Results

Written By: Mike Ingram

Posted on March 15, 2007

Dear Coach Tyrone,

Usually I don’t go in for letters. The whole idea of writing down my thoughts and feelings and then licking a stamp and waiting by the mailbox for a reply? I’ll be honest, it feels a tad womanish. But when I tried to get your attention at last week’s Mid-Season Awards Banquet and Fish Fry you pretty much had your hands full with that suck-ass Bud Gindry, who I can’t even be in the vicinity of without wanting to sock him right in the eye.

Unlike Bud Gindry, I’m not a man in favor of useless yammering. What I am in favor of, Coach T, is Results. Results like winning ballgames by double-digit margins and going deep into the playoffs and causing opposing ballcoaches to think about whether they should just fire up the team bus at halftime instead of sticking around for two more quarters of painful helmet-to-helmet tackles and pancake blocks and post-touchdown celebratory taunting.

The kind of Results, Coach T, that make the men of this town swell up with pride as they file out of Arthur G. Bradford Memorial Stadium on a late-fall Friday night and head to the Tastee Freeze for chili fries and foot-longs and post-game gloating and then later, after the eleven o’clock highlights, when they lock the doors to their bedrooms and perform their Sacred Marriage Duties while remembering how beautiful their wives used to look doing tumbles and pyramids on the sidelines and remembering too the game in ’83 when they laid such a lick on that Langford split-back he had snot bubbles running from his nose and the trainer shining a penlight into his eyes just to make sure he wasn’t comatose (this in the State Championship game, which we would’ve won except for a semi-ancient sideline judge who either couldn’t see three feet past his own face or was taking money under the table from those cheats in Bridesville, which, hell, I wouldn’t put it past them) and then not to get too graphic, Coach T, about the Reproductive Process, but nine months or so after a 10-win season and the women of this town will be giving birth to future running backs and linemen and wide receivers already predisposed for greatness on account of their being conceived under the Albemarle Culture of Victory.

It’s the Circle of Life, Coach T, pure and simple, only God knows what’s gonna become of the boys born this summer, or if there’s gonna be any boys born this summer at all. It’s not my place to stick my imagination like a telescope into my fellow citizens’ bedrooms, but I’m guessing this season’s seen a whole lot less of the Love Act than usual. I’ve been around the Tastee Freeze these last few Fridays, and I can tell you it’s not a pretty picture. Instead of chit chat by the picnic tables, you’ve got a bunch of grown men eating onion rings and Dilly Bars alone in their pickup cabs, engines running, listening to depressing post-game stats on their AM radios and being forced to take stock of their lives.

Look, I know it’s been a tough transition. Hell, six months ago most of the Rebel Boosters were still crying their eyes out over Coach Chuck, who in addition to winning State Championships (five) evidently liked to call certain J.V. players into his office and promise them Varsity in exchange for sitting on his lap or letting him put his hands where a coach’s hands aren’t ever supposed to go. I’m sure that’s not the way you wanted to get promoted, but sometimes things happen in this life and we can’t do anything but make the best.

Like I said before: Results.

I’m sure the Bud Gindrys of the world will try to sugarcoat it for you, tell you everything’s sunshine and farts, that we’re due a year of rebuilding after losing Tyler Winterfrost to A&M and half the line to Tech and Coach Chuck to some kind of minimum-security deal out in the desert. But rebuilding’s for schools like Everforest and Pine Ridge, not the Albemarle Rebels, who don’t rebuild so much as reload, and at the end of the day you got to ask yourself who’s the better friend? Suck-ass Bud Gindry with his pretty little lies, or yours truly, who means no disrespect but will always promise to Give It To You Straight?

Of course you don’t need me to tell you that losing to Emmertsville by three scores is not part of the Albemarle Culture of Victory. And I assume you know we keep Catholic on the schedule only so our backup QB gets one week’s taste of what it means to go four quarters in the Big Dance, not so Catholic’s asshole coach Ted Glavine can lead his offensive line in some sort of choreographed step routine right in front of our traveling pep band after posting 400 goddamned yards Total Offense. That, Coach T, is not what we are all about. Not for one second. Not for one nano-second.

So, all due respect, Coach T, let’s see what we can do about this, okay? Let’s see if we can right this ship before things get worse, before all of a sudden we’re Ogden or Blankenship or Matilda, towns where just making the playoffs is like a gift from heaven, towns where the men sit all night long in the parking lots of the Tastee Freeze or the Hardee’s or the Winn Dixie and they wonder why their boys suddenly want to play soccer, or tennis, why their daughters want to date some kid from the Debate Team or 4-H and why their wives turn away from them and pretend to be sleeping. They’re forced to look deep down into their own souls, these men, and ask probing questions like Is It Really So Hard To Run a Goddamned End-Around and Where Did It All Go Wrong In My Life?

Please, Coach T, don’t let that be us.

Yours in Victory,

Jim Jack Duggans
Shift Manager, Monsanto Chemical
Treasurer (1993-1995), Albemarle Rebel Booster Club
Concerned Citizen

© Copyright Sport Fiction • Powered by Wordpress • Using Detour theme created by Brian Gardner.