Second and Ten

It started with a play on second and ten just before halftime during the first game of the season. Coach called us to the sidelines on a timeout and, right in the middle of things, he pulled off one of his shoes.

"Alright boys," he said, "it's time we start playing real ball."

We nodded, and he bent over and pulled off the second shoe.

It was strange, for sure, and not a little bit distracting. But Coach Art Reinhart was a big-time winner. He'd just been hired to return our program to glory after seven years in the basement. His contract was for ten million dollars a year. At that point, we were 0-0. I told myself that he could do whatever he wanted so long as we won. Little did I know, but that sentiment would come back to haunt me.

The prior season hadn't gone well on the gridiron. We closed it out with seven consecutive losses. We lost the final four games by a cumulative total of one hundred and three points. Our coach at the time was Morten Saunders. He'd been a legend in the '80s. The decades since had dimmed his shine. He was on his last legs with us but we loved him anyway. And, he loved the team. Sadly for both of us, the play book didn't love victory.

We wrapped that year at two and nine. We knew it was the end for Coach. The university gave him a hero's farewell. There was a banquet. Old players came back and told war stories. The university's president thanked him profusely. His wife and sons clapped and smiled. Even some of the stuffier faculty members had a good time.

The team got drunk after the banquet and, per Coach Saunders's suggestion, we took a final victory lap around the field. So, at around midnight on a snowy Wednesday in January, he unlocked the gates and we charged the field under Coach Saunders one last time. We ran some crooked routes chasing a few wounded ducks. The team sustained no injuries. Coach Saunders left on a high note. It was fantastic.

When Coach Saunders died two weeks later on a fishing trip with his youngest son, the whole team bawled like babies. After that, we were on a mission. We told ourselves that the new season would be for him. We would win no matter what. We would do it for Coach Saunders. When we got the news that Coach Reinhart had been hired, we felt like we were fated for greatness.

Back on the field, Coach Reinhart laid out the play. Before we lined up, I glanced to the sideline and saw Coach plop down on the ground and pull off one of his socks. Before I could make heads or tails of this, James Toomber, our quarterback, started barking the snap count.

Toomber took the snap. He dropped back three steps and froze. I was coming off of a corner route when I saw Toomber standing in the fray of the play staring at the sidelines. The right tackle powered into him so hard his helmet was still floating in the air when he hit the ground. Even after the hit, Toomber kept glancing at the sideline.

In the huddle, Toomber leaned on Kelvin Jenkins, the center. "Fellas, what's going on?" He asked. We suggested he take it to the sideline and sit one out. He shook his head. "Boys, I'm asking about Coach."

Coach was on the sidelines shaking his clipboard above his head. His shoes were long gone and his socks were now on his hands. He signaled something that none of us could decipher.

Back in the huddle, Toomber said, "Does anyone know what he's signaling?" Pierre Pierce nodded.

"I think it's the Boomerooski," Pierre said. Everyone's face went blank. "He called it in practice on Thursday. The signal looked something like that. Remember that Toomber?" Toomber squinted and nodded vaguely. We all leaned in to listen.

We lined up and waited on the snap count. I said a little prayer as my nerves started ramping up.

A few of us discussed the socks after the game, but most of the team brushed it off. We'd won by two and that was all that mattered to most. Pierre thought he might have been cold. I reminded him that we were sweating like hogs and that the on field thermometer registered something just south of triple digits. Toomber said it didn't matter. Some people wear gloves, Coach wears socks, he said. I dropped it after that.

Monday morning, bright and early, Coach welcomed us with socks on his hands and the clipboard slipping out every now and again. No one said a word. The Boomerooski hadn't worked but Coach's hand-sock antics proved to be less of a hindrance than you might think. Toomber and Pierre connected on an eighty yard howitzer shot with two to go to seal it. Three Iowa towns worth of people lost their minds in the stands with that play and we became highlight reel kings overnight.

Congratulations rolled in through the week. The "handsock movement," as Pierre called it, got a little traction with the diehards on campus. It seemed that most people had not noticed. That all changed at the presser on Wednesday. Coach did the whole thing with the socks on his hands. One reporter for the Pendergrass Gazette asked if they were part of his strategy. Coach just winked at him and smiled. After that, the socks were a foregone conclusion and the movement was catapulted to a whole new level.

