “I should have ensured that he was in a position where I could limit his reps.”

Player transparency is crucial in this process. Morey drums it home to his players repeatedly: they must report any type of concussion symptoms they are having immediately. Self-reporting was crucial in helping Skelly determine that he’d suffered a concussion last season.

“It was something where I wasn’t sure,” Skelly says. “I’d never had one before. So I reviewed the list of concussion symptoms we have in our playbook. And I was like ‘you know what? I think I do.’ The next day, I went to (trainer) Shelby (Hoppis). And I said, ‘Hey, can you check me for concussions?’ And she did. And I ended up having one.”

The recovery protocol under Morey is very strict but simple. The prescription for getting over a concussion includes rest, rest, and more rest. Skelly was eager to get back on the field, but Morey wanted him to take it easy — he wrote notes to Skelly’s professors asking them to excuse him from his classes.

“I slept 16 to 18 hours a day, just trying to get better,” Skelly says. “For about two weeks.”

“Everyone should have the same protocol and err on the side of caution,” Morey says. “That’s the future.”

Sprint football does appear, at least in some respects, to be a much safer alternative to regulation football. Since the sport was founded in 1934, there has never been an on-the-field death known to occur in sprint football. Compare that with high school regulation football which, this season alone, has seen four players die from injuries sustained on the field.

In fact, the same night Princeton played Army, 17-year-old quarterback Evan Murray suffered a fatal injury while playing for Warren Hills Regional High School— just 45 miles north of Princeton. According to the website of the Summit High School team — Warren Hills’ opponent that night — the average weight of their starting defensive linemen was 265 pounds, nearly 100 pounds greater than the limit for sprint football.

“I’m not yet confident the game could or should be sustained the way it’s currently being played, and revered blindly, especially at the youth level.” Morey says. “I think they’re starting too young.”

Brian Hoffacker

So could lightweight leagues become more popular at the high school level going forward?

“Football, I think, is at a big turning point,” says Wolfe. “People are becoming way more aware of all these serious injuries. My parents always (said) they were way more comfortable with me playing sprint than they were (with me) even playing high school … You’ll still have big-time collisions. You’ll still hit hard. But there’s never a 150-pound guy getting hit by a 300-pound guy.”

Though the weight limit makes on field collisions somewhat less violent, it ultimately doesn’t matter whether players weigh 172 or 272 — contact is contact and concussions are concussions. Given the exhausting amount of research he’s done on the subject, and his own experience, Morey is as qualified as anyone to weigh in on the future of the sport — both the sprint and regulation versions. Despite everything that he’s going through as a result of the sport, Morey still views sprint football as a net positive for young men — based on the most current medical information.

“I feel like it’s an incredibly unique sport. It’s almost impossible for someone to articulate that appropriately — or even positively — unless you’ve played it, and experienced those benefits. If you haven’t played the sport, and haven’t benefitted from it, it’s hard to justify it.”

But in order to fully enjoy those benefits, the kids must stay healthy. And the responsibility of keeping his players safe on the field weighs heavily on Sean Morey. Staying safe is more important than winning.

“I’m so afraid of someone getting seriously injured,” he admits.

You’ve been out here for an hour. It took a while, but you’re finally hype as hell. Everybody is now. With every reason imaginable to mail this practice in, the team has collectively decided to make it special. Something to remember.

The rain has not let up. If anything, it’s more intense now. You stopped noticing a while ago. What’s the difference? You’re wearing your helmet and pads anyway. What about coach? He’s been out here all this time with shorts and no hat. His hair is soaked. He hasn’t complained.

One of your teammates launches himself at a tackling dummy with all the force 172 pounds can deliver. You laugh. He sees this, and smiles. He waves his arms in the air, as if to pump up a crowd.

Of course, there is no crowd. The only crowd nearby is the one a few hundred feet away in the stadium. Kickoff for the heavies is a little more than a half hour away. Their pregame warmup music, AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” blares over the speakers.

Most of the team gathers together for the final drill. Step-over dummies are lined up diagonally over a 20-yard stretch along the middle of the field. Directly in the center are three levels of defenders, all of whom are trying to work past a blocker. After being told which way to go by one of the coaches, Cowden, the quarterback and fastest player on the team, takes the ball and tries to get past the defenders.

Brian Hoffacker

The whistle blows. He glides down the line — with a long, effortless stride somewhat reminiscent of Colin Kaepernick — hugging the dummies along the left side. He gets good blocks. The defenders don’t stand a chance. Cowden passes them all as though they are standing still.

“WE GOT A SCORE!” Coach Morey says, jumping up and down, making like Jim Valvano. “WE GOT A SCORE!”

You laugh at coach’s antics. If the team ever wins, you can’t begin to imagine his reaction. God, you’re having fun. This is so cool. A practice for the ages. You’re on such a high that you want to march right into the stadium and play against the heavies. You guys can take ‘em. They ain’t so tough.

But just then, a sobering thought hits: what if all this gets taken away?

You hear the rumors. You hear them every season. The muckety-mucks at Princeton want to cut sprint football. They’re Princeton, after all. They’re winners. They want to wash their hands of you. They’re embarrassed. Princeton is not for losers. And that’s all the higher-ups see. For all their brain-power, they can’t look past your won-loss record. They don’t get it.

You will cry if they take this team away from you. You love these guys. They have become your family. While many on campus laugh, your sprint teammates have had your back. All you want to do is play. That’s it. Just play for each other. You’re not a drain on the budget — the team is largely funded by private donations. You just want to play, and you’re not playing just to win. You have each other. That’s all you need.

“We’re not bad at football,” Max Skelly says. And dammit, as crazy as it might seem, he’s right. The program may not have won a game since Bill Clinton was in office, but you ARE winners. You’ve been kicked in the teeth over, and over, and over again. And you’ve gotten up every time. The team has dealt with tremendous adversity, and responded by working even harder. All the character-building talk at a lot of other places is just nonsense disguising greed and selfishness. Here, it’s real. You are a success at everything football is about, absolutely everything, except the final score. Isn’t that supposed to be the point of the game? That you learn to measure success by effort as much as by the result, by what you give to each other collectively?

But deep down, you still have questions. Of course you do. You’re at Princeton, and you question everything. You think about the medication that coach has to take. About the four concussions he told you he once suffered in one game. About all the ways in which his life has become difficult because of all those hits he took. You think about these things and the sport you love to play, and wonder if everything really important about what football gives can survive in a different game.

It’s 6:30. The sky is rapidly turning from gray to black. Practice is coming to a close — there are no lights for the sprint team. You’re running a couple of times from sideline-to-sideline to conclude the workout. There are more words of encouragement from coach, who, as always, is building his guys up.

After the drill, a huddle is formed — leaving an opening for Cowden, who’s going to get a running start, and jump in the center. The team watches with anticipation as he circles, and prepares to approach. You rhythmically clap. You’re ready for him to break it down. Here he comes.

“BREAKDOWN!”

“WHOOO!”

“BREAKDOWN!”

“WHOOO!”

“BREAKDOWN!”

“WHOOO!”

And just like that, it’s over. High-fives are exchanged as the team storms off for the locker room, soaking wet, yet satisfied. Before you can join them, coach stops you. He wants to go over one last thing. You follow him to the end zone, where you get down in a 3-point stance, and you work on getting off the block faster, on rushing the passer.

Darkness is falling. You’re the last two men on the field. It’s still pouring. Doesn’t matter. You don’t want to leave. You sense that he doesn’t either. And there’s your answer:  You are both right where you want to be. You want this feeling to last forever.

Today was a good day. A good day for him, and a good day for you.

He’s proud of you. You both got a little better. 

Editor’s Note: It is the policy of SBNation.com not to publish the names of minors who come forward with allegations of sexual abuse or rape. It is also the policy not to publish the names of adults who come forward with allegations of sexual abuse or rape unless those individuals are willing to be named in the media.

It is while watching Portland’s annual Vagina Beauty Pageant, a very explicit talent contest, that Oregon’s commitment to protecting free speech really shines. The pageant is the product of Portland’s surplus of strip clubs and the lack of restrictions on the performances in them: it’s completely legal for a performer to do a magic trick in a liquor-serving bar that would either earn them a ticket or an arrest in any other state.

That Oregon has a lot of strip clubs is well known to any resident. Why here? Locals understand it’s partly because Oregon loves free speech. It’s the only state to have no crime of obscenity, which remains a federal offense. Oregon’s free speech protections are far more expansive than those of the federal government. The all-nude, liquor-serving strip clubs are just the most visible manifestation of a legal framework that protects everything from naked bike rides to verbal harassment to unlimited campaign spending.

In this state’s truly weird fashion, University of Oregon football deserves credit. In 1980, during a historically awful scandal-ridden era of the program, four Ducks players were charged under a coercion statute that made it a crime to use a threat to publicly expose “a secret or publicize an asserted fact, whether true or false, tending to subject some person to hatred, contempt or ridicule.” The subsequent case, State v. Robertson, resulted in a unanimous Oregon Supreme Court decision that has been the single most important free speech decision in the state’s history.

The original charges in Robertson have largely been forgotten, but they are stunning. Few people in Oregon or anywhere else know of the case, much less that it emerged from the worst time in Ducks football history from an incident that is a case study in the sordid intersection of collegiate athletics, entitlement and the legal system. It is also so similar to current events that it appear to be just another instance of a story that repeats over and over again; the only things that ever seem to change are the details.

Every college football program has its fallow times, but Oregon’s futility was impressively consistent until the current century, when a healthy infusion of Phil Knight’s money helped the Ducks become one of the most potent programs in the NCAA. Before that, there were decades of nothing but pure struggle in Eugene before the Ducks started notching post-season appearances and single-digit national rankings. They did not appear in a single postseason game between the 1963 Sun Bowl and the 1989 Independence Bowl; and after the formation of the Pac-8 in 1968, did not go to a single Rose Bowl until the ‘90s. They played in one of the worst college football games in history, turning the 1983 Civil War with bitter in-state rivals the Oregon State Beavers into the infamous Toilet Bowl, a game that ended in a scoreless tie with a total of 11 turnovers and four missed field goals.

Moves were made to run them out of the Pac-8 in the 1970s, when other conference schools suggested that they and Oregon State might be more comfortable in a league better suited to their achievements, like the Big Sky. They averaged only four and a half wins per season, few in league play, as league titles and bowl berths usually went to USC, UCLA and Washington. Oregon had last won a conference title in 1957. Loving Ducks football meant intimacy with failure.

Joe Robbins/Getty Images

After the school briefly flirted with Bill Walsh, Rich Brooks took his first head coaching job in this desperate situation in 1977. Despite their recent history, the team mattered in Eugene and in Oregon; the only major league team in the state was the Portland Trail Blazers. Oregon and Oregon State football were the state’s biggest draw in sports.

Still, Ducks football struggled for relevance in a newly expanded Pac-10. Now they had to compete with two more teams, Arizona State and Arizona, for the recruits not taken by other league powerhouses . Although the school initially paid Brooks less than $35,000, they backed it up with a $100,000 recruiting budget, second highest in the Pac-10.

It was starting to pay off in 1979, when Brooks was named Pac-10 Coach of the Year after the Ducks finished 6-5, their first winning season in nine years. His leading scorer, tailback Dwight Robertson, and leading receiver, Ricky Ward, were both returning. Brooks had depth at QB, cause for optimism for 1980.

