what the fuck was that throw at the end lmao
QB should have just ran it smh
Invictus
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Captain Canada
Topic author - Posts: 8021
- Joined: 01 Dec 2018, 00:15
Invictus
EA gonna EA, brother. We fighting for our lives over here
And then you wonder why Zane and Johntay are out here talking about transferring. Poverty QB play.
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Captain Canada
Topic author - Posts: 8021
- Joined: 01 Dec 2018, 00:15
-
Captain Canada
Topic author - Posts: 8021
- Joined: 01 Dec 2018, 00:15
Invictus
Season V | Chapter VII - Golden Child
Zane sat hunched over at the desk in the corner of his condo, the glow from his laptop reflecting against tired eyes. The rest of the place sat quiet around him. Upstairs, his bedroom remained dark. The television downstairs had long since been shut off. Outside his window, Syracuse’s campus had settled into the eerie calm that only came late at night, when the buzz of student life finally dulled into distant footsteps and the occasional passing car.
His fingers dragged around the trackpad absentmindedly as he scrolled through NIL evaluations, endorsement rankings, and projected market values for college athletes.
He couldn’t stop thinking about what Johntay had said.
At first, Zane had tried to brush it off as just more locker room talk. More noise. But the words had rooted themselves somewhere deep in his brain and refused to leave.
Legacy mattered. A challenge mattered. That meant where he played mattered too.
Syracuse had made perfect sense when he had committed. It had honestly been exactly what he needed at the time. Close enough to Pittsburgh if things ever went sideways back home. A head coach in Coach Brown that kept things honest with him instead of selling fantasies. A place where could step on the field immediately and prove himself against solid competition.
But now? Now the cracks were starting to show.
Syracuse had come off an awful season and looked headed toward another disappointing one. The roster just wasn’t where the top schools were. He had barely gotten on campus and already felt like the best player on the team.
That realization bothered him more than he wanted to admit. It was almost too easy to enjoy now.
Practice wasn’t even a challenge anymore.
Sure, Johntay kept things interesting. He was still the one guy that pushed him daily. A real mentor. Somebody who understood the gave at a level Zane respected deeply. But outside of that, Zane already felt himself going through the motions half the time.
Syracuse was safe.
He understood the environment already. Understood the locker room politics. Understood how to maneuver through campus life here.
But was this all college football was supposed to offer him? Zane leaned back slowly in his chair, rubbing both hands over his face.
His eyes drifted back toward the screen.
Jeremiah Smith at Ohio State. Malachi Toney at Miami. Cam Coleman at Texas.
Serious numbers. Serious players.
Serious teams.
Every single one of them played under the brightest lights in college football. Top programs. National Championship expectations. NFL pipelines.
Meanwhile, Zane was torching New Hampshire and getting his brains beat in against USC while Ajani scrambled for his life behind an offensive line that collapsed every other snap.
If the ball wasn’t getting to him, the offense barely moved. And when it did get to him, half the passes felt like suicide balls thrown directly into incoming traffic.
It had to be more than this. Didn’t it?
Zane’s jaw tightened. For the first time since arriving at Syracuse, he seriously allowed himself to imagine wearing another uniform.
Michigan - the school that never seemed to leave him or his situation. The warm beaches of Miami. Maybe even heading back home to Penn State.
Big stages. Big games. The thought both excited and disgusted him.
Part of him still felt guilty for even thinking it. Coach Brown had believed in him. The staff had handed him the keys immediately. The city already adored him. The fanbase treated him like a savior.
And yet, he still felt restless. A hunger not yet quenched. Still felt unfinished.
Zane shut the laptop harder than he intended and leaned back deeply into his office chair. He rubbed at his eyes again before staring blankly out the nearby window.
The Syracuse campus looked still tonight. Calm. Orange streetlights washed softly over the sidewalks. The quad looked almost peaceful from up here.
His hand reached for his phone almost instinctively. He scrolled down his contacts until Johntay’s name appeared. Zane hesitated for only a second before typing out a message about looking for representation.
Zane exhaled slowly and tossed the phone onto the desk in front of him before leaning back once more.
Outside, the campus remained still.
…
Needing to get out of his own head for a while, Zane threw on a hoodie and stepped outside into the cool Syracuse night.
He decided to keep his walk short. He had an early-morning lift tomorrow, and Coach Brown’s strength staff had already made it painfully clear that showing up slugging was not tolerated. Still, he needed air. Needed space away from the condo walls that suddenly felt too tight around him.
The quad stretched out quietly beneath the dim glow of campus lights. Fallen leaves scraped softly across the pavement whenever the wind picked up. The buzz of Frosh Week and the chaos surrounding the start of football season had finally begun to die down. Students had settled into routines now. Fewer crowds wandered around screaming into the night. However drunken packs moved between dorms and frat houses.
This was the version of campus Zane liked. Quiet enough to think. Quiet enough to hear himself.
His hands stayed buried in the pockets of his hoodie as he wandered slowly across the sidewalk, his sneakers scuffing lightly against the pavement. His mind kept circling back to everything at once. Football. Syracuse. Bianca. His father. NIL. Transfer thoughts.
Every thought felt unfinished.
He exhaled sharply through his nose and kept walking.
As he passed the campus cafe, he noticed the lights were still on inside. Through the front windows, he spotted outside wiping down the patio tables with a rag.
Zane slowed his pace instinctively.
The girl moved methodically between tables, earbuds tucked into her ears as she cleaned. He wandered over carefully, not wanting to sneak up on her in the dark.
