Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream (10 page)

To treat the injury he had spent almost three straight days
in the trainer's office and didn't have to go to class. The excuses from class surprised Crow, who would ultimately have to
take the SAT college entrance exam four times to get over
the 700-point combined score that the NCAA required of a
would-be college player to qualify for an athletic scholarship
without any eligibility restrictions. On the other hand, the
courses he was taking were not very difficult; so that academics
would create as little interference as possible during the football season, he had taken English and government during summer school.

"The teachers understood what they were doing. They respect football," Crow said. "My photography teacher loved
Permian football. He said it was okay [to miss classes]. The
other two didn't want me in class because they knew I would be
dripping water from the ice [being applied to his thigh]." The
following week in a playoff game against Denton, Crow had
gained 119 yards and scored a touchdown as Permian won
16-3 and advanced to the quarterfinals.

After the season he had spoken to a group of elementary
school kids over at Dowling. He read them an Amelia Bedelia
children's book. A short time later he received letters from little
boys asking for his autograph and from little girls asking him
for dates.

"I'm sorry I kept staring at you. I just couldn't help myself
you are so fine!" said Kaci.

"Even though you have trouble reading, I think you read
good. I hope that some day you will become a professional football player," said Shauna.

"I really enjoyed your reading. It was really interesting when
you told everybody how many touchdowns you made," said
James.

The next burst of applause at the Watermelon Feed came when
it was time to introduce the members of the Permian football
team individually.

When their names were called they walked down a narrow
aisle separating the cafeteria in half. Ivory Christian acted like
a bride at the wedding, each step slow and measured, luxuriating in the applause and the hundreds of eyes beckoning to him.
He could have spent hours moving down that thirty-foot aisle,
for this was the part of the game he truly did love, the attention,
the adulation, as far removed as possible from the grit and relentless routine of the practice field.

Not everyone was so eager. Mike Winchell walked with his
head cocked toward the floor, those furtive, brooding eyes
burning holes somewhere, wishing he could be anyplace but here, in the midst of all this outlandish noise and attention.
More than anything in life, he hated crowds, and his dream
was to live by himself near the red-rocked canyons of the wild
Devil's River.

And then there was Boobie.

As Gaines told the crowd that Boobie would be the one to fill
the shoes of Shawn Crow this year, Boobie himself felt a certain
nervousness and excitement. Boobie was never one to praise
others, particularly other running backs, but Crow had earned
the ultimate compliment from him. "'Fell the truth, he's the first
white boy I've ever seen run like that," Boobie said in his singsong cadence that sounded like the ruminations of a rap song.
"Pretty had white boy. White that can run like that? Not like
Crow. He can run."

But Boobie wasn't worried about stepping into the role. He
knew he could do it, get that ball, tuck it under his arm, and do
with a football what Michael Jordan did with a basketball, make
heads turn with a certain cut so pure, so instinctive, only God
could have given it to him. "He can By and dunk all special
ways. I can run and fake all special ways," said Boobie.

He had hardly been a slouch his junior year, scoring fifteen
touchdowns in addition to gaining over a thousand yards rushing. But Boobie had very much played under the shadow of
Crow and spent much of his junior year blocking for him. But
no more.

He acknowledged the loud applause of the crowd like a prom
queen or an Academy Award winner having the first of what
would undoubtedly be a lifetime of moments such as these.
Exuberant chants of "Boobie!" echoed through the room, and
the world belonged to him. It also belonged to his uncle L.V.,
who sat on one of the little cafeteria stools toward the back
wearing a cap that had Boobie's number, 35, proudly affixed to
the side.

When he thought about the two of them, what they had gone
through to get here, it was hard not to feel that some miracle
had taken place. "We come a long way" was how L.V. said it with that soft laugh of his. "I guarantee you. We come a long
way." But now, at last, came the payoff.

And on this night of the Watermelon Feed, his nephew
walked down the aisle with the flushed, irrepressible confidence
of someone absolutely sure of his destiny, the smile wonderful
and wide, the gait easy and sweet. Call it cockiness, call it a
horrendous case of the big head, but there was no one else
like him.

"Why are the scores of Permian games so lopsided?" Boobie
himself had posed the question one day. "Because they only
have one Boohie."

He was right. They only had one Boobie.

And in two days, when Permian went up north to Amarillo
for a pre-season scrimmage against the Palo Duro Dons, people
would get their first real taste of what he was going to do this
season when he, and he alone, was the shining star of the
Permian Panthers.