Oregon enjoyed its turnaround season for about a month before a series of scandals rocked the program. After an extensive cash-for-credits scam was uncovered in Arizona State football, evidence of fraudulent transcripts and phony class credits for dozens of college athletes around the country were discovered by law enforcement, the NCAA, and the universities themselves. For Oregon, the trouble began when it was revealed that three players had received credits for an extension course they never took called “Current Problems and Principles of Coaching Athletics” at Los Angeles Valley Community College. That Oregon assistant coach John Becker had been the head football coach at LAVCC just prior to coming to Oregon didn’t look good. University President William Boyd asked Becker for an explanation. Instead, Becker tendered an unsigned letter of resignation.

“His failure to give me such a letter is liable to be taken as a confession of guilt,” Boyd told the Portland Oregonian. “Rather, I think he is living by a code, a different code than I live by. His is a macho code where you don’t finger those involved at the other end.”

Sporting News via Getty Images

Above: Former University of Oregon football coach Rich Brooks.

Brooks turned in his own resignation, saying at the time, “My action solely reflects my support of John and my feelings for him plus my overall responsibility for the football program.” Boyd rejected the letter, absolving Brooks of any real responsibility although he was later fined, and Brooks stayed on through 1994 before moving on to coach in the NFL and at Kentucky before retiring after the 2009 season.

Reporter Clay Eals had been on the Eugene beat for the Oregoniansince the early ’70s and remembers Boyd being genuinely furious.

“He basically said he’d rather not have any athletics at all if it’s gonna besmirch the image of the university,” said Eals.

In that, recalls Eals, Boyd wasn’t in accord with much of Eugene. “The ‘town’ of the ‘town and gown,’ those people, their main concern about the U of O was whether they had a good sports team,” said Eals.

Boyd also initiated his own inquiry, headed by a law professor, before welcoming the FBI’s presence on campus to investigate possible mail fraud and bribery related to the fake credit scam. Players who had just told the university and the papers that they absolutely had attended the class suddenly changed their tune and admitted the credits were unearned when federal agents showed up.

Ultimately, seven Oregon players were found to have received fake credits. Oregon wasn’t even the worst offender in the Pac-10, which effectively became the Pac-5 for the 1980 season after the conference declared Oregon, Oregon State, UCLA, USC and Arizona State ineligible for postseason play, all for similar incidents.

Boyd’s inquiry found more than just academic problems. Students and assistant coaches were also improperly using campus lines and department credit cards to pay for long distance phone calls. An illegal travel slush fund, used to buy tickets for players and recruits, was discovered at a local travel agency. The responsibility for determining if any of these offenses merited criminal prosecution fell to the Eugene Police Department and the Lane County District Attorney’s office, where DA J. Pat Horton convened a grand jury to look into possible fraud and theft charges.

As the detectives started asking around campus about departmental misconduct, fellow students made allegations of widespread theft, burglary and assault by Ducks athletes, leading to more investigations. The grand jury returned indictments over the summer of 1980 for seven football players for telephone credit card fraud charges and two basketball assistant coaches for theft charges related to the travel fund.

Ducks fans were outraged — not over the potential crimes, but that someone dared to investigate the athletes at all. Bumper stickers reading “Rich Brooks for DA” appeared on cars around town and the Eugene Register-Guard and Oregonian published angry letters to the editor about the unfair persecution of the Ducks. T-shirts bearing an illustration of the Ducks’ mascot in see/speak/hear no evil poses were sold in stores, a very Oregon precursor to “Stop Snitching” shirts. The investigation wasn’t gaining a lot of traction in the community. Ducks fans didn’t buy into the fiction that players were there for an education or feel outrage over a few thousand dollars in long-distance calls and plane tickets.

But college football’s governing bodies were invested in appearances, and just two weeks before the start of the 1980 season, the Pac-10 blindsided the Ducks and revoked three players’ conference eligibility for the entire year. Junior defensive tackle Gerald Haynes, junior split end Ricky Ward and sophomore quarterback Andrew Paige were penalized for receiving “extra travel benefits.” They had been given airline tickets “on credit” from the travel slush fund while still recruits, which the conference deemed an even more serious offense than receiving them once they were on the team.

Brooks was aghast — at the actions of the Pac-10. “Of all the things that have ever happened to me in my life, this is the most unfair thing I have ever seen,” Brooks told the Oregonian. “… [To] affect the lives of young men like this arbitrarily is pretty harsh.”

Fortunately for the players, under the rules at the time they could still transfer and play at schools outside of the Pac-10 that season. Ward and Paige, who had been high school teammates at Santa Ana Valley High in Orange County, California, transferred — Ward to Colorado, Paige to Hawaii. Haynes chose to stay at Oregon and wait out the year. Everyone — the town, the university and the team — seemed eager to move on.

Then the investigation uncovered something truly outrageous and far more troubling than improper travel benefits and fudged transcripts. Two days before the Ducks’ first game of the season, the worst criminal charges of the investigation were made public: four former and current players were accused of sexual assault on an 18-year-old female student, including the just-departed Paige and Ward. A third suspect, Reggie Young, had left in the spring because of lack of playing time and had yet to enroll at another school. The three were arrested in Hawaii, Colorado and California, respectively. The fourth, Dwight Robertson, was the only player charged still on the team. Eugene police arrested him at his dorm.

Of the four, Robertson was the best known. Brooks had been an assistant coach for the L.A. Rams when Dwight’s six-time Pro Bowl linebacker big brother Isiah played there. When the Ducks played at LSU in the fall of 1977, Brooks used the connection to recruit the younger Robertson to Eugene. A tailback and return specialist, Robertson is still ninth in the Ducks’ record book for single-season kickoff return yards and seventh in career kickoff return yardage.

In identical indictments, the four players were accused of sodomy, of using “forcible compulsion” to compel a freshman female student into oral sex. They were also each charged with coercion.

Robertson’s name likely came to be attached to the case because he was the only defendant still living in Oregon at the time, the only one still playing football for the Ducks, and the athlete the university had the greatest stake in. Unlike Ward and Paige, he was never implicated in any of the phone or travel fraud cases. But his status as an active Ducks player meant his name and involvement in the case dominated local coverage and interest.

The timing of Robertson’s arrest, two days before the start of the season, and not the content of the charges, became the biggest story in Eugene.

Brooks, once again, was outraged. He told the Oregonian that his arrest was a purposeful distraction by the district attorney’s office. “The investigation on this has been going on for nine months. These indictments could have been made months ago.” At an alumni meeting in Portland, he defiantly promised to play Robertson in the season opener against Stanford: “It would be a crime for me to suspend him at this point because he is innocent until found otherwise.” Boyd had left the university in May to run the Samuel C. Johnson foundation, and his replacement, Paul Olum, issued a statement saying that “to suspend him [Robertson] then could appear then to be determination of guilt whereas the whole American ethic of justice is based on a refusal to make a pre-judgment of guilt until a decision has been rendered in law.”

At the time, the school had no legal obligation to the victim. It would be years before Title IX required schools to take their own action on campus sexual assaults. Before then, victims were generally left to deal with the potential repercussions of pressing charges in the matter of a campus assault on their own.

Although the Eugene Police reported that threats on Robertson’s life had been called into university security, the police department, and a local radio station, Robertson, released on his own recognizance, played that Saturday. He didn’t start against Stanford, but entered the game on the second play, later fumbled a pass in the first quarter and wound up with 5 yards rushing and 12 yards receiving, and scored on a two-point conversion. The No. 15 Cardinal, quarterbacked by sophomore John Elway, beat the Ducks 35-25 in front of 37,300 at Autzen. The Ducks would finish the season with a 6-3-2 record. After gaining 675 all-purpose yards and scoring five touchdowns in ‘80, Robertson ended up redshirting during the 1981 season and returned in 1982 to finish his career.

To defend Robertson, attorney Kenneth Morrow chose to deny not the crime, but the validity of one of the laws Robertson was charged with breaking. Morrow, who died in 2000, was a soft-spoken redhead who had been a college football player himself, quarterbacking Kansas to the Orange Bowl in 1948. He had even considered a coaching career before he got a law degree instead, and moved to Oregon, working as a prosecutor for Lane County before entering private practice in the ‘60s. He built a stellar record as a defense attorney who won the hard cases, successfully defending clients accused of sex crimes and those accused of murdering members of law enforcement.

Morrow was invaluable to the Ducks, earning a mention in an athletics alumni newsletter for representing “many Ducks over the years.” In 1980, he was busy working on the defense for every player charged by the Lane County grand jury.

Former Lane County deputy DA Darryl Larson, who was the prosecutor of all those indictments, remembers Morrow as a formidable courtroom presence. “Ken was [an] extremely good trial lawyer, he had an incredible memory. I mean he could remember verbatim anything anyone had said during the trial,” said Larson. “You had to be really on your toes because sometimes what he would do is he would change one word the person had just said and quote it back as if they had said the exact opposite.”

Morrow’s legal strategy in regard to the charges against Robertson (and the others, whose cases would be tied to any decisions made on his) meant there would be no courtroom cross-examinations, and no plea was entered. Instead, a formal motion known as a demurrer was filed to the coercion charge, stating that no crime had been committed because the statute that had been violated was unconstitutional and should not have been a law in the first place. The case became one of constitutionality rather than guilt or innocence, and began its two-year journey through Oregon’s appellate courts.

Oregon state law defined felony coercion as such: “A person commits the crime of coercion when he compels or induces another person to engage in conduct from which he has a legal right to abstain, or to abstain from engaging in conduct in which he has a legal right to engage, by means of instilling in him a fear that, if the demand is not complied with, the actor or another will…expose a secret or publicize an asserted fact, whether true or false, tending to subject some person to hatred, contempt or ridicule.” As the case moved forward, the legalese of the statute left the content of the crime almost invisible, but it remains in police reports.

The incident took place at the University Inn (Barnhart Hall, today), a seven-story, co-ed dorm close to the edge of campus, near downtown Eugene. Although it wasn’t exclusively an athletic dorm, a lot of football players lived in the Brutalist concrete block. According to Darryl Larson, the Inn was run by a handful of particularly intimidating, antisocial football players who regularly stole the property and threatened the safety of other students. Players were known to walk into other students’ rooms and simply take anything they wanted, walking off with their stereos or bicycles.

“It had gotten to the point where University Inn was a terror-filled place to live,” said Larson. “If that gives you a sense of what those kids were going through, it’s just unbelievable. We heard over and over again, that it’s just a frightening place to even live because you didn’t know if you would be slammed up against the windows by some football player who’s thinking you were gonna tell on him, and they were gonna beat the hell out of you if you tried to do that. The men were afraid for their lives and the women were afraid for their sexuality.”

“Melinda” was new to the university and a visitor to the Inn from her off-campus apartment, a girl from a small, rural town for whom Eugene was a big change. [“Melinda” is a pseudonym. She was not named in the press at the time and at no point came forward publicly]. She was a freshman, barely 18, and was in a friend’s room with a group of students on the second floor of the University Inn. Paige and Young’s room was across the hall.

A close relative was also a football player at Oregon. So when Paige, Ward, and Young asked her to talk to them in the hallway, it probably wasn’t the first time they had met. They likely were not complete strangers to her. They certainly seemed to know who she was and had deemed her the target of an assault that would require not physical force but psychological pressure that would be every bit as frightening.

