“Did you think she was lying?”
Coach stared at me for several seconds before answering. “I didn’t see any marks on her … There was no sign at all of a physical struggle …”
“But there doesn’t have to be,” I said. “Sometimes there aren’t marks.”
“I know that,” he said. “But I also knew that she had quite the reputation. My assistant coaches had been telling me for months that she was bad news. Bad for Ryan. Always out at the clubs. Drinking and smoking and carrying on … And I’d even heard she was up before the honor council for cheating on an exam … So she wasn’t the most reliable girl … And Ryan was … well, he was Ryan. The golden boy. Heisman candidate. Good student. Squeaky-clean reputation.”
“So you didn’t believe her?” I said, boiling it down to its essence. “Did you?”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t believe her.”
“So you didn’t do anything?” I said, my heart pounding in my ears.
“Shea … You have to understand … I didn’t know what I now know … I only had the facts that I had at the time. And, based on those facts, it just didn’t add up. I really thought she was manufacturing the whole thing … exacting some kind of revenge because Ryan had broken up with her. I thought she wanted me to bench him for the bowl game. Get even. Hurt him the worst way you can hurt a ballplayer … And, beyond that, beyond destroying a football career, I was aware that this type of accusation could ruin a young man’s life. It’s serious if it’s true, of course, but it’s serious if it’s not true, too … And I didn’t think it was true. Not a shred of me believed that girl.”
“Did you at least talk to Ryan?” I asked. “Ask him about it?”
“Yes. Of course I did. Right after Tish left, I called him into my office and asked him what had happened. He told me a story that made more sense than hers. A story that I could … wrap my head around.”
“What did he tell you?” I said, knowing how convincing, downright slick, he could be.
“He told me that he’d broken up with her and that she was very hurt. Very angry … He said she came after him pretty hard, and he just defended himself. Like this.” Coach held up his arms, blocking his face. “He said he did push her out of his apartment, but only after she refused to leave. And he swore to me that he didn’t hurt her … And that was it …”
Coach threw his hands up in the air and shook his head. “It was a classic he-said, she-said, and, bottom line, I just didn’t believe that girl. In my mind, she wasn’t credible. He was. So yeah. I took his word over hers. A few days later, I did follow up with her.”
“And?”
“And she changed her tune … She changed her story. At least part of it. She maintained that he had roughed her up but said that the sex was ‘a little bit consensual’ …”
“A little bit?”
“Exactly. It either was or it wasn’t. Right?”
“Maybe she was scared. Maybe she knew you didn’t believe her.”
“And maybe she had made that part up.”
“Maybe,” I said, acknowledging that this was definitely a possibility. “So that was it?”
Coach nodded, avoiding my gaze.
“You didn’t do anything else?” I asked, my heart sinking.
“You have to remember, Shea … There are rules now about this sort of thing. Rules that say coaches have to report all incidents to the university president or athletic director or police. Or all three. But back then … there was nothing in place. I had never dealt with anything like that before …”
“Did you tell Connie?” I asked, unsure of why this mattered to me.
“No.”
I stared at him, frozen, out of questions.
“Does this … change things?” he asked softly.
I started to say no, because I wanted it to be the truth. But then I thought of Tish. It had changed everything for Tish. It had also changed everything for Ryan. Maybe even for Blakeslee and me. Hell, it had changed the course of history. If Coach had believed Tish’s story, at least enough to report it, the trajectory of Ryan’s entire career would have been different. Even if ultimately cleared of the charges, he likely wouldn’t have won the Heisman the following year, or gone nearly as high in the draft. It would have hurt Walker, too. Without Ryan on the field, we certainly wouldn’t have won the Cotton Bowl; and, without that win, we might not have had the recruiting classes in the years that followed, success begetting success. Walker might not be on the brink of a championship this season, and Coach and I might not be sitting here tonight, in his kitchen.