By Thursday afternoon, I counted no fewer than three dozen students on the quads struggling to carry their books due to their thumbless sock capped hands. On Friday evening, I watched a family, parents included, in the McDonald's dine-in struggle to open their ketchup packets. The father finally resorted to smashing the packets with his white clothed fist ejecting the contents onto a patty held up like goal posts. Their commitment was surprising and a little unnerving.

Toomber was a staunch defender of the whole situation. He said that Coach Reinhart had all but won the game by himself. He argued that with the playbook Coach had cooked up, there wasn't too much to worry about on the field. I tended to agree with him. But, it wasn't football that was my concern.

Things proceeded like this over the next month: coach wore the socks, most players ignored or defended it, more fans started doing it. Wherever you looked in Pendergrass, you saw socks.

After we rolled Tupelo University by twenty five, Electric Larry's Appliance and Wiring ran an advertisement with Larry himself advocating the benefits of using socks to prevent electric shock. When we crushed Kissimmee College by thirty two, my girlfriend's parents sent her a care package with Pendergrass branded handsocks. Every single one of her sorority sisters received a similar package.

We topped The Pinestraw State by fifteen, juiced our national ranking to seven, and handsocks became a regional rage. The mayor held a parade in our honor after we beat James Jones Junction College by a whopping forty-three points. The mayor wore socks on his hands for the whole ceremony.

Toomber was right. We didn't seem to have much to worry about between the hash marks. Off the field, however, was another matter.

Up until about week six of the season, the wins had offset the weird. Coach was propelling us to the kind of victories that get you on national tv and into the conversations of pundits and popular nobodies. Life was going great for us save for the fact that the weirdness kept spreading. I picked up a magazine after our Pinestraw State win and saw a model advertising handsocks with our national equipment supplier's branding. Our local weather anchor wore dressy socks on his hands as he waved over the green screen. And, one by one, my teammates started wearing socks on their hands, too.

Pierre was the first to do it, jokingly. We were watching tape and he slipped his socks onto his hands and started pantomiming Coach as he pointed out a missed block here and sloppy footwork there. A handful of us got a chuckle out of it. But, most of the team either ignored him or gave him a dirty look.

The next day, half the O-line showed up for drills with socks on their hands. The day after that, the defense was wearing the handsocks. Then the wide receivers started saying it helped their gloves fit more snugly. The running backs wrapped their socked hands in tape. By the end of the week, I was the sole holdout.

I figured the socks were an individual preference and left it at that. None of the other players mentioned my naked hands. I didn't dare discuss it. When a classmate did ask me about it, I told him I needed my fingers for holding a pencil to write my notes. He dropped it. That Friday afternoon, I went to get groceries at the Piggly-Wiggly.

I was standing in the checkout line when I heard what sounded like a man in his late fifties broadcasting from about ten inches away from my ear. "You're Miles Gambol," he said. "You're doing real good work out there, son. I just wanted to tell you that."

I turned to see a man in his late fifties with his face about a foot away from mine. He was a sizable man, at least six foot two, and he wore a flannel colored undershirt, flannel shirt, and flannel overcoat. Each one was a different color of tartan. "Thank you," I replied. I turned back to the cashier to pay the bill.

"My name is Kevin Sturdevant and I want to say that you've really shown that you're a real team player," he said in a loud voice. I saw him smiling and nodding vigorously out of the corner of my eye.

"Thank you, sir."

"Things are looking good for us right now. We're in a real sweet spot. Don't want to jinx a thing."

"No, sir."

"And tomorrow's real important what with it being homecoming and all."

"Yes, sir. That's true." I thanked the cashier and reached for the paper bag of groceries. A white flash shot past my hand and smashed the top of the bag with a threatening crunch. Kevin was now standing directly beside me. His stomach brushed against my arm with each of his heaving breaths.

"Milligrew University is a top five defense. You know that, don't you?"

"I do."

"You don't want to jinx a thing. Do you?"

"I can't say I understand what you mean."

"What I mean is to say, where's your socks, son?"