According to the police report, they told Melinda that they had some “compromising pictures” of her, that another teammate had somehow taken a photo of her having sex with her boyfriend. She later told police she did not understand how this was possible, because she was not having sex with her boyfriend. Still, they were so convincing because, as the report stated, “they were very persuasive in their tactics and although she believed in her mind that pictures were not possible, they convinced her it was possible and that they had them,” wrote the detectives. She thought, “What if they really do have something” that would embarrass her? The players might have calculated that Melinda would be especially susceptible to a threat like this. Her family was very conservative and she came from a very religious, sheltered background and may have been a little naïve. She feared what they would think if they heard that nude photos of their daughter were posted all over the University of Oregon.

“They talked to her for some period of time, possibly a half hour, over and over repeating that they had a number of pictures of her and that if she didn’t do what she asked, they were going to plaster the pictures all over the campus, putting them on signs and telephone poles,” said the report.

She went into Paige’s room, and then left, scared. Paige, Ward and Young went back into the hallway and repeated their threat. She went back into the room. According to the report: “[Melinda] told us that she was told that she must give them all ‘head’ and that after she had finished that they would give her the pictures and the negatives.” She felt she had no choice but to comply. After she had done what the three of them said, they called Robertson down to the room. They told her she also needed to do the same for him, and that he would be bringing the photo. They also threatened her and told her not to say anything.”

Both the victim’s statements and Robertson’s say that he arrived after the other players had pressured the victim. He claimed to have had no idea what was going on, although he did admit in later depositions that he saw Young whisper into her ear, then she came over to him and performed oral sex on him. He said he left the room before she left. Her account differs; she said he came into the room and immediately dropped his pants.

“[She] told us that after she had finished doing everything that had been demanded of her, that she was handed a photograph,” reads the report. She said that the photo was of a girl sitting on a toilet and that the photograph was not of her. She walked out and she could hear the laughing behind her as she left.”

Even though they told her not to tell anyone, after the assault, Melinda called her relative on the football team, and told him what they had done. He told her not to tell anyone, that he would handle it.

The next day, he confronted his teammates. Only Ward denied being in the room, but none of them admitted to any sexual activity. Unsatisfied with their response, he went to Brooks and told him what had happened. He told the police that Brooks later said to him each player had a different story, and that although he believed the incident happened, it was her word against theirs, so “no one could do anything about it.” He added that Brooks told him he had warned the players “that he would kick them off the team if they did it again.”

They were not kicked off the team. And Melinda did not go to the police — at least not right away.

Not until the investigation into other misconduct by Oregon athletes came to campus in 1980, did Melinda finally file a report, doing so in March. She was not alone, but one of more than 20 women who stepped forward during the investigation to report sexual assaults by football players. Paige was accused of assaulting other women, and the student newspaper the Daily Emerald reported that a total of eight players were being investigated for similar crimes. According to Larson, the cases that went to court only represented a fraction of the incidents they looked into.

“There were all these other cases that were reported to us and we interviewed girls who’d been raped or sodomized, brutalized in some way, who were either unwilling to prosecute or we just couldn’t put the case together that we felt we could really charge anybody with,” said Larson. “It was much more unbelievably gross than the charges that were actually filed would indicate.”

Just like Melinda, none of the other victims had reported the incidents to police when they happened because of a fear that nothing would be done, fear of retaliation (one later told the Washington Post she had received threatening phone calls warning her not to testify in front of the grand jury), and fear of public humiliation. At least two victims said they had spoken directly to Brooks about one player in particular: Andrew Paige.

Paige was a star quarterback in high school at Valley High in Santa Ana, California, and was considered a top recruit. Oregon beat out USC, UCLA, Washington and Michigan for him. Before he ever set foot on campus, he already had very talented legal representation: attorney Milton Grimes, best known today for having represented Rodney King against the City of Los Angeles. According to Larson, Grimes had assisted Paige when he was involved in a homicide case with two other defendants before attending college.

“And because Paige was a high school All-American quarterback, he was able to turn state’s evidence and in exchange for testifying against these other two guys, was able to get out of it,” said Larson. “He basically dodged a bullet, goes merrily off to Oregon to play football where he never, in my opinion, did anything for the Ducks except terrorize the campus.”

In addition to the sodomy and coercion charges in regard to Melinda, he was also indicted on a count of burglary and in alleged assaults on two other women: one pressed charges for attempted first-degree sodomy and another for first-degree sexual abuse and attempted rape.

While the charges in Melinda’s assault were tied up in the appeals process, Paige went to trial in the summer of 1981 for the sexual abuse and attempted rape charges. Newspaper accounts of the trial said that the alleged victim went to Brooks after the assault. Brooks then contacted Grimes himself, because of the attorney’s “special relationship” with Paige. The woman testified that Grimes and his wife called her a few days after the incident to apologize for Paige’s behavior, but the judge instructed the jury to disregard that testimony. In court, Grimes then successfully defended Paige, arguing that the woman was paranoid from cocaine use and that her defensive attempts to get out from under Paige when he pinned her on his bed were sexual in nature: “The wriggling could have been seductive, couldn’t it?” he asked. She said, “I thought a physical struggle would make him more violent than words. I’ve been taught that it’s better to be raped and alive than physically resisting and beaten or dead.” The trial lasted a week and after deliberating for just over an hour, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty on both counts.

Paige was also acquitted in a jury trial for burglary later that year, frustrating Larson, who had been unable to get a conviction on any of the grand jury indictments issued thus far. “It didn’t seem to matter what facts or evidence we had, the juries would let him go,” said Larson. “I think it was partly the times, you know. Eugene was desperate for football greatness and I think juries just didn’t want to convict these kids.” Paige eventually pled to a lesser count of attempted sexual abuse on the third victim’s charge of attempted sodomy. He was sentenced to seven months in county jail and paroled after three.

Only in news accounts of Paige’s sexual assault trial do some rare, overt mentions of race occur. In a state that was overwhelmingly white, reporters noted that every player involved in Robertson was black, the victim was white, and in Paige’s subsequent trial, the jury was all white. Eugene had the reputation of being a progressive center of activism, so it is impossible to imagine that was unworthy of notice. Morrow, working on Robertson’s defense, had more than just a successful record defending black clients. He was the recipient of threats when he defended members of Eugene’s small but active Black Panther Party in the ‘60s, people he saw as targets for police harassment. And perhaps he felt the same for the players he defended. A moment from Brooks’ testimony at Paige’s trial certainly was jarring: “She indicated that she was reluctant to press charges. She said she felt he needed some counseling in social behavior and particularly in black-white relations.”

After a county judge granted Robertson’s demurrer in October of 1980, Larson challenged the ruling in the Court of Appeals. This time, the court agreed with the deputy DA. The Oregon Supreme Court then agreed to hear Morrow’s appeal.

In August of 1982, the court issued a unanimous opinion: the statute was unconstitutional. As far as the coercion charge was concerned, no crime had been committed.

Larson was stunned. The court had said, in other words, although an assault may have taken place, there was no crime in the coercion that led to the assault. Telling Melinda they had photos of her having sex and threatening to release them was not a crime, but actually a type of protected free speech.

The justices agreed that the existing statute was simply too broad. In the opinion, Justice Hans Linde wrote that the Oregon Constitution “forecloses the enactment of any law written in terms directed to the substance of any ‘opinion’ or any ‘subject’ of communication, unless the scope of the restraint is wholly confined within some historical exception that was well established when the first American guarantees of freedom of expression were adopted and that the guarantees then or in 1859 demonstrably were not intended to reach.”

In an opinion of more than 10,000 words, the actual case, the assault on Melinda, is granted only 40 words. Guilt was not at issue, only the validity of the coercion statute. But Linde also wrote that just because the statute was unconstitutional, the actions prosecuted under it should not be interpreted as permissible: “No doubt this [the crime that resulted from coercion] could be prohibited, if the issue before us were the validity of the charge rather than the validity of the statute under which it is brought.” But it wasn’t. The facts were never contested in court.

And Oregon history was made. All subsequent free speech cases in the state’s courts referred to the “Robertson framework,” as it came to be known, and its strict interpretation of Article I, Section 8. It was shortly after Robertson that a Portland strip club owner had his dancers go fully nude, and it was the Robertson decision that helped him win in court when the City of Portland tried to make them put the G-strings back on.

Since the Robertson ruling, Oregon’s highest court has consistently struck down laws that restrict expression, departing from both the other states and from the U.S. Supreme Court. In a 2008 hate speech case, where the defendant was accused of blasting a racist, homophobic, and obscene tirade at two women from loudspeakers on his truck at a traffic stop, they declared part of a harassment statue criminalizing “abusive words or gestures, in a manner intended and likely to provoke a violent response” unconstitutional. In 2005, the court struck down a state law forbidding live sex shows and a city ordinance that required nude dancers to maintain a distance of four feet from patrons.

Three attempts at the polls to pass ballot measures amending the state constitution to allow for restrictions on sexually oriented businesses have failed; the last was in 2000. The attempts of legislators to replace Article I, Section 8 with the language of the (federal) First Amendment, language that would allow for more restrictions, have failed. There are still regular attempts by concerned lawmakers in the Oregon legislature to find a way to pass zoning laws, but for the most part the legislature carefully anticipates challenges to these laws, even when they do not attempt to restrict businesses. One recent bill that required strip clubs to post information on workers’ rights and established an anonymous tip line for reporting violations expanded its reach to “live entertainers” because a law directed at a specific type of performance — stripping — likely would not have survived a free speech challenge in Oregon.

The state plainly takes pride in its uncompromising stance on free speech. It owes much to the author of the Robertson opinion, the German-born Linde, now 91. Linde remembers little about the particulars of Robertson, as did nearly everyone contacted about this 33-year-old case, but he does remember a bit more about a later case, City of Portland v. Tidyman, which attempted to enact zoning restrictions on adult businesses.

“It was about a law being used against somebody who sells sexy books or magazines. And the same thing applies to strip joints and so on. You can’t prejudge whether a particular magazine is going to violate something and if you don’t have the evidence you can’t describe exactly what the harm is,” said Linde. “If that’s what they’re arguing, you do that by prejudging the content of the magazines or books or whatever they sell.” And any law that is directed at the content of that expression is invalid.

“That’s why they think that the Oregon Supreme Court has done something special,” said Linde. “Simply the idea of looking at your state constitution and saying ‘It says you can’t pass a law that does such and such, and this is that kind of a law, end of story,’ that’s so unusual!”

As to the legacy of Robertson? “How do I know?” he answered. “See, you’re assuming I’m reading what the courts are saying [today].”

Larson still thinks the court erred in 1982. “The Supreme Court in Oregon basically said that if you shout ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater, that that’s protected speech, and that is not a law, and should not be the law,” he said. “He (Paige) basically shouted ‘Sex!’ and there wasn’t any, in a crowded community, and (then) used that to force her into sexual acts.”

Melinda had left the school and Eugene by the time the Supreme Court handed down its opinion. After she told him she didn’t want to pursue the sodomy charges separately, Larson filed affidavits dropping the charges against the four players in early September of 1982. In them, he wrote “…[She] advised me that she was disappointed in the Supreme Court’s decision and that she was dissatisfied with the entire process … . She indicated that she was familiar with the outcome of other University of Oregon athlete related cases and that she no longer desired to subject herself to the abuse which she has endured.”