I

THE PRE-SEASON SCRIMMAGE IN THE LATE AUGUST TWILIGHT
had barely started when Boobie peeled off a run that gave
glimpses of why the college recruiters were after him, why
Texas A & M and Nebraska and Houston and all the others
routinely crammed his mailbox with heady testimonials to his
magnificence.

You have been recommended to us as an outstanding prospective
major college student-athlete.

You had an outstanding junior year at Permian and I am sure
your senior year will be even better. You are in a situation that many
young athletes dream about.

The entire Houston Cougar football staff has been in the process of
putting together the top list of high school senior football players in
Texas.... Booby, we feel that you are one of these few select players.

James-we are in New York preparing for the kickoff classic and
enjoying the sights. Good luck in your first game. Looking forward to
watching you play later this season.

They weren't interested in him just because he was big and
looked imposing in a football uniform. There were a thousand
kids in Texas who fit that description. It was something else, more than just strength or speed, a kind of invincible fire that
burned within him, an unquenchable feeling that no one on
that field, no one, was as good as he was. "Miles had the attitude," said former teammate Art Wagner with admiration. "He
thought he was the best."

He had played his junior year with a kind of seething emotion that sometimes dissolved into quick frustration and discouragement. He easily got rattled, particularly when things
weren't going well, and there were times on the field when he
seemed as frazzled as a child. But there were other times when
that emotion made him spellbinding and untouchable.

It had been there during the Abilene High game when he
gained 232 yards on eight carries and scored touchdowns of 62
yards, 80 yards, and 67 yards. His father, who lived in Houston,
had been in the stands that night. They had been separated for
some time, and it was the first time James senior had ever seen
his son play football at Permian. He was almost unprepared for
what it felt like to watch his own flesh and blood out there on
that field. "Oh, man," he remembered. "The first I seen him
carry that ball, he busted that line for eighty yards. Do you
know how you feel when you see your son doin' good, doin'
somethin' special? It kind of put a lump in your throat. Man,
that boy ran that ball that night!"

The fire had been there during the Arlington game in
the playoffs, after he had come off the field with tears in his
eyes because one of the opposing players had called him a
nigger. Gaines tried to comfort him and told him the other
team only wanted to get him worked up so he would get himself kicked out of the game. And then he saw a change come
over Boobie as if' something had snapped, the hurt and humiliation giving way to a raging anger. He only carried the ball
twelve times that day for forty-eight yards, but it was his savage
blocking that made the recruiters up in the stands take notice,
the way he went after the Arlington defenders with uncontrolled vengeance, the way he flattened a linebacker and rendered him semi-unconscious. It proved to them that Boobie had more than just the requisite size and speed to play big-time
college ball. He had the rawness, the abandon, the unbridled
meanness.

"He's strong as snot," Mike Winchell said of him.

"He's the best football player I've ever seen," said Jerrod
McDougal.

Boobie himself was well aware that all eyes were poised on
him this season, and while he luxuriated in it, he seemed almost
carefree about it. Holding court in the trainer's room shortly
after the practices had begun in the August heat, he bantered
with the nine-year-old son of one of the coaches as if they were
best pals in grade school together, calling him "waterbug head,"
asking him if lie had a girlfriend, grabbing his head and giving
him it noogie, telling him that when it came to "the shoe," Adidas would never hold a nickel next to the almighty Nike. He lay
on one of the brown trainer's tables, but it was impossible for
him to keep still. With his head hanging over the table, he ran
his fingers along one of the crevices in the wall and started to
do a rap tune.

He asked one of the student trainers to dial the phone for
him and call his girlfriend. The student held the phone out as
Boobie, shaking with laughter, yelled from across the room,
"What's the deal, what's the holdup on comin' to the house?"
When Trapper walked in, Boobie called him "cuz" and "catdaddy." A few minutes later he was handed a list of defensive
plays to study. He looked at it for several seconds, the droning
terminology of numbers and letters as appealing as Morse
Code, and started to read it aloud in rap to give it a little flavor,
a little extra pizzazz.

He continued to play with the wall and then turned onto his
stomach before flipping over again on his hack. He spoke in
little snatches.

"My last year ... I want to win State. You get your picture
took and a lot of college people look at you.

"When you get old, you say, you know, I went to State in
nineteen eighty-eight."

He dreamed of making it to the pros, just as long as it wasn't
the New York jets because he didn't like the color green. And
as he flipped onto his stomach one more time, he said he
couldn't ever, ever imagine a life without football because it
would be "a big zero, 'cause, I don't know, it's just the way I feel.
If l had a good job and stuff, I still wouldn't be happy. I want
to go pro. That's my dream ... be rookie of the year or somethin' like that."