The field goal would have to travel 64 yards, and kicking it between the goalposts – into a fickle wind – would make the feat all the more difficult. With only one tick remaining on the clock and his final timeout burned, however, Ocean State University coach Miller Faber had little choice.
The chances of a successful Hail Mary were slim – Evergreen Tech had stymied the Sharks’ passing attack all night – and Merrill Quatro regularly booted 60-plus yarders at practice.
No, with his squad down 23-21, the quirky sidewinder was his best option.
“Kicking team!” Faber shouted.
Quatro slipped on his helmet and before taking the field, stopped and looked at his coach.
“Which one am I gonna get, coach?” Quatro asked.
“What are you talking about?” Faber replied, watching as the rest of his team prepared to line up on the Evergreen 47-yard line. “Which what?”
“You know, one of your clichés. I think the first one came at the team meeting my freshman year, about how football is like the game of life. That’s a good one … makes me chuckle.”
Faber was irritated. A berth in the Begonia Bowl was on the line, and winning this game – on the road against more than 50,000 mostly hostile fans – was all Faber was thinking about.
“Son,” Faber snapped. “Right now isn’t the time or the place … I used up all the rah-rah stuff in the locker room and I’m not in a joking mood. Why don’t you just go out there and do what you’ve done a thousand times, OK?”
Quatro took a few steps forward and then turned around.
“It’s just that I’ve had four years to think about it, and it seems too simplistic,” Quatro said. “I understand in football, as in life, we face adversity and have to overcome challenges, so I get where you’re coming from. But every game we know there are going to be four, 15-minute quarters, a 20-minute halftime, and the game will end with a winner and a loser, even if it takes overtime. Life isn’t that cut and dried.”
Faber shook his head.
“Just get out there, dammit!” Faber screamed.
Quatro scampered onto the field behind the holder, took two quick digs into the turf with his right foot, and waited for the snap to the holder.
Before the ball came spiraling out of the hands of the center, though, Tech called a timeout in an effort to ice the kicker.
Quatro headed back to the sideline.
“See,” he said. “That’s a perfect example. “They still had a timeout they could use, but in life sometimes you don’t have a timeout. Sometimes you have no time … and sometimes you have a lot of time. Really, I don’t think life is a game at all. And football? It’s just football. If it’s like anything, it’s like rugby. You know, rugby started at the Rugby School in England back in 1845 …”
Faber vigorously rubbed his forehead with his left hand, and pulled his cap off with his right.
“Merrill,” he said. “For the love of all that’s holy, will you just please kick the ball? As a favor … to me. Hit it, miss it, I don’t even care at this point. Let’s just end this conversation, and then you can end the game.”
Quatro winked and double-timed back to his spot.
There were no more timeouts to be called, so the ball was snapped, placed down by the holder, and quickly met with the thunderous thud of his instep.
Quatro watched the ball break slightly to the right before curving back to the left, easily splitting the posts and clearing the crossbar with plenty of room to spare.
The few hundred Ocean State fans on hand erupted in cheers, while the rest of the fans sat in stunned silence as their team had lost on one of the longest field goals ever kicked in college football.
The holder – a backup quarterback – lifted Quatro into the air, and many of his teammates joined in the celebration. Quatro glanced at Faber, who was smiling and shaking his head.
As a philosophy major, the kicker was often engaging his mentor in conversations that had little to do with sports, and the coach ribbed him about his high mindedness – sometimes with a touch of exasperation. Faber usually countered by pulling an old chestnut from his bag of coachspeak.
This time, Quatro used the off-the-wall banter during the timeout to keep from overthinking his career-defining field goal.
“Helluva boot, Merrill!” said Faber, who nudged his way into the pile of humanity to give the kicker a hug and pat on the helmet. “So, tell me, smartass … which of my words of wisdom did you think about when you made that kick? Was it the one about tough times don’t last but tough people do, or maybe how sports doesn’t build character, it reveals it?”
“Actually coach, this was one time I wasn’t thinking about any of your clichés.”
Quatro held up both hands and rubbed his fingers together.
“I just remember you telling me an NFL kicker makes more than $2 million a year.”