Since the court proceedings were carried out entirely in legal motions and appeals, neither Melinda nor any of her relatives who testified in front of the grand jury ever went to court. Because of this, when reached for comment, more than 30 years later they were surprised to learn that the case actually had gone through the system, and were utterly unaware of its impact on Oregon law. While none of them wanted to speak on the record, one family member said she was personally upset with the outcome of the case, and that this was “a story that seems to be as old as college sports, itself.”

It certainly does. Some 35 years after Melinda’s case, a similar one reveals how complicated seeking justice can be in the context of major college athletics.

This August, a female Oregon student who reported three basketball players had raped her settled a lawsuit against the university for $800,000 and the costs of her education there. Her suit said the university (and basketball coach Dana Altman, originally named but later dropped from the suit) should have known that one of the players, Brandon Austin, had a similar complaint filed against him at his previous school. Altman let the three players play on the team while her complaints were investigated, and they were ultimately expelled. The school’s response to her lawsuit was to access the alleged victim’s confidential records from the university’s counseling center and to countersue her for their legal fees, although that suit was dropped quickly after it sparked widespread outrage on campus and nationally.

Very little has changed in the particulars of these cases across campuses despite the structural changes brought about by Title IX, which now requires that schools carry out their own disciplinary proceedings when allegations of sexual assault are made.

Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images

Larson believes school investigations can’t be impartial. “It means hundreds of millions of dollars to the U of O, in lots of different ways, having a successful football program. If football players are involved in some accusation of serious bad conduct, is the school really going to be the most independent fair arbiter of whatever is going on? No,” said Larson. “I think it’s sort of crazy to say the institution that relies on these millions of dollars, and the respect amongst its peers around the country would be fair and independent. I mean, they might be, but I wouldn’t say it’s the best plan.”

If anything, the efforts of the Lane County DA’s office and the Eugene Police Department in 1980 stand in stark contrast to stories out of Tallahassee or Missoula in recent years, where local law enforcement and prosecutors were themselves implicated in a failure to address similar assaults.

“I felt like it was important to deal with those victims with very deep respect and consideration in terms of what they were going through psychologically, educationally, and in every other way,” said Larson. “And we in that sense probably were ahead of the curve. I think things are more sophisticated now, but I know certainly these detectives I was involved with were extremely conscious of that and trying to do the best job they could in terms of respecting the victims.”

Yet the reactionary culture of collegiate athletics Larson and the victims encountered then was in step with the emerging conservatism of the coming decade, one that saw many of the freedoms of the ‘60s curtailed and rolled back. Then, as now, athletic talent and a program’s thirst for success could diffuse the consequences and protect its members from social and legal censure.

Tradition is central to the best and the worst parts of college sports. We get older, but the alma mater stays in the same city with the same colors and the same song and the players stay the same age. Old attitudes towards women, sexual assault, and masculinity do not age well. The refusal to engage fully with new ones is nearly universal in collegiate athletics. Perhaps the Oregon Ducks players, who were censured this past January for chanting “No Means No” after their Rose Bowl victory over Florida State, mocking the sexual assault charges against Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston, did not appreciate how no member of a college athletic program is in a position to point fingers.

Given the legal, political, and social changes of the last 30 years, how would the assault against Melinda be charged today? With the caveat that it is difficult to answer hypothetical legal questions, current Lane County DA Patty Perlow wrote in an email “one assumes the young woman has not consented to the sexual contact (defined as deviate sexual intercourse in Oregon). The sexual abuse in the second degree statute (ORS 163.425) provides that subjecting another person to deviate sexual intercourse without consent is a Class C felony.” The act—having sexual contact with someone without his or her consent—remains a crime, although using a threat of embarrassment to induce it does not.

The one definite consequence of this one particular case has been enormous. The effects on expression in Oregon and all the unanticipated consequences are in plain sight; so too are the effects upon how schools choose to protect themselves and their athletes from prosecution. They serve as a reminder that some treasured freedoms come from an ugly fight, where serving justice in the abstract comes about because of a concrete injustice.

Oregon might be different today if Morrow’s challenge had been unsuccessful. It would certainly be at least a little less free and a lot less colorful. But even had the Supreme Court upheld the coercion statues, that does not mean those four players would have been convicted. Not if the success rate of Larson’s other indictments at the time was any predictor. In any circumstance, he just could not get a Lane County jury to indict a football player. This year, the investigation into the accusations against basketball players did not even result in an indictment. Today, the weight of the burden of proof still rests on the shoulders of the victim and those arguing for her; the community and the institutions of higher learning feel their fate, in some measure, is connected to that of the defendant.

In the single criminal conviction Larson obtained out of all of the indictments brought by the grand jury—a plea bargain by Paige to a lesser charge of sexual assault—the judge said at sentencing, “Women, whether they walk naked through the city of Eugene, drunk out of their gourds, have a right to be free from attack.”

How strange that in the future, the legal freedom literally to walk naked would be the direct result of such an attack.

Note: Former Oregon coach Rich Brooks declined to comment, as did Melinda’s family. Attorney Milton Grimes and Dwight Robertson did not return requests for comment.

DO NOT APPROACH WILD BISON
THEY ARE UNPREDICTABLE AND DANGEROUS

I see these warning signs all across the Dakotas. This is bison (or buffalo to us city folk) country; the prairie grass of the Great Plains an irresistible feast for the herbivores. Despite the advisory, when I spy a couple of the shaggy beasts munching away while hiking in Wind Cave National Park, I can’t help but move closer. They are rare, fascinating creatures, seldom seen outside of Neil Young’s ranch. Besides, they seem so docile, and so intent on their lunch.

As I approach, one of the pair, the bull, looks up at me suddenly and starts to snort. I belatedly notice the one-ton frame, dominated by the muscular hump packed behind those antlers. I’m only about 10 yards away, and my field guide notes bison, which can weigh more than 2,000 pounds, can reach speeds of up to 40 MPH. Before I can even begin to conjure the stampede scenes in “Dances with Wolves,” he lunges toward me. I turn and sprint up the path. I can see the headlines in my mind:

“Dumbass Tourist Trampled By Magnificent Creature; Ignored Signs To Stay Away.”

At the top of a small rise, I muster the courage to look back. I realize the bison has scarcely moved. It was a mock charge. He just flexed enough to send me skittering away, then returned to his meal.

I stand in the warm sun, the adrenaline pouring out of me as nervous sweat. After a while, I get a hold of myself, trudge back through the canyon, get in my car, and drive on. Destination: Fargo, the home of the four-time defending FCS champion North Dakota State Bison.

Yes, I had just angered the namesake beast of the team I was coming to investigate for signs of whether the program could win an unprecedented fifth straight national title. I had pissed him off, and then he sent me packing with the merest show of force.

It sounded to me like an apt metaphor for what the football team would likely do to its competition en route to another victory a few days later.

I pull in to town in the wake of Taylor Swift, who rocked the Fargodome two nights earlier. That pop’s foremost superstar would deign to make a tour stop in North Dakota would be stunning just a few years ago, but these days it seems fitting. Indeed, given the popularity of all things North Dakota of late, I half expect to see the prairie landscape littered with production trucks and klieg lights.

Once the “large rectangular blank spot in America’s consciousness,” in the words of native son and legendary TV newsman Eric Sevareid, North Dakota has gone viral in the last few years. The massive oil boom in the Bakken field in the state’s western quarter is so well known there is a network TV show about it, “Blood & Oil,” starring Don Johnson as a sort of prairie J.R. Ewing (locals dismissed it the instant they saw mountains in the background of scenic shots, rather than the state’s trademark buttes). Then there is the murder mystery “Fargo,” a TV show based on the Coen brother’s movie, which in fairness was more about Minnesota (and filmed there, too). John Oliver recently delivered a 20-minute diatribe about the fecklessness of the oil companies in North Dakota. And on and on.

LCDM Universal History Archive/Getty Images

NDSU football fits neatly into the spotlight. The Bison have become a darling of ESPN, with GameDay traveling to Fargo in both 2013 and 2014 and spotlighting its historic, cinematic downtown area along with the reigning champs. “This is a combination of “College GameDay” meets Wrigley Field meets Champions League soccer intensity,” executive producer Lee Fitting told the St. Paul Pioneer Press last year. “To see the people on the balconies and hanging out of windows and on the rooftops was something that we never get to experience.” ESPN has regularly broadcast the program’s systematic beatings of FBS teams (they’ve won five straight, collecting more than $1 million in the process). Author Chuck Klosterman, who grew up in North Dakota and is the state’s emissary to the popular culture, told me, “The idea of watching the Bison on ESPN was something I would have never even fantasized about growing up—that just seemed impossible.”

But here we are. This season’s opener against Montana was nationally televised on the four-letter network, and the Saturday before I arrive, “SportsCenter” was live from the Fargodome to promote the big clash with Northern Iowa.

“I moved out of North Dakota in 1998,” Klosterman says. “When I told people where I was from, they asked about the weather. That is the ONLY thing anyone asked about, ever. Now, they ask about oil or the Bison.”

NDSU pulled out the game against Northern Iowa in dramatic fashion, winning 31-28 on a touchdown pass with 35 seconds left from the Bison’s star senior quarterback, Carson Wentz, to redshirt freshman wideout Darrius Shepard, who made a sensational catch in the back of the end zone. The wild victory neatly encapsulated North Dakota State’s roller coaster season. Montana stunned the Bison by scoring on the last play of the game in that season opener, a rude shock to the champs, and a signal that they weren’t going to win another by simply tossing the shoulder pads out on the field.

“It was weird in the locker room afterwards,” Wentz told me. “Our young guys were confused, like ‘What’s this losing feeling?’”

The Bison got things back on track with four straight wins, including rivalry wins over North Dakota and South Dakota State (for the 75-pound Marker Trophy, a replica of chunk of quartzite that once marked the border) before the showdown with UNI. Thus, the locals are upbeat, and this week’s game, the one I’m in town to see, is against weaklings of the University of South Dakota, seen throughout Bison Nation as a welcome opportunity to relax in the pub by a warm fire after the intense three games they’ve just won.

The Montana loss spiked fears that graduation had shredded the defense, and that it would be up to Wentz to spearhead the Drive for Five essentially alone. Fortunately, the quarterback his head coach, Chris Klieman, calls “the best I’ve ever seen at the FCS level” seemed up to the task. Ranked as a top NFL prospect by Mel Kiper, pro scouts have flocked to Fargo all season to witness Wentz’s combination of elite physical skill set and line of scrimmage poise. The Bison have a long tradition of being a power running team that (gasp!) huddles up before plays, but Wentz’s savvy has allowed them to change route concepts and blocking schemes at the line, giving them “way more run/pass options than before,” according to Klieman. Indeed, under Wentz, the Bison lean toward being a pass-first team for perhaps the first time in program history.

