Page 21 of The House of Wolves

Fourteen

MY COACH, RICH KOPKA,was looking at me as if I’d come down to his office to steal his playbook. Or his wallet. I was as fascinated as always by his nose, which seemed to make a hard right turn about halfway down.

I got right to it, told him what I wanted to do in a few minutes, when the players were on the field, and that I didn’t want him out there with us.

“It’s my team,” he said, peering at me over his reading glasses and trying to look fierce.

“Yeah, no.”

Then I explained to him that I wouldn’t want the players present when I was having a private conversation with him, but that if I went past the time when practice was supposed to start, he could fine me.

So a few minutes later I was standing on the big Wolves’ logo at midfield, suddenly feeling the way I had the first time I ever stood in front of a class. Genuinely surprised at how nervous I felt.

I had rehearsed what I wanted to say. I just wanted to let them know that I knew football but had no intention of trying to sound as if I had invented it, the way their coach did just about every time I saw him interviewed on television.

Some of the players in front of me were kneeling. Some were standing. I was wearing jeans and my Hunters Point hoodie. Like I was one of the boys, even though they were all staring at me as sullenly as if I’d just shown up from human resources.

Just like that, I threw out my prepared remarks.

Read the room,Joe Wolf had always taught us when we were kids. And I just had. I realized they didn’t need to hear from me as much as I needed to hear from them.

“You guys know who I am by now. Sometimes I feel as if people in outer space know who I am, at least if there are football fans up there. So ask me anything.”

They looked at each other before Andre DeWitt, our free safety, stepped forward, grinning.

“Which conference did you play in?” he said. “Big Ten or ACC?”

“The Joe Wolf conference. Three brothers and me. Everybody needed to wear a helmet.”

Got no reaction. But then I wasn’t out here to get laughs.

“By the way?” I said to DeWitt. “That pass interference call against Cleveland was total BS. The other guy was the one who pushed off.”

“Just one more ref acting like Boo Boo the fool.”

“Hear you.”

I thought,Maybe one guy on my side. Or at least not against me. A start.

Just make sure you don’t end up sounding like Boo Boo the fool.

Caleb Crowder, our best running back, with the longest man braid I’d ever seen, was the next to step forward, hand raised. Maybe this was like class after all.

“Is this where you say you want to win so bad it hurts?”

I grinned. “The only time you hear about how much an owner wants to win is when a team isn’t.”

He nodded.

“And Caleb? You need to get more touches. We don’t run the damn ball nearly enough.”

He turned around, stretched out his arms, and yelled at his teammates,“Thank you!”

I looked into the crowd. They all had their helmets in their hands. Football players don’t put on their helmets until it’s time to go to work. I was struck by how young so many of them were, not all that much older than my players at Hunters Point.

“What else?”

Ron Sadowski, the tight end, said, “Are you going to be one of those owners who wants to be on the sideline during games? I hate that shit.”