I glanced at his sock covered hand crushing my groceries. "I left them at home."

He smiled and chuckled. "And what about yesterday? Did you leave them at home then too? In fact, I can't say I've seen you in town once with them on." His eyebrows slowly rose and his smile faded. He looked like an owl who had just seen the grim reaper.

"I have a lot going on," I said with a smile. "And, I've always been a little bit absent minded."

Kevin's demeanor whipsawed back to happy town and he laughed heartily. "Are you joshin' me? The way you play makes me think you must be joshin' with me. You don't miss a thing on the field. Not a thing. So, why are you tryin' to mess with the team's mentality? You're not a trouble maker in the lockerroom, are you?" The owly look swooped back across his face.

"Oh, no, sir," I said, leaning back slightly. "Never have been and never will be."

"That's what I like to hear!" He slapped me on the back and nearly knocked the wind out of me. "That's all I wanted to hear. Well, I take that back. Tell me one more thing: you won't forget the socks again, will you?"

"I won't," I said. I slowly took hold of the grocery bag and began to pull it out from under his hand.

"Are you sure?" He said. He pressed his hand down on the bag. The bag slowly crinkled flatter until his socked paw found the eggs that were resting on top of everything else. "You're an absent minded fellow! Do me a favor. Just go on and put some on now."

"Put socks on now?"

"You got two on your feet, don't you! Just go on and let us know you won't jinx a thing. Come on, help out the team!" He shouted this last comment loud enough for everyone in the front half of the store to hear him. Thirty sets of eyes were immediately fixed on my naked hands. Normally, I wouldn't be one to cave to such an unusual command from an obviously deranged individual. But, it was just that that gave me pause. If he was this nuts about the socks, lord only knew how nuts he'd be if he caught me after a bad game. I figured I'd hedge my bets. So, I sat down on the linoleum floor of the Piggly-Wiggly and pulled my shoes and socks off in front of a few dozen or so strangers. I put two tube socks on my hands and stood up to face Kevin. He beamed with a demented kind of joy and gave me a bear hug that told me he either really loved me or really wanted to kill me. The message was further confused by the wet kiss he planted on my cheek. All of this was followed by a bold invocation of blessings from the Almighty. Only then did he release me.

I left the store with the kind of hustle I preferred to reserve for the football field and emergency bathroom breaks. As soon as I was in my car, I pulled the socks off my hands. No sooner had I done this than I saw Kevin galumphing out of the store. He was trundling through the parking lot in my general direction. I started the car and fled.

On the way into the stadium the next morning, I walked with Toomber and attempted to voice my anxiety. "I don't think the sock thing is going away. We can manage that, right?"

"We're undefeated five games in." Toomber said. He never broke stride and didn't offer even a hint of a glance as the smack of his rubber soles echoed down the concrete corridor.

"That may be true, but you've got to admit that there is something off about this sock fad. I mean, it's not just students and fans. I saw families wearing them. My pastor gave a sermon wearing Pendergrass handsocks. That's…"

"That's school spirit." Toomber came to a full stop. He grabbed both of my shoulders and squeezed. "That's what we need, isn't it?"

"Sure, it is. But…"

"Butts are for the bench," he said, gripping my shoulders well past the point of awkwardness. "I know where you're going with this. If you want to ride the pines, be my guest. If you want to win, you've got to ride the wave. Maybe we lost so much the past few years, we don't know what winning really is. Ever think of that?"

"Is it worth it? People seem genuinely nuts." I replied with as much conviction as I could muster. The words disappeared down the hall past dozens of metal doors painted red for athletes, green for grounds crew, and yellow for coaching staff. Even in the concrete bunker-like stadium hall, I felt the legion of zealots' ears listening to my moment of doubt. "This is getting very big and very weird."

Toomber's eyes were anxious but his grip was steady. "We have more than twice the wins we had last year. We're only five games into this season. The homecoming game is in two hours and I've got this year alone to figure out how much money my arm can or can't make. Do the math. I can live with some quirks." He let me go, turned on his heels and picked up his stride exactly where he left off.

I started after him when my left foot caught a crack in the concrete floor. I tripped and staggered forward. By the time I recovered, Toomber was through the door and in the locker room. I could hear the chorus of war chants starting.