Wentz “grew up a Bison,” in the words of his coach. He is from Bismarck, where he was a three-sport star, a 4.0 student, and generally so wholesome he probably peed milk. Wentz’s older brother was a varsity baseball player at NDSU, and there was never any doubt where Carson was coming to play college ball. Wentz’s predecessor at the helm in Fargo, Brock Jensen, won three straight championships, but one program insider told me opposing coaches told their defenses to hit Jensen, but not to knock him out of the game, for fear of having to play against Wentz. After three years of buildup, Wentz took the field in 2014 and promptly broke school records for completions, passing yards, and total offense, then scored the game-winning touchdown in the national championship game. With him at the helm, all things looked possible for the Bison. Even winning another championship with an otherwise ordinary team.

When I meet Wentz after a film session, I’m struck by his size, a full 6′6 and 235 pounds, truly a pro’s frame. The obvious comparison is to Joe Flacco, also a big, strong-armed FCS quarterback (he played at Delaware) with a slow heartbeat on the field. With his auburn hair and black-framed nerd glasses, Wentz also evinces a whiff of Andy Dalton. “I actually grew up loving Brett Favre, he was a competitive son of a gun,” Wentz tells me in the language of the 4-H Club social type he is, rather than the legendarily wild Green Bay gunslinger.

Wentz didn’t even go to the Taylor Swift show.

My first mistake in Fargo was to pronounce “Bison” as bye-son. I was quickly corrected to articulate the nickname as “Bizzon.” One single, slightly slurred syllable. After screwing it up fifteen or so times, I finally hit upon a method for remembering. I conjured Arnold Schwarzenegger saying the name “Dyson” in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” then swapped the ‘D’ for a ‘B.’ Boom—I was no longer an obvious tourist, even if I did sound suspiciously like I was from Salzburg.

Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports

Dyson, uh, Bison Nation takes things seriously. NDSU sports one of the more passionate fan bases in college football, with intensity and pride hovering at SEC levels. Fans wear Green and Gold everywhere in the fall. There are no pro or major college teams in the roughly 1,500 miles between Minneapolis and Seattle to distract attention, so the Bison are covered and followed locally as such.

Mike McFeely is a longtime Bison watcher and commentator in print and on radio. His daily radio show mostly covers politics, but in football season the focus shifts to NDSU, so much so that McFeely puts me on the air to talk about the story I’m writing. “Sponsors all want a piece of NDSU because of the heat coming off the program,” he says. Tickets for games at the 19,000-seat Fargodome are virtually impossible to come by, and there is a long waiting list for spaces merely to tailgate. There are only about 113,000 people living in Fargo, and fewer than 750,000 in the whole state. Imagine Michigan drawing half a million fans to games in the Big House, and you have a relative context for the passion NDSU football evinces. Bison fans are legendary throughout the Plains for the way they voyage to away games in, well, herds, reminiscent of the acres of buffalo that once coated this country.

“No one travels like us,” insists Bison superfan Mike Wheeler. “No one compares, that’s just a fact. When we went to Minnesota (to play the Gophers in 2011), a couple of their boosters took photos of our tailgate to show those fans how it should be done.” Indeed, many fans have already made their plans, as usual, to travel to Frisco, Texas, the annual site of the FCS National Championship game, or “Bison Weekend,” as they call it in the Lone Star State. Frisco is a second home for Bison Nation, to the point “they were talking about giving us our own zip code,” according to Wheeler. Indeed, the income generated by NDSU fans traveling south to the Dallas suburb is so crucial to the locals that it is practically part of the municipal operating budget. One local bar donated $3,000 to the program, and the Mayor of Frisco was the honorary coin flipper for the Fargodome opener in September. “He was just checking up on his boys,” one fan notes.

Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports

“No one travels like us. No one compares, that’s just a fact.”—Bisons superfan Mike Wheeler

Part of the appeal is that the fans recognize themselves in the team—hard working, no-nonsense folks who grew up in rural areas, often having come from the farm to play for the Bison (a handful of players went to high schools so small they fielded 9-man teams). “We may have turned into a national brand,” says NDSU athletic director Matt Larsen, “but our core is the upper Midwest, with that work ethic, and blue collar, tough kids.” Brian Schaetz, a senior defensive tackle from Denmark, Wisconsin, is an archetype. At a booster luncheon on the Friday before the South Dakota game, Schaetz relates the story of his “recruitment.” “I was in the barn milking cows with my Dad, who told me NDSU had a good football team and a good ag (ricultural) school,” he told the packed banquet hall. “I thought, ‘Okay, guess I’ll go there.’” Schaetz went on to relate his career goal—not play pro ball, but to “run a grain elevator.”

The tough farm boys don’t come to Fargo to play the wide-open spread offenses that has devoured the rest of college football. NDSU has reliably played power ball for decades, bashing away with fullbacks and multiple tight ends, at least until Wentz took over under center. As former coach Craig Bohl admits, “It’s a challenge to find the old pro-back fullback or H-back. Those guys run counter-culture to what’s going on in football. But you have a kid that grew up on a ranch, drives a pick-up, and has a belt buckle, he doesn’t mind bashing his head into a defensive end 15 to 20 times a game.” The roster isn’t solely constructed of shitkickers unafraid of concussions; the current squad includes more than two dozen African-Americans as well as players from Orlando, Dallas and Oakland, most of whom presumably don’t know what a grain elevator is.

Just like me.

North Dakota State’s legacy of football excellence predates the recent quartet of championships. A Division II powerhouse for decades, the Bison won eight championships at that level, and had a mere two losing seasons between 1964 and 2003, when the program moved up to 1-AA (now FCS). Their record in that stretch was an insane 374-94-4. Generations of Bison fans have lived without enduring a significant stretch of losing, and saw greats like quarterback Jeff Bentrim and defensive lineman Phil Hansen star in the green and gold and go on to professional careers. The opening of the Fargodome in 1993 moved the Bison off the frozen tundra of Dacotah Field into an indoor wonderland that is the small-school equivalent of the NFL Cowboy’s Jerry World. The Dome proved a boon in recruiting and allowed the fans to escape three hours of shivering in the icy Fargo winds.

The decision to move up to Division I was very controversial, and fraught with naysayers who didn’t think the program had anything to prove. “I was against the move up,” admits McFeely. “I was being literary and wrote that the president of the University was grasping for Gatsby’s green light that he could never reach. And I couldn’t have been more wrong.”

“The key was Gene Taylor,” says Hansen, today the analyst for NDSU radio broadcasts, of the former Bison athletic director. “He was very forthright about what had to be done, and then he went out and made it happen.” That meant cajoling the Fargo moneymen into donating enough cash to double the scholarships on offer from 30 to 60 and pump up the budget for the coaching staff and recruiting trips.

The man Taylor hired to coach the team in this brave new world was Bohl, at the time Nebraska’s defensive coordinator. Bohl brought intensity and his pilot’s license to the program, and he flew himself across the plains states to drop in on recruits. He had the Bison competitive in their new environs right away. “I remember we played Valparaiso in our first game,” Hansen says, “and we thumped them. I thought, ‘This is Division I?’”

The Bison truly took a quantum leap during the disastrous tenure of Tim Brewster at Minnesota. An enormous load of players, including star lineman Billy Turner (now with the Miami Dolphins) and safety Craig Dahl (now with the New York Giants), crossed the border to play in Fargo while Brewster fruitlessly chased talent elsewhere.  “Brewster was a buffoon,” says one NDSU insider. “We wanted him to get a 10-year contract.”

Michael Chang/Getty Images

Star lineman Billy Turner was picked in the 3rd round of the 2014 NFL draft

The class Bohl assembled at the start of the run in 2011 lost a mere three games in four years. Kyle Emanuel, a defensive end/linebacker who was part of that group and now plays for the San Diego Chargers, told me “the tradition of NDSU definitely attracted me, but it was the passion for the game in Fargo that really sold me. Football means so much to the city, and I wanted to be part of that.” Emanuel says he’s been asked the key to the Bison success numerous times, and that there is no one good answer. “Part of it is great preparation and great coaching, but it’s also a mindset,” he says. “There wasn’t a single game I played in which I wasn’t 100 percent confident we would win.” That confidence is echoed throughout the program by everyone I talk to.

The 2013 edition of the Bison embodied that assurance.  Perhaps the best FCS team ever assembled, the senior-laden group beat bowl-bound FBS stalwart Kansas State, went 15-0, and won its four FCS playoff games by an average of 33 points, stampeding Towson State 35-7 in the finale. With that, Bohl left to take the Wyoming job, leaving the three-time champs under the direction of Klieman, the defensive coordinator under Bohl. There were hard feelings at the time, as Bohl thought Klieman was following him to Laramie before Taylor offered him the top job.

The coaches’ friendship may have been severed, but Klieman proved an able hand, driving the herd to the fourth straight title, even as Taylor, too, moved on, taking the Associate A.D. role at Iowa. “Here I am, with a 0-0 record and, suddenly, a new athletic director,” recalls Klieman. Larsen, an energetic New Yorker fresh from the Stony Brook campus on Long Island, moved to the prairie and quickly established a working relationship with his new coach, like Larsen a former college player. “I didn’t even unpack until after Frisco,” Larsen says. “The pressure was great, but you have to embrace it. We are everybody’s Super Bowl, and success breeds complacency.”

Larsen extended Klieman’s contract the day after the Bison beat Illinois State in the final seconds to win their fourth straight title last January. Still, the football annals are riddled with the carcasses of assistants who sailed on the winds of the previous coach for a year or two only to prove maladroit at sustaining the program long-term. The jury remains out on Klieman’s ability to stamp his own signature in Fargo.

In the big picture, the pressure is equally on Larsen, especially as the point man for the next great question on everyone’s minds in Fargo—should the program step up in class once again and go to the FBS? The oil windfall could certainly underwrite such a move, and the swagger that comes with the riches has locals dreaming big. While there are people in town who roll their eyes at the idea of money going to football and not greater cultural pursuits, many others see a move to top ranks as the ultimate signal that North Dakota has arrived at long last. NDSU is locked into its contract with the Missouri Valley Conference for another five years; unless the program is willing to pay a prohibitive buyout, it will remain for the immediate future. But given the success the Bison has had against the big boys, there is optimism the team could at least compete in the FBS, if not mirror the success of, say, Boise State and be a regular inhabitant of the top 25.

“You always want to be well-positioned for the future,” Larsen says. “The playoff at the FCS level is so special, with 24 teams going head to head for a championship. Going away from that would be hard to do. But there are so many changes ahead, and you don’t know what the landscape will look like.” Several people I talk with opine that the FBS power five conferences will likely pull away and form their own “Division 1-A+” if you will, and that NDSU would fit neatly into the next tier with the likes of the MAC and AAC and Sun Belt teams. Besides, playing the best available competition is the essence of sport; the players and coaches didn’t sign up to settle for a comfy niche. Many observers, including Klosterman, are all for it.

On the other hand, many others wonder, as they did back in 2003, if it is worth the effort. “What’s your endgame?” McFeely says. “Playing Wyoming and Fresno State for a shot at the Meineke CarCare Bowl or whatever? How does that compare with playing a tournament for a national championship?” Hansen says flatly that, “I know we can compete in the MAC,” but also decries the idea of playing all year for the reward of a blah bowl game, with “6,000 fans, 4,000 of them parents” in attendance. Bison Nation loves to make the straight two-day shot down to Frisco, but asking them to regularly make the trip to, say, Shreveport or San Diego is another matter. “You’d have to hire a $2 million head coach and increase the athletic budget significantly,” Hansen adds. “It’s tough to do that and look people in the eye around here.” Some cynics point out that traditional FCS powers like Georgia Southern and Appalachian State have moved up in the last decade, leaving a denuded field that the Bison have exploited en route to its dynasty. The FBS wouldn’t be so forgiving.

