Consumed: A MMA Sports Romance (55 page)

“Well, I mean, you’re going to have to
move beyond that eventually, right? So just take advantage of the fact that the
school is basically paying you to visit California and watch a really awesome
football game.”

“If I let you come with me, you’re not
going to like…try and make me go to some crazy party after, right? I mean, I
just want to do what I came there or and come back.”

“Okay—how about a compromise? I won’t drag
you to a party, but if I meet a guy there and want to bring him back to the
hotel, or even if you do, the other one of us will hang out at the pool or
wherever to give the other some privacy.”

“Are you seriously thinking of snagging a
guy at the championship game?”

Jess shrugged with a little grin.

“Adrenaline pumping, excitement; win or
lose, it’s pretty much a sure thing, right?”

I tried not to groan again. Sometimes I
really did wonder if Jess considered going to college to be little more than an
excuse to get with as many guys as she possibly could. It wasn’t fair of me—I
knew she was making good grades—but sometimes it seemed like she spent more
time making plans to ensnare a hot guy for a night or two than she did on her
classes.

“Okay,” I said finally, thinking to myself
that it was likely I would easily regret this. “Okay, fine. I will go to the
game, and you can go with me. And if either of us ends up actually hooking up
with somebody, we will work out how to give each other privacy. Let me borrow
your ID and I’ll get the information the office needs to issue our tickets.” I
shook my head. The last thing I had wanted to do was actually go to the game;
but if I had to go, I thought to myself that at least it would be interesting,
with Jess there with me.

CHAPTER
SIX

I had thought that our stadium was
impressive; when Jess and I got out of the bus carrying students to the bowl
game, I was shocked at the hugeness of it. The parking lot was crawling with
people—tents and campers and RVs were scattered across the place, with team
colors flying on every conceivable corner, and the smell of dozens of different
kinds of food filling the air. In spite of the fact that I’d been dreading
going to the game and having to watch Zack, I found myself getting swept up by
the excitement that everyone else was contributing to. Everyone was
amped—cheering as they made their way towards the stadium, calling out to the
opposing team’s fans, in a mood for a really good game. I had to wonder just
how well Zack would perform; if he was going to crack under pressure, it would
be a game like this where he was going to be televised across the country,
where the stakes were the highest—a rare, championship game.

Jess and I split away from the group at
the gate. The tickets I had as a reporter for the campus newspaper were much
better than the general; it was one of the perks of the job—after all, I needed
a good view of the game to report on it. As we moved through the crowds
flooding through the stadium, Jess was looking around—for the best food
options, for people heading to our section that might be interesting, for the
possibility of getting a cheap beer where she wouldn’t be carded. I was focused
entirely on the game. How would Zack perform? Would we win? I was trying to
think of just how I would cover it for the article, as well. After all, the
game itself was a big draw—but what story about the game would I tell? It was
one of the exercises Professor Grant had us do: pick an angle on an event and
try to come up with the way that you would go about writing an article from
that perspective.

We finally got to our seats and I started
setting up, taking out my camera to get action shots and taking a few pictures
of the steadily growing crowd. Some of the people attending the game were, I
knew, folks who attended the championship every year; they weren’t invested in
one team over another, but came just to enjoy that particular event. There were
also—obviously—those who were either students or alumni of either school,
crowding the stands in seas of school colors, faces painted and banners waving.
It was hard to separate myself from the intense emotions that everyone around
me was obviously feeling; I could barely hear the marching band for the other
team across the stadium, but they would have been loud indeed for the fans of
that school—just as our school’s marching band was on our side.

I snapped pictures of the crowd, capturing
a few banners. One of them made my stomach flip-flop inside of me; on our side,
a bunch of girls in school color bikinis and tiny shorts were waving a
hand-painted banner that read, “Win the Game and Get a Kiss, Zack!” I told
myself that I didn’t care—that I had broken up with him and he was a free
agent. I might have my regrets, but I couldn’t hold it against the girls that
they were cheering for a single guy and probably hoping to get invited to his
hotel room at the end of the night.

I started to fidget as the pre-game
dragged on; dance teams for both sides were doing routines, there were the
mascots to watch, and I wondered just how long it would take for the enormous
stadium to clear once the game was over. Jess was already having a good time,
chatting up a guy who was seated near us, teasing him about getting her a beer
and a hot dog because she was a poor, broke, college student who came here on
my charity. I tried not to laugh too obviously at her ruse and instead focus on
what was going on around me.
When is this
game even going to start?
I thought, with more than a little impatience.
More than anything, I wanted it to be over, the victory handed to one of the
teams so I could get back to the hotel room and spend the next several hours
dreading the interviews I would have to do—dreading having to interview Zack.

The teams ran out—ours first, unlike the
home games I had covered. I tried to keep myself from looking for him, but in
an instant, I spotted Zack running out with his team mates, his away jersey
spotless and vivid.

“He’s not looking too bad,” Jess commented
between cheers for our team.

They started their warm ups and I tried
not to watch Zack’s every movement as I caught a few pictures for the article;
I tried—I really tried—to make sure I was getting a fair sample of the whole
team in their exercises.

They took to the sidelines and the other
team came onto the field, looking just as energetic and just as strong. If
nothing else, I thought, it would definitely be a good game—there would be no
shutouts in this match. The other team’s crowd cheered while our side booed,
and my heart was pounding.
I don’t care
if we win,
I thought to myself; it would be nice if we did—my interviews
the next day with the different members of the team would go a lot more
smoothly if they weren’t all mourning their loss of the game—but on a personal
level, it didn’t bother me at all.
I
don’t care if we win, but please don’t let Zack get injured.

