Skin in the Game Read Online Free
championship that year as either he or Lund.
All right, maybe a woman as a football coach wasn’t completely insane.
“Well, what do you have to say?” Stu prodded.
“Nothing,” Cade answered firmly, although he felt a twinge of regret as he said it. He wanted to play again. Badly. He just hadn’t expected an opportunity to come this soon…or in this way. “We’ll just have to pass on this opportunity, Stu. It’s not like there won’t be others.
And besides, I don’t want to get a reputation as an itinerant ‘gun for hire’ who goes back to being a benchwarmer the minute the anointed starter recovers.” I am the anointed starter. And at this point in his life, he’d rather retire than settle for less. He didn’t need the money. Hell, Stu didn’t need it, either; Cade’s success, both on the football field and through endorsement contracts, had lined his agent’s pockets nearly as well as his own.
If this turned out to be his one and only opportunity to get back on the field, he would miss the game like hell. But he couldn’t believe it would be his only chance, and he also wasn’t going to back out on his promise to the man who’d practically raised him. This was just the first crumb being thrown at his feet. The Vikings were a team on the rebound, and Cade wasn’t interested in being their first date.
Stu sighed. “You couldn’t be there by noon?” His voice held a pleading note, and Cade knew this was more about salvaging his credibility after making a promise than any hope that Cade would actually take the job—if it were even offered.
He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Noon might actually be doable. Coach Lund had asked him to come by between nine and ten in the morning to fill out the necessary paperwork for the district’s mandatory background check and for a primer on the team’s roster, strengths, and weaknesses. That would take an hour at most, but Cade wouldn’t be able to take over coaching the team until the background checks were completed and the district signed off all the approvals—apparently, it was harder to get approval to volunteer at a school these days than to get a job at one—and that would take a day or two.
So, what harm could it do? None, really. Going to the try-out wasn’t a commitment from him any more than asking him to come was a commitment of an offer from the team. Even if one was forthcoming, he could say no. And in the long run, he had a better chance of getting the kind of offer he was looking for if he could demonstrate other teams’ interest in him than if he had no nibbles at all.
Those were all the rational reasons to agree, but the real reason he did was the hollow feeling in the center of his chest when he imagined a future without football.
***
Angie came home to find her father sitting in his favorite armchair, its tattered upholstery protected by a quilt her mother had made years before, with the football game blaring from the TV. This came as no surprise, of course. He’d never done anything else on Sunday afternoons from August through February for as long as she could remember.
Of course, she had all those afternoons to thank for her encyclopedic knowledge of the game, since she’d spent nearly every one of them either on her father’s lap or at his knee, listening in fascination as he explained every formation, every play call, every stratagem. What had begun purely as an attempt by the only girl in a houseful of boys to monopolize a small portion of her father’s attention had grown into both a passion and a calling. Thanks to her father’s tutelage and her uncanny ability to analyze spatial patterns and mathematical probabilities, she’d worked her way from the strange girl who liked football way too much into a position as assistant coach—and for the next few weeks, anyway, head coach.
She walked into the living room and greeted her dad with a peck on his stubbled cheek.
“Hey,
All right, maybe a woman as a football coach wasn’t completely insane.
“Well, what do you have to say?” Stu prodded.
“Nothing,” Cade answered firmly, although he felt a twinge of regret as he said it. He wanted to play again. Badly. He just hadn’t expected an opportunity to come this soon…or in this way. “We’ll just have to pass on this opportunity, Stu. It’s not like there won’t be others.
And besides, I don’t want to get a reputation as an itinerant ‘gun for hire’ who goes back to being a benchwarmer the minute the anointed starter recovers.” I am the anointed starter. And at this point in his life, he’d rather retire than settle for less. He didn’t need the money. Hell, Stu didn’t need it, either; Cade’s success, both on the football field and through endorsement contracts, had lined his agent’s pockets nearly as well as his own.
If this turned out to be his one and only opportunity to get back on the field, he would miss the game like hell. But he couldn’t believe it would be his only chance, and he also wasn’t going to back out on his promise to the man who’d practically raised him. This was just the first crumb being thrown at his feet. The Vikings were a team on the rebound, and Cade wasn’t interested in being their first date.
Stu sighed. “You couldn’t be there by noon?” His voice held a pleading note, and Cade knew this was more about salvaging his credibility after making a promise than any hope that Cade would actually take the job—if it were even offered.
He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Noon might actually be doable. Coach Lund had asked him to come by between nine and ten in the morning to fill out the necessary paperwork for the district’s mandatory background check and for a primer on the team’s roster, strengths, and weaknesses. That would take an hour at most, but Cade wouldn’t be able to take over coaching the team until the background checks were completed and the district signed off all the approvals—apparently, it was harder to get approval to volunteer at a school these days than to get a job at one—and that would take a day or two.
So, what harm could it do? None, really. Going to the try-out wasn’t a commitment from him any more than asking him to come was a commitment of an offer from the team. Even if one was forthcoming, he could say no. And in the long run, he had a better chance of getting the kind of offer he was looking for if he could demonstrate other teams’ interest in him than if he had no nibbles at all.
Those were all the rational reasons to agree, but the real reason he did was the hollow feeling in the center of his chest when he imagined a future without football.
***
Angie came home to find her father sitting in his favorite armchair, its tattered upholstery protected by a quilt her mother had made years before, with the football game blaring from the TV. This came as no surprise, of course. He’d never done anything else on Sunday afternoons from August through February for as long as she could remember.
Of course, she had all those afternoons to thank for her encyclopedic knowledge of the game, since she’d spent nearly every one of them either on her father’s lap or at his knee, listening in fascination as he explained every formation, every play call, every stratagem. What had begun purely as an attempt by the only girl in a houseful of boys to monopolize a small portion of her father’s attention had grown into both a passion and a calling. Thanks to her father’s tutelage and her uncanny ability to analyze spatial patterns and mathematical probabilities, she’d worked her way from the strange girl who liked football way too much into a position as assistant coach—and for the next few weeks, anyway, head coach.
She walked into the living room and greeted her dad with a peck on his stubbled cheek.
“Hey,