“I can’t thank you enough for doing this, Jamar. Those kids needed to hear from someone like you, someone who’s been on the field recently and not twenty years ago like me.” Coach Green squeezed his shoulder. “Not everybody can reach players the way you just did. You’ve got something special there.”

“Um…thanks,” Jamar said, the words striking a chord he had been unprepared for. He’d come here to help out his former coach, with no expectation of getting anything in return. But he couldn’t deny how incredible it felt to look into those players’ faces and realize that he was making a difference.

Coach Green gave him another firm pat on the shoulder. “Shoot me a text if you can make it to next Saturday’s game. I’ll have sideline passes for both of you at will call.”

As they walked away from the group of players, Taylor leaned over and whispered, “I was ready to pick up a helmet and run out on the field myself after listening to you.”

Jamar chuckled. “I can see that. Powerhouse Powell, kicking ass and taking names across the Big Twelve Conference.”

“Powerhouse. I like it.” She tipped her head in the direction of Coach Green. “He was right, you know. You’re pretty good at giving pep talks.”

“I’ve listened to my share,” Jamar said.

“So I guess I’ll have to learn to like football if I want to build a clientele of football players,” she said.

“I’ll bet by the end of these two months you’re going to wonder how you ever lived without football,” Jamar said.

“You care to place money on that?”

He laughed at her flat tone, but his amusement swiftly dissipated at the sight of Alec Mooney approaching. His blog and podcast were lauded as the gold standard in college football. Jamar appreciated him because he was fair and didn’t rely on sensationalism to get his point across. He also liked that Alec always carried around a slim notebook, as if he were single-handedly trying to bring back old-school reporting.

Still, Jamar’s relationship with the media had been a bumpy one. They’d treated him as the darling of Texas football since high school, a kid who had it all: brains, brawn, and the type of easygoing personality that made reporters gravitate toward him. As a straitlaced kid from a two-parent, middle-income suburban household, he defied the stereotype that the NFL was comprised of young black men who used football as their only way out of inner-city poverty.