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He was alone in there when I walked in. I didn’t waste any time, since my coach was constantly reminding me what an extremely busy guy he was.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
He peered over his reading glasses at me. They were perched at the break in his nose, one he’d suffered at the hands of his best assistant coach a few years ago, after Kopka had fired him—mostly because the guy, Ryan Morrissey, was smarter than Kopka and a much better football coach. Morrissey was also tired of taking the blame for the boneheaded play-calling decisions that Kopka kept making.
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m working.”
“What Imeantwas what were you doing putting that scared little boy in at quarterback today?”
“He’s six four,” Kopka said. “Maybe a little scared today. Definitely not little.”
“Question remains the same.”
“I needed to find out what we’ve got with him.”
“That’s what training camp is for,” I said.
“It’s not as if your boyfriend was lighting things up before I sat his ass down.”
“Ex-husband. Not boyfriend. And irrelevant to this conversation. We’re talking about you, Coach. Not him.”
Kopka leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head and said, “Let’s just say I’m tired of him doing to the Wolves what he used to do to you.”
I knew he was trying to get a rise out of me. But I let it go. At least Joe Wolf had raised us to never punch down. My father hadn’t given us a lot of positive life lessons. But that was one of them.
“The only person who thought that kid was worth drafting was you.”
“I’m gonna make a pro quarterback out of him,” Kopka said. “It’s just gonna take a little time.”
“You could take until the end of time and not make an NFL quarterback out of him.”
“If you came down here to second-guess decisionsImake aboutmyteam, you best get out of my office now, lady.”
My team.
They all think it’s theirs.
“Ted gives us the best chance to win this season,” I said.
“Your father didn’t tell me who to play. So I’m certainly not going to let you do that.”
“Who do you plan to start at quarterback next week?”
“Not that it’s any of your goddamn business,” he said, “but I’m gonna announce on Wednesday that I’m going with the kid.”
“No, you’re not.”
He smiled, calmly took off his reading glasses, folded them and placed them on his desk.
Then he stood up, as if the simple act of doing that would terrify me.
“This meeting is over.”
“Sit down.”
“Excuseme?”
“This meeting is over when I say it’s over,” I said, my eyes locked on his. The girl who’d grown up with three brothers and never taken any shit from any of them. “Now sityourass down.”
