Coach Jed Foster led his Tornados out into the Swamp as it shook with roaring Gator fans. It was college football’s opening day and Western Kansas State’s first game ever as an NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) team. Coach Foster made his way to the sidelines where he immediately grabbed his Freshman running back, Jim Grimner, by the face mask and shouted above the din, “This could be the greatest day of your life, son!”

The Gators entered the Swamp, and the crowd exploded. Foster could see fear in Jim’s eyes. “They’re just people, Jim. Let ‘em be noisy. You just do your thing,” he said.

But by half time the score was 35-0, and the Tornados had a total of 9 yards of offense. Of course, Coach Foster had known that his team, new to college football, wouldn’t be able to compete with the big, bad Gators, but he had hoped for more life, more fight from his players. Coach Foster knew that if he didn’t find a way to salvage the situation, the whole season might be lost because of this one game. In the locker room, the players were sullen and angry.

“Whoo!” Coach Foster shouted as though he had just gotten off a rollercoaster, “was that fun or what!” The players looked at him incredulously. “Hey, guys, this a fantastic football team we’re playing. We knew that coming in here.” Coach Foster paused, and surveyed the eyes of his players. “These are the defending national champs after all. So don’t worry about the score. Just worry about playing assignment-sound football and having fun.” Coach Foster paused, poked his head out towards the field, and took an exaggerated breath of the air. “I mean, tell me this ain’t a dream come true to play in a place like this,” he said. “Make the most of it, and don’t worry about the rest.”

This seemed to brighten the players’ moods a bit. He had them seeing things his way; it was time to close the sale. “The score’s zero to zero, men,” Coach Foster said, pounding a closed fist on a nearby locker. “Lets not worry about winning the game, let’s worry about winning each down. Let’s show these Gators that we have some pride! Let’s show these folks that we know how to play some football!”

The Gators kicked off to start the second half. It was a high end of end kick that sailed to the one yard line where is was bobbled and then handled by Izol Durbish, the Tornados’ top speed-dealing wide receiver. Durbish broke a tackle at the two and leapt forward to the six before getting clobbered and fumbling the ball. When the pile finally moved, Durbish lay unconscious, and the Gators had the ball.

With a 35-0 lead and first and goal at Western Kansas’ six yard line, the Gators made mass substitutions on offense. The backup QB took the snap, ran a play action to the tailback then stared down his primary target running a post in the end zone before zipping the ball. Tornados’ cornerback Leon Mack read the QB’s eyes and jumped the route, knocking the ball up in the air where several players from both teams dove for it. But it was Florida’s Quison Banks who came up with the prize, and just like that, it was 41-0, then 42-0.

The ensuing kickoff was fielded by Jim Grimner for the Tornados at the three yard line. Jim immediately darted left to avoid a tackle, and then broke right, burning up the field and picking up a couple of decent blocks on his way to being run out of bounds at the Tornado 38. It was Western Kansas’ most successful play of the day thus far, and its best starting field position as well.

With a big lead, the Gators were trying to get their second and third teams as much experience as possible, and their inexperienced defensive backups failed to match up properly with WKSU’s wishbone. Jim took the pitch from Tornado QB Brad Moss and bolted up the sideline behind the blocking of the other wingback, Sidney Lipton, who took out two green Gator linebackers before losing his balance. Jim was finally pushed out of bounds at the Florida 40 yard line for a gain of 22, and just like that the Tornados had more than tripled their offensive production for the day.

But Moss was swallowed by the Gator D-line for a loss of three on the next play and did well to hang onto the ball. On 2nd and 13, Moss shovel passed to Lipton, who blasted his way to the Florida 39 for a gain of four. So it was 3rd down and nine, and Coach Foster needed a play to keep the drive alive. Again, Grimner had the hot hand, but nine yards was a lot to ask from the wishbone on 3rd down. Nonetheless, it was their best chance; he signaled in the play, “option left echo.”

The wishbone moved left. Lipton opened a lane, and Moss got the ball to Grimner just as he hit the hole. A big linebacker bore down on Grimner, but the small wingback hit the afterburners and managed to separate from the pursuit.