One hundred and sixty thousand hands covered in white tube socks flailed in the air as we waited for kickoff. A toddler no more than eighteen months old was being held in the air with a large cardboard cutout taped to her chest: "LOSER'S LOSE!" The father had a similar sign taped to his chest that read, "LOSER'S LEAVE!" The mother's sign read, "WE'LL NEVER LEAVE THIS HOUSE!"

"The punctuation surprised me." Pierre said, thoughtfully. "Frankly, I'd have assumed that the apostrophes would have been an afterthought."

I nodded. Pierre nodded.

"Can we stop nodding?" I said, attempting humor to mask the churning in my stomach.

"Please, yes," Pierre said. He put his helmet on and looked me in the eye. "Don't worry about this stuff. Let's just get on the field. Are you ready?"

Before I could respond, an eruption of cheers and gasps filled the stadium. Coach was running back to the sideline after retreating to the locker for a "pit stop." The socks were on his hands and he was still barefoot. An untied bathrobe now fluttered behind him as he ran to the sidelines. A floppy red tartan trapper hat sat on his head. He was pantless.

Coach strode confidently up to the bench where the offensive linemen were seated. Toomber was kneeling by Kelvin Jenkins, the center, and reviewing the upcoming drive. Coach clanged his championship ring against the aluminum bleacher; the offense's eyes shot wide open when they saw him.

"Bring it in, fellas," Coach said. "I believe in you. I believe in me. I believe in what we're going to do. But, we're going to have to work for it. Remember: work and leisure are different. Leisure is unpressured time. Work assumes pressure. Games assume pressure. Games are work…" He paused for a moment and adjusted and tightened the robe's sash. I looked around the huddle, panicked. Everyone else just nodded along. I felt like I was in a nuthouse and the only one that knew it. "Now, let's go over the first drive."

The rush of blood in my ears drowned out the remainder of what he said. I stared at him and thought that for once I knew the horror that those wildebeests on TV felt when they watched the knobbly green rock turn into the crocodile's mouth as it consumed their face. It was the most deeply pitted and natural horror that I could imagine. This socks-on-hands-no-pants-trapper-capped-bathrobe clown would kill me. And if it wasn't him, it surely would be one of his conscripts.

Before we'd finished covering the first drive, the crowd began to rip off their pants. Chinos, jeans, jorts, shorts and leggings showered the field. It looked like the aftermath of a tornado through a JCPenney. The start of the game was delayed while the grounds crew jogged out and collected the clothing. They piled it in heaps on the sidelines. Once the field was cleared, the officiating crew trotted over to one of the piles, dutifully removed their pants, and placed them on the top of the heap. The grounds crew followed suit.

I looked at the opposing team. They were shocked. I looked at the local police officers stationed around the stadium. They were fidgeting with their belts. Even the sheriff that escorted Coach just looked around and smiled. Jimmy Metcalf, our starting left guard, started to pull off his leggings when Pierre motioned for him to stop. "I'm pretty sure it's against regulation to play in only your jock." He smiled and looked at me. I forced a smile and put on my helmet.

Toomber piped up just as we were about to take the field. "Do you smell that?"

"Toomber, we've got eighty thousand pantless people with socks on their hands," I said. "You're damn right I smell it. The whole thing stinks."

Toomber kept his eyes forward and started to scrunch his nose. "Sure, there's that. I'm not talking about feet though. I'm talking about…" he trailed off. He surveyed the crowd. "I'm talking about that electricity. It's like a toaster on the fritz."

"They believe," Pierre said.

"Believe in what?" I asked. I was flummoxed. I assumed that Pierre was the lone holdout in the land of the sane with me. But, the look in his eye was cracking my confidence. "What do they believe in, Pierre?"

"They believe in everything. The whole damn thing."

