I Will Never Tell You The Secrets of Success on the Field and In Business by Coach X

 

They say the sports biography racket is a tough game.  It is.  But anyone who thinks I’m not tough enough gets to meet a headbutt from feared linebacker Conrad Dobler.  As told to me.

This is a cutthroat business.  An athlete or coach is about to talk, to as told, and the vultures start circling.  I’m not above it.  Circling’s my business too.

Drench Cranen spent fourteen months spotting Tom Thibodeau in a dank basement slowly working anecdotes about how to succeed in basketball and in life in between bench presses.  Then Drench Cranen was spotted falling 14 stories from the Tribune tower.  They say he jumped.  Money problems.  Three weeks later I see The Ice Man Yelleth by Tom Thibodeau with Frank Manztek from the Trib creeping up the bestseller list.

Back in the ‘90s, I got a telegram telling me that Mike Tyson wanted to write another book.  This was right after the ear biting.  I knew it was too good to be true, but if I was wrong, if another writer got to him and asked him “why’d you bite that guy” I could never live it down.  The telegram told me to meet him an abandoned meat packing plant in Queens.  There was someone there, alright.  It wasn’t Tyson but it was certainly someone who had pugilistic experience.  I guess Mitch Albom was not too happy I started interviewing his old professor on Mondays.  At least that’s what I think happened.  The goon he sent was much better at repeatedly showing me the location of my liver with his fist than explaining himself.

You have to have good instincts in this business.  “There’s pain behind these goggles,” is what Éric Gagné told me when we met to start working on his book.  “There’s plenty of green behind ‘em too,” is what I said.  I knew at that point we weren’t going to work together, though he made that clearer when he demonstrated the circle change grip on my face.

They told me there was some young coach out in the midwest who took a team to a bowl game after they threw out the old coach at the last minute.  Nasty stuff.  Ogres involved.  Everyone thought this kid would get eighty-sixed into the lake, but I got a tip to head out there and check it out after they won a couple of games.  I was free in early November and already in Wisconsin after the publishers canceled my book with Craig Counsell called From Brewer Boy to Miller Man: Why I’ll Never Leave Milwaukee.    

You never approach a sports personality through an agent or a team communications person.  That’s a good way to get the word out.  Next thing you know, you’re getting a free ride in Mike Lupica’s trunk while he goes to interview Jason Grimsley.  I like to approach them in a dank alley or in a parking garage.  I heard Rick Reilly hides in their houses and slowly descends from their ceiling while saying things like "They told him that basketball players couldn't play tight end.  But then again, he never had much patience for gatekeepers, even if it was in his name: Antonio Gates."

I thought I had worked out a good system to get to this Braun guy, but someone had dropped a dime on me by the time I had gotten to Evanston.  Maybe it was the shifty looking cabby who seemed a little too interested in my book on both guys named Vernon Wells.  Maybe it was the guy standing a little too close to the airport phonebooth.  Either way, I got a nasty present waiting for me at the hotel, someone grabbing the back of my neck.  “Stay away from Braun if you know what’s good for yous,” he said.  I don’t know what’s good for mes.  “I was expecting flowers,” I said.  What I was actually expecting was the inevitable sap to the back of the head.  Henchmen are always a tough crowd.

I woke up in a dumpster in an alley under the train tracks.  The guys who worked me over thoughtfully gave me a spit of expired gyros meat for a pillow.  The train rumbled overhead and the drizzle helped usher the meat grease from my hair into my eyes.  Good for the skin, I guess. The Greek Treatment.  It was a long hike back to the hotel but I needed the fresh air and didn’t trust a cab.  The doctor had told me I should stop getting hit in the back of the head.  That was three saps, two blackjacks, and a ceremonial parliamentary mace ago.  After Tony La Russa hit me at his golf tournament to raise money for drunk showbiz chimpanzees because I told him he should’ve brought in a lefty when he shanked one bad enough that it went into the Celebrity Ape Gallery.  Nearly made Dustin check out.  I lost out on writing Gifted Handedness: The Tony La Russa Story.

I crawled back to the hotel looking for a shower and a nap and I got neither.  Someone had been in my room looking for something, and it looked like how my head felt.  I was about to pick up the phone to have a full and frank discussion with the manager about their key policy when it started to ring.  I picked it up.  The voice was badly disguised.  Someone was trying to do a cockney accent.  “You won’t find yer book ‘ere,” the voice said.  “Braun’s a puppet, poppet.  You ‘ave no idea. When they win The Hat.” “Shouldn’t it be The ‘At?” I said.  They hung up.

Something was off.  I decided to fish around the practice facility.  By the time I got there the night was busy putting out the last few ashes of the afternoon.  I decided to hide out by the dumpster until it got completely dark.  Sometimes I wish someone told me how often I’d spend my evenings siring lady dumpster around a loading dock before I decided to become a sports personality biographer.