Suddenly, he was all alone, racing down the sideline. He could smell the grass in Ben Hill Griffin Stadium as 92,000 Gator fans collectively gasped. Coach Foster was running down the sidelines, shouting “Go! Go! Go!” But all Grimner could see was the end zone, just a few yards away. Then he was smashed from behind by the free safety and brought to the ground; the hit echoed across the field.

Thanks to Grimner’s run, it was 1st and goal at the Florida seven yard line.

But the Tornados got lined up only to immediately incur a five-yard false start penalty on the left guard: 1st and goal at the 12. The backfield set up in I-formation, and Moss ran a play action to Grimner and then ran right into a crushing sack that made the ball squirt loose. Western Kansas retained possession, however, thanks to the heads-up play of Lipton, who saw the ball bouncing away from the play and pounced on it. But the ball was now all the way back on the 23 yard line: 2nd and goal. Coach Foster called a timeout.

Foster smiled at his players as they came over to the sideline. “Ain’t this fun?” he asked and didn’t wait for a reply. “Don’t start pushing now cuz you wanna score. Just focus on your reads and assignments and just play. Just try to win this down; don’t worry about anything else.”

The Tornados lined up in wishbone formation and ran an option right. This time Moss kept the ball and scraped and scratched his way to the Gator 19: 3rd and goal. Western Kansas huddled-up, Jaron Watts, a tight end, subbed in for Grimner, and then the Tornados lined up in the shotgun with Lipton in the backfield to Moss’ left.

The ball was snapped, and a blitz was on. Moss dropped back, and Lipton managed to seal off a blitzing linebacker who had an angle on Moss. Then the safety came through and hit Moss on his blind side just as he released the ball. The moment for Moss seemed last forever. As he winced from the crushing hit, he watched the ball flutter into a crowd of players like a homerun pitch straight over the plate, but then it disappeared, batted-down by his own line man to prevent the interception: 4th and goal.

The offense ran to the sideline as the field goal unit went onto the field. Coach Foster cheered the offense’s successful foray into Gator territory. “That’s focused football! One play at a time, one play at a time!” the coach shouted. Tom Hildebrand connected on a 34 yard field goal kick, and Western Kansas State had its first points ever as an FBS team.

Box Score:

WKSU   0     0   3   0     3

UF        21   14  10 7    52

Jim had always dreamed of playing big time college football. But even though he had ran for a state eight-man league record in high school, none of the big colleges had given him a look because of his size. Jim was only 5’7’’ tall, but he was built solid as rock and weighed in at a muscular 200 pounds. He wasn’t the fastest player on the field, having been clocked at 4.55 in the 40. But as his coaches had always said, Jim had great instincts.

Jim watched himself on the team video, dashing for daylight against the Gators, and he remembered how in the moment everything seemed to slow down so he could see the whole field. And with this vision, it seemed that he could read minds, for he knew what every player on the field would do at least a second before they did it. He felt good about this, and rewound the tape to watch the run again. Suddenly, somebody shoved him from behind and Jim fell to the floor hard.

Embarrassed at the disgrace and furious at being embarrassed, Jim turned and leapt up ready to swing. But he was immediately tackled by Sydney Lipton, who laughed as Jim’s wild swing connected awkwardly on his back. Syd jumped up and put out a hand to help Jim up. Jim was furious, mortified, but he didn’t want to fight Syd. Syd was his teammate, his fellow wingback. He slapped Syd’s hand away, saying, “Jerk. What’s your problem? That wasn’t funny.”

Syd, a JUCO transfer, sniffed at Jim like a bull sniffs at red. “My problem,” Syd said, “is you.” Syd looked Jim in the eye calmly, coldly, and Jim could feel his spirit recoil from the harsh judgment held in Syd’s stare. Syd continued, “You sit here rewinding that run over and over again, patting yourself on the back when you got a lot to learn.”

Jim wanted to laugh at this. What did Syd know? Syd never carried the ball, he just blocked. Jim shrugged and said, “Coach says I have good instincts, so I’m trying to remember what it feels like when those instincts are working best.” Syd looked down at Jim, he was a good five inches taller, and laughed. Jim’s face turned red, and he grit his teeth.