The next sixty minutes saw Pendergrass State play the best football that the country had seen up until that point in the season. The offense put on a show. Some critics said that it was the pantless fans that distracted the Milligrew team. But, there was no denying the fifty eight points we hung up on their defense. Our defense, meanwhile, pummeled their quarterback so hard that he didn't complete a second half pass. As tired as we were playing offense nearly constantly, the clinic that the defense put on was worth it. Derrick Jones-Garden, our left tackle, flattened their quarterback, Cornelius Banks, six times. Pierre said that DJG looked like a priest conducting the world's most brutal exorcism. I thought that he looked like a Mac truck at a go-kart demolition derby. The stadium rocked so hard that the flagpoles wobbled a little. We even noticed a few cracks in the walls of the tunnel on the way back to the locker room.

I had nearly forgotten the whole pants debacle by the time the game was finished. The crowd roared continuously for a good ten minutes after the clock stopped. We did a victory lap around the stadium and rolled into the locker with a sense of invincibility. That was the last mostly sane moment of the season.

Coach was just finishing his post game pep talk when we started to smell smoke. It got so thick that we had to evacuate the stadium. We found the parking lot filled with fans and littered with fires. People were burning pants on the ground in heaps and in their charcoal grills, too. It looked like something out of a horror movie. Pierre said it resembled a Hieronymus Bosch painting. He showed me on his phone. Although Lot 38 had neither flying nor giant demons like the painting, the vibes aligned. It was the wildest most terrifying thing that I'd ever seen. Then came Monday.

Mayor Bivens convened with the city council first thing Monday morning and unanimously passed an ordinance allowing all city residents to operate in public without pants so long as they were clothed with a bathrobe. National news picked up the story and excoriated, lampooned, and heehawed about the situation for nearly two days.

Trapper hats, meanwhile, flew off the shelves faster than they could truck in new supplies. People drove two and three counties out just to get them. Walking around town was surreal. No one was wearing pants or shoes and socks on their feet. Everyone was in a robe, a trapper hat, and handsocks. There were pale thighs everywhere and not a hand to be seen. It looked like a People of Walmart convention.

The funny thing about someone's pants is that you don't notice them until they're gone. But, if you're the only person wearing them, you stick out like a sore thumb or, rather ironically, a pale naked thigh. I tried to sustain my resistance after homecoming, but the social tide had turned too powerfully. After one day, two assaults, and countless volleys of insult, I concluded that I should march into the local mall, pantless of course, and acquire the necessary costume.

The straw that broke the camel's back was an unprovoked caning that I received in line at the Piggly-Wiggly by someone's grandmother in a motorized grocery scooter. After that, I chose to avoid the Piggly-Wiggly for the remainder of the season and dress in the custom of the fans. It was simply in the interest of self preservation.

The handsocks were the simplest fix. I cut holes for my fingers. It was a practice frowned upon by the traditionalist I later learned.

Next, I purchased the longest robe that I could find. This was largely because I intended to secretly wear shorts under the robe. It would be my own private protest. Finding the right robe wasn't easy since nearly all of the supplies were gone. Every store was cleaned out by supper time on the Sunday after the homecoming game. I ended up going with the only thing available in full length: a women's baby blue silk Marilyn Monroe type thing. Thankfully they had one XXXL sized number that suited a six foot man's frame rather nicely. Due to my secret rebellion that was occurring beneath the robe, I kept the sash tightly lashed. My legs remained together every time I sat in public to ward off the prying eyes of the purity police.

Finding the appropriate hat was easy due to the university's generosity. I had my pick of various colors of tartan and styles of trapper.

As for the shoe situation, I drew the line at walking barefoot in the street. After considerable thought, I determined that faking injury was the appropriate loophole. Steven Surgron was spared the wrath of the pantless for wearing a cast on his leg after a pretty bad break. I bought a pair of thong sandals and told people that I had a whole lot of blisters on my feet that needed to heal. It worked although I was viewed by some with suspicion.

In the meantime, we racked up four more wins and were sitting at 10-0. We were going into the final game of the season with a second-place national ranking and confidence a mile high. Even my anxiety lessened a little after adopting the "Pendergrass style," as it was popularly known. I was heckled less, complimented more, and even received occasional cat calls on campus. I can't say that I ever liked putting the hat, robe, and socks on in the morning, but I told myself that it was temporary. Fans forget everything in the offseason. If things went well, we had two more games after this Saturday's matchup. The last one would be the title game. If wearing a woman's robe, trapper cap, and handsocks for a few weeks was what won a national title, then I was going to garb up.

