My eyes go wide. “You’re kidding.”

“Oh yeah. It was a whole thing. Unfortunately, there wasn’t another soul on this campus, other than maybe me, that agreed with him, and he got outvoted. Shame what happened that year.”

I frown. “Is that the year of the fight? When the game was forfeited?”

“That was the year,” Figg says, nodding slowly like he’s remembering it all.

“What happened back then, anyway? Everyone always refers to it as a brawl. I’m picturing gladiator-level fighting out on the field.” I chuckle.

“You’re not too far off,” Figg says. “Your Birdie never told you this story?”

“No, sir,” I tell him. “She always waves it off when I ask.”

“Well, you know your dad was the captain his senior year, too.” He looks at me and I nod. Every so often he’d wear his old jersey with the tattered C sewn to the chest. “He was pretty set on taking the high road and not doing any pranks at all. I think that really made Taylor upset, because they love the pranking tradition almost as much as Crenshaw does, right? They decided they were going to pull an epic prank at the homecoming game.” Figg shakes his head.

“Did they start the fight? Was that the prank?”

“Oh, no. Nothing like that. The pranks can sometimes get out of hand, but they always start out relatively innocuous. The Taylor team had gotten word that one of our players had a pregnant girlfriend.” Figg rolls his eyes. “I guess they thought this was something worth calling out, and they came running out of their huddle that night with beach balls shoved under their jerseys. All fifty of them. I honestly don’t know how they got past their coaches like that. But of course, everyone in the stands was laughing, and the entire Crenshaw team was embarrassed on behalf of their teammate. When the captains met in the middle for the coin toss, there were words exchanged. And then words became shoving, and shoving turned into a bench-clearing, all-out battle in a matter of seconds. Or, as you put it, a gladiator-level fight.” He shrugs. “And of course, we had to forfeit the game.”

“Wow,” I say, picturing a hundred football players on the field just pounding the crap out of one another. Not a pretty sight.

“Yeah, it wasn’t our proudest Guardsmen moment, that’s for sure,” Figg says. “And not one that a lot of people in Meridien like to remember. That’s probably why your grandmother never talks about it. If it happens to come up, don’t you tell her I was the one who spilled the beans. I’ll never be invited to dinner again.” He laughs.

“I promise I won’t throw you under the bus,” I say, laughing too.