I figure about an hour passed when I saw something flicker from inside the dumpster.  Someone was lighting up a smoke.  Maybe it was a janitor taking a break.  Maybe it was some knuckle-duster out to get the jump on me.  I decided to investigate but as soon as I opened the lid I heard a voice.  “Keep it closed,” he said.  “Stay there.  We need to talk.”  A puff of nicotine wafted from the lid.

“He’ll never let you get close.  He doesn’t want anyone to know he’s pulling the strings.  And he’ll kill you if you figure out his secrets to winning on the gridiron and in the board room.  You can trust me on this.  I'm close.  I'm not exactly against the new guy, but against the world.  But you'll never get to him.”

“Who?” I yelled.  “Who?”  “What are you, some kind of owl?" he said. I grabbed the lid and flung it open ready to give this fella an ornithology lecture with my left and my right but he was gone.  The dumpster wasn’t a dumpster at all.  It was a fake, and it had a false bottom.  I tried to climb in but the door at the bottom was bolted fast.  Even if the guy I talked to was only capable of moving a few yards at a time, he'd be long gone before I got it open.

I had nothing to do but to walk back to the hotel.  I only closed the door and loosened my tie when someone knocked.  Telegram.  It simply said “meet me in Little Birmingham.”  “What the hell is Little Birmingham?” I wondered.  “You can see it right over there,” the telegram man said.  I turned my head and that’s when the blackjack came out.  This time, the lug made a mistake.  I hadn’t taken off my hat yet, which contained a small but resilient helmet shell within the lining specifically to ward off blows to the back of the head.  I ordered from the back of a magazine I got at the doctor’s office called What’s That? A Magazine for the Frequently Bludgeoned.

I whirled around and socked the man telegram operator in the jaw.  He was a oaf, the type of guy who looks like he spends a lot of time in a single-strap unitard.  I grabbed the sap and sent him a telegram of my own with a few full stops around the skull.

Little Birmingham did in fact happen to be right where the telegram guy was pointing before he tried to put my lights out.  It was only a few blocks away but it felt like a different world.  I thought it would be pockets of industrial England selling peas and textiles.  Wrong Birmingham.  There were rows of stores selling Birmingham Stallions nick-knacks.  “Y’all come in here,” they all called to me from their stores.  I had no idea what I was looking for, but I knew I was in a dangerous spot.  Suddenly, I was surrounded by a group of large men in 2022 World Games Fistball Champions sweatshirts and hustled into a vacant storefront at the end of the block.  They shoved me down a staircase into a dark basement.  At least no one gave me a knock on the bean.

“You’ve been asking a lot of questions around here,” a voice said to me in the dark.

“I just want to know if the coach who is winning games at Northwestern wants write a book about Leadership,” I said.

“Then you are asking the wrong person.  Let me ask you something, do you think a defensive coordinator from North Dakota State could orchestrate a 21 point comeback against P.J. Fleck and his All Anagram Defense?  Do you think he could figure out how to stop the UTEP rushing attack in the second half?  Do you think he could do all of that while scouting players for the USFL supplementary draft?”

“USFL?  Wait, a minute, are you…?"

“Who I am is none of your concern.  I’m running a USFL team as well as four other college teams you don’t know about, two NFL teams, the Fehérvár Enthroners, two lacrosse teams, and a team in a sport so secretive you’ve never even heard of it.  My family has been doing this for generations.  And I don’t need any two-bit hacks digging into it.  They already are getting close on what my father did to Ryan Day.”

“What you’re going to get from this project is nothing,” he continued.  “No interviews.  No nuggets.  No secrets of success from the quarterback room to the board room.  No analogies for overcoming adversity on the gridiron and in life.  You will stop.  You will go back to writing about golfers or basketball players or polo players for all I care, but your questions about Northwestern football stop.”

“So why would you tell me all of this?”

“To be honest, what I’m doing is very impressive and I’m sick of secrets.  I am sick of seeing this gape-mouth clod get the accolades while I sit here in the shadows.  But of course you can’t be trusted."  "Klaus!" he yelled suddenly. "Kristian!” I could hear the two burliest fistballers clomping down the stairs.  I knew they were itching to practice their new passing techniques on my kidneys.

“Look out!” I yelled.  "It’s former Louisana Tech Athletic Director Bruce Van De Velde!”

The mystery coach fell out of his chair.  In the confusion, I bowled over either Klaus or Kristian and then shoved the other Klaus or Kristian out of the way before sprinting out of the storefront and making a beeline out of Little Birmingham.

I did not even go back to the hotel where there would certainly be another bigger and meaner galoot waiting there to play the accordion on my spine.  Instead, I headed straight for the train station where I wanted to put as much distance between me and Evanston as possible.

This is a nasty business and a nasty town.  I now understood the lawn signs I saw that said "We've had enough" with the N and U capitalized.  I had eNoUgh as well.  I got back to the office but there was a dame waiting for me there.  She was dressed in the widow’s black and looked like she was working directly for Trouble, Inc.

“Please help me,” she said.  “I cannot sleep.  I cannot eat.  I simply must know how Brad Underwood feels about how success on the court can translate to success in business and in life.”