Ordinarily, the low self-esteem Fargoans have about themselves and their state would also be a handicap. But the combination of oil revenue and football prowess have given North Dakotans a new outlook. “We were just the worst,” McFeely says. “We worried so much about being ‘nice’ and how people saw us. When “Fargo” came out, people were so appalled. ‘We don’t put people in wood chippers!’ But now the chipper [Note—a replica] is a tourist attraction. The team has allowed people to finally embrace Fargo and feel good about themselves.”

That boost has evinced itself in a major upgrade of facilities.  Larsen enumerates them as he sits in his temporary office north of campus, surrounded by warehouses and across the street from a T-shirt company aptly called “FAR FROM NORMAL.” The jewel is a $41 million athletic facility, adjacent to the Fargodome, to house the basketball team and Larsen’s new offices. Larsen is also intent on building an indoor practice home for the football team, and upgrading smaller but showy pieces like the tunnel walk and trophy case. Expansion of the Fargodome itself is by nature limited unless it was torn down and rebuilt anew, but what add-ons that can be done within the foundation of the current building are almost certain to take place.

Ah, yes, the Fargodome, the cacophonous home of the Bison. That’s why I’m here, and on game day the streets all around the building are alive with what Larsen calls “pound for pound the best tailgate in the nation.” The RVs, sporting license plates from across the plains, actually began pulling in Friday night, and judging by the looks in the eyes of some fans, the party started then, too.

Wheeler was one of the very first NDSU tailgaters, predating the Fargodome, “when there were only a handful of us diehards out here drinking and freezing our asses off in the wind.” He points out the original vehicle around which the early Bison tailgate orbited, a 1986 GMC van owned by a man named Dave “Goofy” Gauffin, who once upon a time drove the Bison team bus. The van still makes it out on game days, though Gauffin, who passed in 2007, does not.

Today’s opponent, University of South Dakota, is by all standards no match for the Bison. The Coyotes are 2-3, coming off a 40-21 drubbing by Western Illinois. More to the point, USD has a long, sad history of being pummeled by NDSU. They haven’t won in Fargo since 1978. The last three games between the schools ended in an aggregate 143-7 massacre. The Mount Rushmore boys haven’t won a conference game in 14 tries, dating back to 2013. Meanwhile, the Bison have won a Division I-best 26 straight home games at the Fargodome.

So it’s no surprise that while over 18,000 have turned out for the game, there are some empty seats. After all, pheasant season begins today, and the lure of bagging a few game birds on a picture perfect fall afternoon outweighs watching a blowout, even in football-crazy Fargo.

Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports

NDSU head coach Chris Klieman

Kickoff approaches, and with a tinge of regret we all head indoors for the game. Sadly, there’s no equivalent of Ralphie, Colorado’s mascot Buffalo, racing on to the Fargodome field, but NDSU does have a pretty cool ritual to mark the moment the Bison enter the arena. The lights go down, and thousands of cell phones are raised, their lights creating a rock concert feel. The din cascades off the roof and all across the field. “Players tell me their ears ache and their heads pound for days after the games,” Wheeler says proudly. There’s no way Taylor Swift got this loud of a reaction. South Dakota doesn’t take the field as much as slip in unnoticed—surprisingly, after the playing of the National Anthem.

The game begins on-script. The Fargodome crowd screams and forces a South Dakota false start on the third snap of the game. After a punt, NDSU powers right down the field, as easily as, well, a herd of Bison carving through a pack of Coyotes. Wentz shows his stuff, including a nice throw on a sprint-out under duress and a decisive hot route against a blitz. NFL scouts in the house today include reps from the Seahawks, Patriots, Saints and Chiefs, and they must be impressed. Freshman runner Bruce Anderson takes it in from the 2-yard line, and it’s 7-0.

The Coyotes fumble it away on their next possession, and a sack of quarterback Ryan Saeger ruins their third. Meanwhile, NDSU cranks up the running game, the program staple. Anderson and Chase Morlock rip off good gainers that allow Wentz to play action and find a wide-open Shepard for a 37-yard TD. The first quarter ends 14-0. The Bison are outgaining USD 139-28. The mismatch is nigh, and the folks who are out hunting pheasant look smart.

Then Wile E. Coyote is subbed out, and the big bad wolf enters the game.

Saeger and the Coyotes coaches go old school. Saeger runs over and over behind an unbalanced line powered by an extra lineman. The Bison have no answer for it. Saeger takes it 37 yards on his first try, leading to a short TD pass that halves the deficit. On the next possession, Saeger appears to run again, only to pull up and throw the Auburn-style pop pass to halfback Trevor Bouma, who rumbles 73 yards, setting up a short Saeger plunge that, incredibly, ties the game at 14. The Bison faithful look at each other, not comprehending.

We always beat South Dakota. These guys have lost fourteen straight conference games. We’re tied??

Wentz reassures them with an impressive, run-oriented drive that covers 81 yards and most of the remaining time in the half. The capper is a short TD pass where Wentz appears to change the protection at the line, and hits a wide-open pass in the flat as a result. NDSU leads at the half, 21-14, and Wentz looks good, but there is a disquiet rippling through the Dome.

Are we really going to the edge again this week? This was supposed to be our chance to breathe easy…

The Bi-nasty was built on the power running game. Alas, there is no bellcow back on the roster, and the committee approach has foundered this season. In the third quarter, the Coyotes take away the NDSU strength. Anderson is hurled for a loss on third and two to open the second half, and it gets worse from there. USD also blitzes into Wentz’s scripted rollouts, throwing them off tempo. Three third quarter drives go nowhere, and only an interception and a missed field goal keep the Bison ahead. NDSU misses a field goal of its own to open the final quarter, and David starts looking around for a bigger slingshot.

1978, guys. 1978!!

To the disbelief of everyone except the guys in the white jerseys with red trim and red helmets (that’s the Coyotes), USD begins to cave in the Bison on the ground. Saeger runs over and over, and the chains keep moving. When they want to mix it up, the Coyotes hand it to Bouma. They embark on a monumental 15-play drive, running it 11 times. No run goes for more than eight yards. The Bison defense is spent from all the body shots. Saeger then fakes a run and flips to a wide-open Drew Potter to tie the game with 4:47 left. As a hint of the conviction on display, USD actually lines up to go for two and the lead before Klieman calls timeout. Instead, South Dakota kicks the PAT for the 21-21 tie.

(jaw hanging open.)

Wait, though—it’s Carson time!

Indeed, this is the kind of situation Wentz has pulled out time and again, including seven days earlier and in the national title game seven months ago. This is the moment for all those intangibles everyone talks about—We expect to win! We know what it takes at the end!—to kick in.

Two runs get short yardage. Wentz tosses an incomplete pass. NDSU punts.

$&(#&$)^)#^Y*$*&$(!!!

Now the incomprehensible feels inevitable. Saeger bangs for a first down on third and short yet again. On the next play, he is sacked by Bison tackle Nate Tanguay, but when Saeger’s helmet goes flying, so does the ref’s hanky. Fifteen yards are marked off, and the zombie-like crowd suddenly gets passionate, seizing on the call as an excuse for the looming disaster like a wolf snaring a prairie dog.

Saeger inexorably marches the Coyotes into field goal range, and Klieman, stunned himself, doesn’t use his timeouts to preserve the clock. With three seconds left, Miles Bergner trots out to the field. The season has been a disaster for the USD kicker-punter. The third quarter miss was his seventh on the season. “It’s been a rough year, I admit it,” he said after the game. But he’s outpunted NDSU’s All-American punter, Ben LeCompte, during the game, and now he has a chance to undo all those missed kicks.

“I was in the mindset that it was time to give it all and do it for everybody else,” Bergner said later. “Not for me. For my Dad, my family, my family here, my teammates and my coaches. And then I put the ball through.”

Indeed, Bergner calmly hits the 33-yarder, and the Coyotes pour on to the field, their shouts audible to the rafters. “We didn’t get lucky,” Coyotes coach Joe Glenn notes. “They didn’t fumble the ball to us, they didn’t throw interceptions, they didn’t get hurt by the officiating. They just got outplayed by a tough, gritty bunch.”

Nurse, get the paddles and charge to 150!!

After the game, Klieman takes the shocking loss rather well, considering. “I could see it coming a million miles away,” he says. “We talked all week about letdown games, and so that’s on us.” Wentz then comes into the interview room and disagrees. “I thought we were pretty locked in all week. But we gotta work for it.” Wentz looks downcast, speaking earnestly but in bland player-speak that is NFL-ready, noting again and again that he won’t really know what went wrong until he watches the film.

I run into McFeely in the press box after the game, and he calls it the worst loss ever in NDSU history, given the opponent, the setting, the streaks—everything.

Worst. Loss. Ever. And I was here for it!

I skulk out of the Fargodome with my eyes darting about. I’m waiting for an attacker to fly at me from the shadows. I make it to my car and get straight outta Fargo.

As it happens, the crucial film Wentz needs to examine isn’t Xs and Os but an X-ray. On the Monday after the South Dakota game, rumors began filtering out of the Fargodome that Wentz was seriously injured. The worst was confirmed the following day, when it was announced Wentz suffered a broken bone in his throwing wrist and is out for at least the rest of the regular season, if not the postseason.

It’s a hammer blow. Apparently, it happened in the second quarter, and Wentz soldiered on, thinking it was just a sprain. The injury explains, if not excuses, a lot about the upset loss, especially the Bison attack getting stuck in a quagmire in the second half, though Wentz said later it didn’t affect his play.

All is not lost. The new starting quarterback is the fantastically named Easton Stick, a redshirt freshman prep superstar out of Omaha who turned down the Big Ten and several other FBS programs to come to Fargo. He’s been whispered about in much the same way as was Wentz, and in his debut, Stick lived up to the hype, rushing for two touchdowns and throwing for a third as NDSU beat Indiana State in the Terre Haute rain.

Then, this past Saturday, Stick threw for a pair of touchdowns and ran for 130 yards as NDSU won another road game, this time at Southern Illinois, 35-29, leaving the Bison 6-2 on the season. For all the drama in Fargo, the NDSU schedule remains manageable, and the postseason likely. All Stick has to do is get the Bison to the dance—once the playoffs start, anything can happen, even a dramatic Willis Reed-like return of Carson Wentz. The Bison remain in the top ten, though this year the FCS has seen a power shift south, with Jacksonville State, Coastal Carolina, and Chattanooga at the top of the polls, and Richmond outslugging James Madison in a battle of contenders—with ESPN GameDay broadcasting live from the JMU campus in Harrisonburg, VA. To win it all again, NDSU will almost certainly have to journey east and win some road games in SEC country.

As I left town, my mind went back to the bison whose peace I disturbed back in Wind Cave. I had come to the Dakotas to discover what made a dynasty tick, and while I was there the team suffered a mind-bending upset and lost its superstar quarterback. Even the Bakken oil fields weren’t immune from my poisonous touch—a well blew out that weekend, spewing crude into a tributary of the Missouri River. Turns out, the endangered animal was more sensitive than I first believed. What I took to be a show of strength—the bison’s mock charge—was, in fact, a sign it was alarmed.