The entire crowd on both sides watched
with bated breath as the coaches went out for the coin toss. Even though it
happened at every game, there was a definite tension in the moment that was
gone from other games I’d gone to. I caught as many pictures as I could of the
two coaches walking up to the center of the field, waiting for the ref, and
then getting the result. The flip went to the other team, and they cheered
loudly enough to almost deafen our side.

I settled in to watch the game as the
teams took up their positions to start. I had done my research on the team we
were up against, just as I had for the previous article I had done. They were
known to have an aggressive offense-based strategy, which was similar to our
team’s typical M.O. I wondered if Coach Bullden had managed to turn up the heat
on the defensive line, and watched with interest as the first play started. For
the whole first quarter, it seemed like our team and the other team were
feeling each other out—neither side scored a point, but they were right on top
of each other, finding ways through the defenses, working out where the
weaknesses were. Every shift in the play—whether it was a pass, an
interception, or a tackle—brought cheers up from one side or the other, and I
half-wished I had brought ear plugs with me to at least muffle the huge amount of
noise.

The second quarter started and I found
myself watching Zack more and more. I could hear Jess flirting with the guy she
was wrapping around her little finger, but my attention was entirely on Zack.
He clearly wasn’t distracted or cracking under the pressure—he was on top of
the game, working hard, staying focused. It seemed to me like he was probably
not even remotely thinking about me, and while part of me was relieved, another
part was depressed. The second half went back and forth; we scored, and then
the other team managed to even the points; then, just like the first half,
everything was neck-and-neck, with the teams moving from one end of the field
to the other, not quite able to make a break through each other’s lines long
enough to get another touchdown. It was a nerve-wracking game, and the cheers
and shouts around me never abated for even a moment; if I wasn’t focused on
taking notes on the game, watching to try and work out the different
strategies, I might have been swept up in it myself.

The second half finally ended and the two
teams ran from the field to go back to the locker rooms to rest and get ready
for the back end of the game. The half-time show would be longer for this game
than usual, and I was looking forward to watching the marching bands perform.
The cheers cut back slightly, but didn’t die as the show got started. The two
marching bands came out onto the field and started up, getting ready to do
their competing routines. Even as I got excited, even as the two bands geared up
and began playing, my mind was on Zack. I pictured him in my head in the locker
room, drinking water or Gatorade, listening to Bullden catechizing the
team—telling them what they’d done wrong in the first half and getting them
hyped for the second half of the game. With a tie on the scoreboard, there’d be
pressure for both teams to try and get the first score right out of the gate.

I watched and didn’t watch as each
marching band took the field in turn. Our marching band went first, and I
absentmindedly sang along with the crowd as they went through their four songs,
recognizable classics that I thought had probably been played at every major
football game from the first year the songs came out. I took pictures of the
formations, grabbing as many as I could. I would have to ask Jess later on just
what had been played, because I wasn’t sure I would be able to remember it. But
I had the pictures, and I didn’t think the half-time show would be a major
focus of the article and the features anyway. When the other team’s marching
band took the field, I managed to pay a little more attention, catching a more
modern song—OK Go’s
Here it Goes Again
among the more classic selections. I got one or two pictures of their routine,
but it wasn’t important enough to do more than that.

“So what do you think about the first
half?” I asked someone near me.

I started collecting quotes, recording
people as best as I could in spite of the shrieking, screaming, cheering noise
that surrounded me. I grabbed a quote from Jess and the guy she was talking to
just as a matter of course—it probably wouldn’t make it to the final article,
but it gave me something to do while I was waiting for the game to start up
again.

From the start of the second half of the
game, it was clear that both teams were looking to create a lead and break the
tie. The two teams took the field with just as much energy as they had at the
beginning of the game, rushing out and looking absolutely determined. The other
team—the Wild Cats—managed to break through our defense and get a touch down
all in one play a few minutes into the third quarter. I was on my feet,
snapping pictures and taking notes in my mind and in my notebook throughout the
fraught quarter. Our team tried to even the score but couldn’t seem to quite
break through the other side’s defense. I thought to myself that the other
team’s coach, Gulder, had clearly stressed defense in his team’s half-time
briefing. I caught a few quick glances at the sidelines, watching the rest of
the team, watching the coaching staff pacing, working hard to try and find a
way to get that all-important score. The other team expanded their lead with
another touchdown, and there was a collective groan through our side of the
stadium while the other side shrieked.

I kept hoping that we would pull the lead
that the Wild Cats had on us closed; but as the third quarter ticked down to
the final seconds, we all knew it was impossible. We would have to have a
monumental fourth quarter—we would have to at least tie the other team in order
to get into overtime, where we might be able to pull ahead. It would really be
a miracle if we were able to pull ahead before regulation time ended.

At the beginning of the fourth quarter,
the first play by the other team—one of their key defensive players went down
and we made it halfway into their end of the field before one of the other
tackles brought our player down. We still had possession of the ball. The
defensive lineman was obviously hurt; he didn’t get up for a long time and the
refs came out to assess the situation. There was no penalty—the tackle had been
perfectly legal—but as medics came out and helped the player limp off of the
field, it was clear that he wouldn’t be playing for the remainder of the game.
It was his bad luck, I thought with a bit of sympathy.