The Stendhal State team arrived in gleaming busses with mirror tinted windows. These were much fancier than our generic rentals that pulled up with the windows open and the AC broken. The players were bedecked in navy suits and sunglasses that mimicked the mirrors of the bus. A few hundred Pendergrass fans were pressed against the barricades screaming every manner of insult you could imagine. They waved their trapper hats and rocked back and forth in their robes. None of it fazed the Stendhal State boys.

For three quarters and fourteen minutes, we threw nearly everything we had at them. Nothing seemed to work. We were down by seven after the first quarter. We trailed by ten at the half. We clawed our way back to within four at the close of the third quarter on account of two Bobby Martinez field goals that he pretty much had to take from the parking lot both times. With about a minute left in the fourth, Martinez knocked his shoe and a few toenails off making a conference record sixty five yarder. Now, we were down by one.

Stendhal finally slipped up when Jason Jaspers, their quarterback, got cute and started heckling DJG. The center thought he heard hut and snapped the ball. It sailed over Jaspers' head. After a little skirmish in which there may have been some light biting by our defense, we recovered the ball. The downs were set at the Stendhal thirty three with seven seconds left in the game.

We were in need of a miracle. The believers on the bench prayed. The nonbelievers implored the universe or conjured good vibes only. Coach told us he had a secret. We took our last timeout and gathered on the sideline to listen to the secret.

"We've been here before, boys," Coach said.

"Not for a while," Toomber said.

"Don't interrupt, Toomber," Coach shot back. "Now, let me tell the secret." We all leaned in to listen.

"'Twas brillig in the slivey toaves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsey were the borrowgroves, and the momraths outgrabe." Coach nodded knowingly. He looked around the circle of boys and met each of us in the eye. After looking at each one of us once, he clapped and ran back to the brown corduroy recliner that he'd brought to the sideline earlier in the week and plopped down in it.

We stood in stunned silence for a solid five seconds after he left. Before the full weight of panic set in, Kelvin Jenkins spoke up. "Did anybody catch any of that?"

"It's an old poem. Definitely not football," Pierre said.

From the recliner, we heard Coach shouting, "Twas brillig!! Twas brillig!!"

Toomber spoke up, "Boys, it looks like we're on our own here. Pierre, let's go with the Boomerooski. It's a fifty fifty shot and we haven't used it since Milligrew. They might not have run that in practice."

"Twas brillig!" The fans were now chanting along with Coach.

Pierre nodded slowly. "Makes sense. Does anyone have a better suggestion?"

No one did.

"Twas brillig! Twas brillig!!" The stadium thundered with what I could only assume was our new war chant.

We lined up and waited for Toomber to start the snap count. I glanced over my shoulder to look at Coach. He was fully reclined and shaking his feet in the air wildly screaming the chant.

"Twas brillig! Twas brillig!" Coach was on the Jumbotron reclined, shaking his feet, and screaming. The crowd was stomping their feet with him. They stomped so violently that the ground shook. The flag poles wobbled and finally one snapped and collapsed. The pantless referee paid no attention.

"Brillig! Brillig!" The stadium thundered and then started to rock. Literally. Section 301 in the upper deck gave way first. The rest of the nosebleeds followed suit like dominos.

"Brillig! Brillig!" No whistle. The play was live. Bodies were falling from the sky and the stadium was collapsing in on itself. The living continued to chant despite the dead. The thunder of the crowd was quickly replaced by the roar of crashing concrete and the scream of twisting rebar.

The play slowed to a stop. The clock ran down to zero. A thick gray cloud of concrete dust enveloped the field followed by total silence. We stood on the field motionless and breathless at first. The silence was quickly broken up by violent coughs from the survivors.

Toomber was the first person to spot Coach. He was nothing more than a shadow in all the dust at first. He walked over to us with a Cheshire smile stretched across his face. No one on the team spoke and neither did Coach. He sat down on the grass criss cross applesauce style, pulled the socks off his hands, and put them on his feet. Then he pulled a pair of old loafers from his robe's pockets and slipped them over the socks.

"I didn't know how this game would go, fellas," he said in a cheery voice. "But, I'd say people got their money's worth today."