And just maybe, North Dakota State has reason to be worried as well.

Under crisp skies and an especially warm October Saturday afternoon, the Jumbotron at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field was aglow, as more than 100,000 people had assembled, making the crowd for football larger than the population of many of the surrounding towns.

Fans had been camped outside for more than a day before kickoff, a sea of maroon and white tents, beer cans, corn hole games and a staggering number of young women in matching maroon cocktail dresses and cowgirl boots. They were there to watch the Aggies face off against the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide, a collection of souls forming a pop-up, pigskin city of sorts, shared traditions, rituals and governing principles.

And where else but Texas could the Aggies construct what they believed to be one of the most jumbo of the Jumbotrons in the nation, collegiate or otherwise? Measuring 47-by-163-feet wide (7,661 square feet), the board is roughly three times the square footage of the average American home, a replacement for its predecessor built in 2006, which at the time was also among the largest in the country.

A large rectangle on the south side of the field, it perched above the cannon (which boomed every time the Aggies scored), the locker room entrance and was bedecked on either side by a total of 55 American flags, honoring the Aggies killed during World War I. One of the largest “video boards” (a more finessed term used by stadium architects for Jumbotrons), it has become one of Kyle Field’s most consistent stars.

In the minutes before the team took to the field, the Jumbotron rolled documentary-style archival footage of the campus, the team and the stadium, which started in 1904 as a $650 endeavor that seated 500 people. Lore has it that Edwin Jackson Kyle, an agriculturalist known for his extensive writings on pecans, had to front the money himself, as university officials were initially skeptical of the facility’s value. Kyle’s profound interest in topics like soil was left out of the video, which was directed from a control room nearby involving no fewer than 30 people.

Sports and nostalgia go together like nacho chips and fake cheese, the crowd roaring at the images of bold text: “I AM KYLE FIELD” reiterated by a man’s booming, velvety voice. The Jumbotron had personified the field, making it a character of itself in the forthcoming football drama. It could talk, tell you its backstory, wrap fans up in a cocoon of afternoon football. People build attachments to places, but few outside of Disney theme parks will actually speak literally rather than metaphorically. Through its Jumbotron, Kyle Field does.

Then on screen came footage of the players arriving, clad in Beats headphones, looking tough. The flyover of the day - F18s - was announced. The Jumbotron helped lead the stadium-wide prayer, the national anthem, then the state anthem, “Texas, Our Texas.” An energy executive in gray hair and a maroon blazer waved on the screen as the crowd learned that he was the week’s “impact donor.”

Although the stadium was full, at times the eyes of the 100,000 were transfixed by the Jumbotron rather than the field. The screen showed the Yell Leaders, Reveille IX, the mascot collie, the starting lineup that arrived in pyrotechnics and smoke that would have made Siegfried and Roy blush.

During the first quarter, as A&M trailed Alabama 14-3, a row of young men and women, a sea of maroon fingernails, temporary tattoos of A&M’s logo on their faces, and thematic cotton T-shirts, noticed a camerawoman with the Jumbotron staff. She wore a crewmember polo and calmly approached their seats at the end zone. Students never really sit at Aggies games, so those were a minor formality. Shoulders were shaken, gasps released, eyes widened as they pointed at the benevolent camera. They paused. An elephant mascot, Big Al, visiting from Alabama, pelvic thrusted to a marching band nearby.

The camera turned to the students, blasting their images onto the screen before fellow fans, triggering an eruption of collegiate sports ecstasy.

“AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGIIIIIIEEEES!!!!!”

The camera cut off, all told, the affair lasting no more than five seconds, a full-fledged Jumbotron-induced freak out.

“Our goal is to enhance the experience. Not get in the way of it,” Andy Richardson, director of 12th Man Productions, the digital and video production group overseen by the athletic department that manages the Jumbotron production, later told me. “We want to specialize in those goose bump moments.”

Today, we consider the Jumbotron.

Both loved and reviled, the Jumbotron has become ubiquitous to sports arenas as hot dogs, beer, winning and losing, the new organ in the ballpark. It can excite, humiliate, distract and may even provide a pixelated mirror of fans. Long before the spread of smartphones and selfie sticks, Jumbotrons - for better or for worse - put fans into the center of live sports.

And now, as decision makers in sports business realize that smartphones are permanent and evolving appendages of their customer base, the Jumbotron, in all its loud and delightfully tacky majesty, may be under threat.

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The Jumbotron is somewhat static, void of the “like” button that is a signature of Instagram and Facebook, but remains as another window by which fans can be seen to the world, albeit as they shove nachos and Bud Light into their faces. In a world where the seemingly oxymoronic job of reality television casting agent exists, the Jumbotron is still one of the rare pockets of mass media that shows real people doing real things - enjoying a sporting event. Typically, those on its screen don’t have a fleet of makeup artists, hair stylists, fashion consultants or time to be filtered or airbrushed. Yet the Jumbotron is out of fan control, instead operated from some unknown Oz, a digital character actor to the theater of competitive sports. Hence the tension, the joy, the agony of the super-sized appearance.

There are the botched wedding proposals, charming kisses, the balding men with their exposed guts, the bros brandishing bare and often-painted chests, fans break dancing or doing the wave, the clueless ones who don’t realize they’re in its crosshairs, their obliviousness being part of what draws its zoom. Today, Jumbotrons now solicit images and Tweets from fans, which they sometimes rebroadcast, and there’s an even newer, fascinating phenomena; people realizing they’re the star of Jumbotron, then taking selfies of themselves … on Jumbotron. Perhaps media theorist Marshall McLuhan rolls in his grave.

As the art of televised sports becomes more intricate, stadiums and arenas continue to experiment with ways to make the in-person experience further resemble the increasing sophistication and comfort of the couch-view at home, Nicholas M. Watanabe, a professor at University of Missouri focused on sports management, said. Unlike their parents or grandparents, postmodern sports fans had a new alternative: Why pay to leave home when increasingly large screens showed aerial angles of the game, sharp analysis and coverage, to say nothing of avoiding off-couch threats like Sahara-like parking lots or sour weather?

“Jumbotrons have become an essential part of the sport business,” Watanabe said. “Especially in creating excitement and interest from fans. We know that if fans had a good time, it makes it all the more likely that they will want to come back again.”

And lucrative. The rise of the screen has meant the decline of creating permanent signage for sponsors, as well as offering potential advertisers a shot at securing a large number of entranced eyeballs. “Having fans in a stadium is as close to having a captive audience as you will get these days,” he said.

But, where did the Jumbotron come from? And, after decades of dominance, is it on a path to extinction?

One of many unintended consequences of the industrial revolution was the rise of leisure time, particularly for the middle- and working-classes who previously spent much of their time toiling in hard labor or fighting to survive at all. Death and disease had pervaded daily American culture roughly a century ago in a way that’s difficult to comprehend today. Not only was there little time for fun, or sports, in some American cities, nearly a third of infants didn’t live to see their first birthday, the average life expectancy for men was 53 and for women (who were largely relegated to domestic roles and a limited political voice) 57. A simple cut could swell to an infection; flu-like symptoms could foretell a fatal bout of pneumonia. Considering that most Americans were preoccupied with work and survival, mass sports spectatorship as a concept had yet to bloom.

To put it into locker room parlance, life sucked.

The spread of electric lighting redefined daily routines, helping fuel restful and fun indoor activities like reading and board games. For the first time, it also made possible watching sports inside, such as boxing, and paving the way for indoor arenas like the third incarnation of Madison Square Garden, opening in 1925, to be built. Soon, lighting made outdoor recreational games possible, as well, and expanded their reach into the night when people finished work. In the early 20th century, a new, working class of sports fans came of age in the United States. First newspapers and then radio raced to cover every home run, touchdown, point and player, particularly in cities that were attracting workers, the economy shifting from one of rural agriculture to urban industrialization. After World War II, television coverage of sports began in earnest, mostly piggybacking off the interest sports had conjured on radio and in newspapers. The courtship between media and sports had begun, eventually germinating into a full-blow love affair, with more time and disposable income at stake.

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The earliest goals of the Jumbotron were akin to those of the earliest televisions - a way to convey information simply

As television’s success became a fixture in sports rather than fad, by the early 1980s team owners and stadium architects began to ponder how to incorporate them into arenas, the stadium becoming more like what fans were growing accustomed to at home. While selfie sticks are “narcisticks” and later digital video like YouTube and Vine would allow people to feel like they were the stars of their own television shows, the original goal of Jumbotrons was far less existential; engineers merely wanted a way to display images and show things like game statistics, in bright sunlight. The earliest goals of the Jumbotron were akin to those of the earliest televisions - a way to convey information simply. But like television and film, Jumbotrons also have elements of escapism. They “take us from where we are and deliver us, mechanically, electronically, or digitally to where we want to be,” Greg Siegel, a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara wrote in an essay for the journal Television & New Media titled “Double Vision.”

Like many technology origin stories, there’s some squabbling over who was there first. Americans may have been quick to embrace the Jumbotron, but its roots likely trace across the Pacific Ocean to Japan. The story likely begins with Mitsubishi’s “Diamond Vision,” the company’s moment of brilliance coming from building a screen using a technology similar to tube TVs before the advent of LCD or plasma screens.

Shortly thereafter, rival Sony was credited with Jumbotron’s birth, legend having it that Yasuo Kuroki, a longtime engineer with the company, was critical in its creation. Sony had emerged from the despair of World War II as a small Japanese electronics shop with eight employees. In the 1950s, the company grew by building transistor radios that were soon exported to the United States where they became a commercial success.

While engaged in a war with JVC’s VHS system, in 1975, Sony launched the first Betamax video recording equipment, a flop for the brand but an investment in how people continued to use their screens at home, nonetheless. The VHS vs. Beta videotape format war pitted two different (and incompatible) models of video recorders against each other, VHS ultimately winning out in popularity. Four years later, the company released the Walkman, a portable audio device that fundamentally changed the way people listen to music by putting buds in their ears and songs on cassette tapes in their (large) pockets. The company continued to push into compact discs, as well as sound systems for movie theaters, a new era of personal electronics rising and designers like Kuroki trying to understand not only the innards of new devices, but also how people were actually incorporating them into their lifestyles.

Kuroki had joined the company in 1960 and helped create its logo, along with the Walkman, earning him the nickname “Mr. Walkman” among Sony insiders. One of Kuroki’s colleagues, Yuji Watanabe, a chief Betamax engineer, helped design a new microprocessor-based light bulb called Trini-lite, which in a single unit, fused blue, red and green sources. Trini-Lite allowed for great clarity on screen, as well, as computer control, the foundation of the first Jumbotrons. (Kuroki died in 2007.)

“You have to remember that back then, Times Square was still mostly tickers rather than video screens,” Christopher K. Sullivan, a national sales manager with Sony’s sports venues division said. Sullivan joined the company in 1983 and was part of its early Jumbotron sales force. He still works there today. Soon, manual scoreboards were replaced across the country. “The market was wide open, nobody had done that before.”