Then Syd said, “You have good instincts, but you can’t take a hit. On this team, you’re going to have to learn how to take a hit! And the coaches are sick of you falling down every time the wind blows! That’s why I knocked you down, that’s why you’re my problem.” Jim relaxed. Syd was right. That was always the knock on his play. No one thought he could take big-time college football hits, and if he was going to make the most of his opportunity to carry the ball in Coach Foster’s new wishbone attack, he was going to have to do just what Syd said, learn to take a hit and keep motoring. Suddenly, he realized that there was nothing that he wanted to do more. He bolted out the door, juking past Syd with telepathic cunning. Syd ran after him in pursuit, determined to knock Jim down.

As the bye week came and went, Coach Foster broadened the teams’ focus on mastering the fundamentals of football to include a study of their next opponent, the #25 Iowa Hawkeyes. Jim quickly noticed in the film room that this team knew how to tackle. I can’t let them hit me square, he thought, they’re too good, and I’ll never bounce away. But in practice that day, cornerback Leon Mack and linebacker Sean Ray took turns obliterating him before he could dance away. Syd wouldn’t even look at him. That night he went to his dorm room bruised and angry. He wrote an essay for English class arguing that physics has nothing to do with football, it’s all about who wants it more. He wanted to believe this, but somewhere inside himself, he knew it was wrong. But the essay was finished and it was time for bed, so he put these thoughts away.

He dreamed one of his favorite dreams that night, only this time it changed into a new dream. He dreamed he was a kid again, living in Mississippi near the forested wetlands. A circus train had wrecked and a car full of monkeys had escaped. Jim saw himself encountering the monkeys for the first time and trying to catch them. He would lunge at them, trying to tackle them by the ankles, but always they bounded away.

He chased the monkeys as they bounded through the wooded swamp over logs and bogs and into the setting sun, disappearing into a night that was filled with the insect music of summer. The trees were tall and dark around him. The monkeys were forgotten. The dream changed, and suddenly he realized that he was in a prairie, a vast ocean of grass, completely exposed to a wind that was howling and roaring like a freight train. The sky was black and green, and wicked tentacles of lightning shattered the horizon to reveal an enormous black tornado headed straight for him.

He couldn’t move, he stood watching the tornado twist towards him in the green and white strobe of lightning, and he saw how the tornado spun up the earth, plowing into and whipping everything around it up and into the sky where it spun and fell far out of the way. And as the tornado ripped towards him, the earth opened up into a river—beautiful and blue and leaping with fat white-bellied fish. The tornado twisted into the river, and the river twisted away with Jim now floating on a raft made of logs lashed together with brittle ropes. His hands gripped the lashings as the raft glided along with the slow, winding flow of the immense river—a river so wide he could only see only one shore at time.

But then the river narrowed and grew faster as it cut through a deep and jagged gorge. Jim found himself anticipating the river’s flow and steering clear of sharp stones as he saw them rising just above the choppy surface of the water. But the river rushed on faster and faster, and the surface got choppy and rockier. Finally, he realized that he could not anticipate every stone, it was impossible.

Jim thought of the black tornado, tearing everything up and away, and he spun his rafts as he approached a range of sharp rocks jutting up from the river like the teeth of some Homeric sea monster. And spinning flat on the current the little raft tapped the rocks and kept moving spinning forward with greater momentum. And as he spun, the dreamed changed again, and he was a whole Mars-like planet. And his spinning became a powerful gravity that pushed him through an asteroid-filled galactic arm.

When he woke up he realized why Syd wouldn’t look at him during practice. All this time he hadn’t been listening. He needed to learn to spin off tackles and not just elude them or hope he could bounce off. That’s just not enough, he thought, I’ve got get a hard stiff arm and use it to spin, and I’ve got to be able to spin in different directions too.

The next day in practice Jim Grimner visualized himself as a tornado tearing through the defense and found that spinning off hits was easier than he thought could be. Coach Foster was obviously pleased. Syd just nodded at Jim after practice. There was no time for congratulations or to feel pleased. The next day the team would load-up and head for Iowa City to face the Hawkeyes.

About the Author

Robert C. J. Graves

Robert C. J. Graves’ work is widely published in nearly two dozen literary journals, including 491 Magazine, Anastomoo, Boston Literary Magazine, Chickenpinata, Crash, Chiron Review, Eclectic Flash, Leaf Garden, The New Flesh, Shoots and Vines, and WestWard Quarterly. A former sportswriter, Robert has a PhD in English from Bowling Green and an MFA in Creative Writing from Wichita State.