The 1970s were an era of electronic scoreboards, which just used simple lights against black backgrounds to render words, numbers or primitive images, a bridge between the static signage of old stadiums and arenas, and the Jumbotrons of today. Electronic scoreboards reflected something people wanted from their game experience - a more sophisticated viewing experience - but the technology wasn’t quite there yet. Even when new, they looked strange, out of place, clumsy. What made a Jumbotron a Jumbotron (even if people called them by different monikers lest they step on Sony’s early claim to the official name) was that it actually was like a television screen, able to provide in-depth storytelling beyond mere blinking lights. The image went from being static to active, making the Jumbotron’s role in a stadium or arena larger and more imposing than ever before.

Peter Schatz/Bongarts/Getty Images

It was with this understanding of how technology worked that at the 1985 World Expo in Tsukuba, Japan, Sony unveiled a Jumbotron to technology journalists, who, according to Popular Science in 1985, marveled at the screen on display being “fully digitized.”

“The Japanese are completely infatuated with video technology,” New York magazine said, also intrigued by the possibility engineers announced that year of a “filmless camera.” The Jumbotron was the “Eiffel Tower” of the Expo, according to the Boston Globe, the standout, memorable icon of the event.

The Jumbotron was quickly embraced by another group that regularly communicated information to large, rapturous crowds: megachurches. Sullivan said he worked on early installations at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California. One of the first megachurches in the country, the building stood 12 stories high, an atrium made up of 10,000 glass panes, a natural light nightmare. However, the test of Sony’s Jumbotron there was deemed a success, Sullivan said, noting that it may have been Sony’s first permanent Jumbotron installation. As large and looming as they looked when shut off, Jumbotrons provided close-ups of the faces of clergy, creating the intimacy of the personal preacher at every service, regardless of audience size, a mass-produced, in-person televangelist. Observing its success, particularly in the realm of mass religion, sports team owners began to worry that if they, too, didn’t add the screens to their stadiums, the MTV-fed, cable-ravenous public may curb their attendance at live events. Additionally, it allowed them another opportunity to enhance revenue through in-game advertising.

Early screens were made in Japan, but as the cost of labor there increased, manufacturing shifted to Taiwan and China. The early versions were huge drains on electricity and suffered during inclement weather, but with time have evolved to be more energy-efficient. Sony staffers battled water damage and engineers traversed the country retrofitting and waterproofing the boards, which lived outdoors in a variety of environments that were seldom like those of consumer living rooms. “Green Bay is different than San Diego,” Sullivan said. “There was a lot of trial and error in figuring out the right components.”

Jumbotrons never left religion, being embraced by everyone from Billy Graham to Pat Robertson to Jerry Falwell. Politics, too, have gravitated toward the screens, weaving them into rallies and eventually to inaugurations, expanding the audience for live participation in history, notably when Barack Obama was sworn in for his first term in 2008. Six years earlier, and as New York was making an ill-fated bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields even had the new Jumbotron at the 168th Street Armory named after her as part of the facility’s 10th anniversary renovations. “Clearly, I’m honored that the Armory has named the Jumbotron after me,” Fields said in a statement at the time.

Baseball, in particular, worried it was losing its grip as in the 1970s fans began to become disenchanted with the homely new wave of teams, athletes and multi-purpose stadiums that had taken over the culture once made up of bat-wielding heroes like Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson playing in ballparks like Ebbets Field. Over the next few decades new flavors of extravaganzas were needed and Jumbotrons, many stadium architects and owners felt, could aid in reversing the downward momentum.

It began in 1980, when American audiences first saw a large video screen in at Dodger Stadium during the 1980 MLB All-Star Game.

By 1987, Dodgers pitcher Orel Hershiser complained that the board at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park was distracting. The Giants refused to turn it off as the Dodgers hit, but compromised by showing a frozen image of a Giants cap on the screen rather than flashing different images. Were Jumbotrons a sign of a new generation, one that was more interested in action taking place on screens rather than in real life, an argument that was raging over the increasing popularity of at-home video and arcade games?

That same year, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times wrote: “Every stadium has to have a message board, you know, because fans can’t enjoy themselves unless they can watch on a TV screen what’s going on live right in front of them on the field. Also, the screen allows fans to enjoy commercials, stupid cartoons and between inning roving camera shots of small kids smearing ice cream on their faces.”

Backlash aside, many stadium and team owners saw the large screens as a necessary compromise to a new era of fans who needed screens to be entertained during inevitable downtime during games. This was a new generation of sports fans; one that wanted to see both game and screen in real time. Over time, they began to expect it. Then, and now, they had financial potential and soon they were everywhere; Sony put Jumbotrons in concerts, on the back of moving trucks, in Times Square. Competitors began making large, outdoor screens, too, Panasonic winning the contract to create one for the 1984 Olympics at the Los Angeles Coliseum. “Welcome to the MTV Age of American sports,” United Press International proclaimed in 1987.

With price tags ranging from $500,000 to $2.5 million (not including the cost of cameras, a control room and related labor), UPI estimated at the time that 60 Jumbotrons had been constructed nationwide. The standard size was 27 feet by 36 feet, a fraction of the size of those like at today’s Kyle Field. Soon a new generation of retro ballparks, like Baltimore’s Camden Yards, which opened in 1992, both tried to nod to tradition, while being fully-modern and Jumbotron-welcome. The Jumbotron had made its journey from scorn to acceptance.

“The concept is to entertain the fans with the form that’s best known to them,” John Hays, the Angels vice president of marketing said in 1988. “And that’s the TV format, where a fan watches at home and sees replays and profiles. We take those kinds of things and transfer them right back into the ballpark. The scoreboard provides flexibility. It literally can do anything a computer can do.”

That wasn’t very much in the late ‘80s, but Jumbotrons eventually grew to include closed captioning, expanding the experience for hearing impaired fans and also democratized some of the nosebleed-seat experience, offering close-ups of players making the game more than specks on a field or a court. Jumbotrons began to offer detailed statistics about the action on field, making the 150-year-old art of scorekeeping a relic hobby. “The scorecard is vanishing faster than the $2 hot dog,” The Wall Street Journal reported in the summer of 2001, partially blaming “the screaming Jumbotron. “Baseball today is designed for fans with short attention spans and big wallets.”

Similarly, in a treatise in a 2001 edition of the journal, Leisure Sciences, Professors George Ritzer and Todd Stillman argued that the Jumbotron played an integral role in making the postmodern ballpark more commercialized, or “McDonaldized.” The risk, they argued, was that with increased commercialization like that displayed on Jumbotrons, ballpark magic eroded, superficiality ascended.

“People now go to consumption sites to engage in leisure-time activities and consumption itself has become the major leisure-time activity for many people,” Ritzer and Stillman said. “In theoretical terms, whatever boundaries existed between leisure and consumption have ‘imploded,’ as have those between the settings that we think of as being devoted to each.” (Some fields, including Texas A&M’s Kyle Field, have opted for their Jumbotrons to never play commercials, rather static promotions that mimic signage.)

Then, there’s the kiss cam.

Noah Graham/NBAE via Getty Images

No one is clear when, precisely, the tradition of pointing a camera at an unsuspecting couple then asking them to kiss in front of an ocean of peers began, but it christened the Jumbotron as a vessel for intimate-public moments. By the 1980s, it was flourishing, particularly as a way to offer drama during lulls in a game, but also opening the door for the awkward moment of zooming in on siblings, or two strangers who don’t know each other at all, resulting in a moment that is at best awkward, at worst sexual harassment.

In 2005, Esquire listed “Propose via stadium Jumbotron” as one of its “59 Things a Man Should Never Do Past 30.” In trying to explain the penchant for public proposals in 2005, The Wall Street Journal pointed to the booming wedding industry, which now even includes “proposal consultants,” reality TV shows like TLC’s Perfect Proposals, and “a culture that celebrates attention-seekers.” The Journal pointed to an Orlando Magic game that year in which the Jumbotron flashed, “she said no,” a gasping crowd and a woman running off the court. However, the couple were actors and part of a stunt concocted by marketers, who charged $50 to $200 a proposal.

“A wedding is a moment of ‘lay celebrity’ - you’re the star of your own show - and now people want to extend that to the proposal,” Elizabeth Freeman, a wedding historian and associate professor at University of California, Davis told the Journal.

And the kiss cam has also been a beacon of gay rights. While the New York Liberty in 2002 had lesbian star players like Sue Wicks, a 2002 issue of The Advocate raised concerns that lesbians were underrepresented on the Jumbotrons.

Ady Ben-Israel, a lesbian fan of the team and others staged a “kiss-in” in which they stood up and kissed each other during every time out during an August game against the Miami Sol.

“It’s a double standard,” Ben-Israel said. “They want our money and support, so why can’t they acknowledge the lesbian fans filling the stands?”

Ironically, Sony would lose its commercial hold on its screen brainchild. The term “Jumbotron” itself, once trademarked by Sony, eventually slipped into generic usage and eventually became dormant. In its heyday in the ’80s and ’90s, Sullivan, of Sony, estimated that the company controlled 75 to 85 percent of the Jumbotron market. But as more companies entered the business, by 2000, the company had lost its edge in the market and curbed its business. While Sony does extensive business in sports venues, it no longer makes the large screens today.

The original Jumbotrons were trying to mimic television screens, but eventually morphed to trying to mimic the screen of the Internet, both in visual interface, attempts at interactivity and by creating a faux sense of intimacy. And it was a two-way road; high-definition televisions spread in size and relatively shrunk in cost, making the possession of a personal Jumbotron at home more possible for millions, the best view of a game sometimes being at home.

It could be argued that the Jumbotrons were the original “second screen” experience long before the term became a sports media favorite to describe an era of mobile devices and laptops becoming attached to the palms of fans. As the 20th century teetered into the 21st, not only did Jumbotrons become even bigger to ensure those at the venue could see the action just as they could at home, their role was changing yet again.

Even a generation after its popular spread, there were still some Jumbotron holdouts. Built in 1914, until recently Chicago’s Wrigley Field was believed to be the only major North American professional sports stadium or arena without a Jumbotron. That changed in April, when the Chicago Cubs unveiled video boards as part of a $375 million renovation, a decision that architecture professor and ballpark historian Philip Bess decried on the website ChicagoSide as a “super-sized mistake.” Notre Dame, another notable Jumbotron avoidee, announced this year that a new “video board” would be included in its upcoming stadium renovations.

Joe Robbins/Getty Images

Back in College Station at Kyle Field, the young men and women in maroon who had their five seconds of fame near the end zone were out of breath by the time the Jumbotron panned away.

Shortly after the Aggies unveiled their board, they learned that it would not, in fact, reign for long as the largest in collegiate sports. This summer, rival Auburn University unveiled a new $13.9 million video board, measuring 190 by 57 feet, twice the size of a basketball court, the largest in college sports and a new marker in the continuing arms race of collegiate sports construction. All told, the board has been embraced, but like some of its predecessors, it has garnered criticism for its price tag and fear from some fans that its strobe light effects might trigger epileptic fits.

“To photograph people is to violate them,” Susan Sontag wrote in “On Photography” “by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them as they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.”

The Aggies Jumbotron camerawoman walked away.

“That was AWESOME!” one young woman said to another. Two young men high fived. Then, they all unpeeled their smartphones and were sucked into their screens, the team’s loss unfolding before them, a private viewing in public. (Alabama ultimately overpowered Texas A&M, 41-23.)

As one invention rises, an old one blinks out.