She sensed him approaching anyway. Her eyes narrowed slightly at first before recognition flickered across her face.
“If it isn’t our coffee thief,” she said, amusement woven through her voice.
Zane immediately felt himself grin despite the heaviness that had followed him outside.
He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and chuckled softly. “Oh, you remember that?”
She smiled to herself as she continued wiping down the table in front of her.
“It’s not every day you see karma go to work live.”
Zane laughed quietly under his breath. “I don’t really know what came over me there,” he admitted. “I guess she caught me in a bad ass mood.”
The girl nodded like she understood more than he had actually said out loud.
“Happens.”
She straightened up after finishing the table and nodded her head toward the cafe entrance.
“Come on. I’m closing up.”
Zane followed her inside. The cafe felt completely different without the usual flood of students crowding the counters and tables. The low hum of refrigerators and coffee machines filled the silence. Chairs sat flipped upside down on several tables while the scent of espresso still lingered heavily in the air.
Under the warmer lighting inside, Zane got a better look at her.
She was light-skinned with long black braids cascading down past her shoulders. There was something strikingly balanced about her appearance. Softness and sharpness blended together seamlessly. Feminine without trying too hard. Poised in a way that felt natural rather than practiced. The kind of face that looked effortlessly photogenic no matter the angle.
She caught him studying her for a second too long and raised an eyebrow slightly.
Zane cleared his throat. “I never actually introduced myself, he said. “I’m Zane.”
He extended his hand. The girl looked at it for a moment before taking, a small smirk tugging at the corner of her lips.
“Marie,” she replied.
Her hand felt warm against his. For the first time in what felt like weeks, Zane realized his mind had gone quiet.
Cam sat on the floor of his dorm room with his back pressed against the wooden bedpost, staring blankly across the room at the open suitcase laying on the ground.
Half-packed was generous. It looked more like a pile of frustration than luggage.
T-shirts hung halfway out of the zipper. Socks and hoodies had been thrown in carelessly. A pair of cleats sat beside the suitcase instead of inside it, like even they hadn’t fully accepted he was leaving yet.
The room itself felt hollow already. Like Purdue had started erasing him before he had even officially gone.
Cam rubbed both hands over his face slowly before letting them fall into his lap. He hadn’t meant for any of this to happen.
That was the part of eating at him most.
He hadn’t walked into Coach Odom’s office trying to quit football. He hadn’t gone in there trying to get pushed off the team entirely. He just wanted consideration. Opportunity. Some acknowledgement that he belonged.
He felt like he had earned at least that much. Instead, he had walked out feeling smaller than he ever had in his life.
Not even on the team anymore. Deferring most of his classes this semester to online courses until he could figure out his next move.
His phone buzzed again beside him. Another text. Cam barely looked at it.
The last few hours had been full of them. Some teammates sounded annoyed with him. Others sounded disappointed A couple had tried reaching out sincerely, telling him not to spiral or make any rash decisions.
Then, there was Brice. His quarterback had sent exactly one word.
“Pussy.”
Cam scoffed bitterly under his breath at the memory.
They hadn’t even been close like that. Brice just carried himself that way naturally. Crude. Arrogant. Hints of disrespects. The type of dude who treated every interaction like a competition he needed to win.
Still, the text stuck with him more than he wanted it to.
His eyes drifted back toward the suitcase. Here he was thinking he was some real Division I receiver.
A year ago, barely anybody wanted him coming out of Upper St. Clair. He hadn’t been some five-star prodigy with schools lined up around the block begging for his signature. He had worked for this.
And now? Now he was flaming out before had even finished his first term of college.
The thought made his stomach twist violently.
Cam grabbed his phone again despite himself. He already knew what he was about to do before he even unlocked it.
Safari opened automatically. His recent searches sat right there waiting for him.
“Zane Jones Syracuse.”
Cam clicked it. Immediately, article after article filled the screen.
Highlights. Interviews Graphics. Watchlists.
“Freshman sensation.” “College football’s breakout star.”
His jaw tightened harder with every scroll. Zane was everywhere. The country’s leader in receiving yards. Already appearing on Biletnikoff Award watchlists as the best receiver in college football.
Zane. His former best friend.
Cam’s thumb stopped moving. A bitterness spread slowly through his chest like poison.
The friend who had abandoned him. Who always needed the spotlight. Who couldn’t stand the idea of Cam becoming his own person.
Who overreacted the second Cam stopped accepting being Robin to Zane’s Batman.
At least, that was the story Cam kept feeding himself. The alternative hurt too much.
Could he have been wrong/ The thought crept in unwanted. Cam immediately shoved it back down.
No.
Coach Odom was blind. Rebecca didn’t care enough about what he was going through. Zane had held him back.
He needed those things to be true. Needed someone else to blame.
Otherwise all of this landed back on him. And he wasn’t ready for that yet.
Head coach Fran Brown sat at the long oak conference table with his coordinators flanking either side of him, the atmosphere inside the room carrying the stale heaviness of a conversation nobody particularly wanted to have.
Jeff Nixon sat to Fran’s left, broad-shouldered and heavy-set beneath a Syracuse hoodie stretched across his frame. His bald head reflected the harsh overhead lighting while the black goatee framing his mouth twitched occasionally whenever someone said something he disagreed with. For most of the meeting, though, Nixon kept his eyes lowered toward the table itself, refusing to meet the gaze of the alumni and collective representatives sitting across from them.
On Fran’s right sat defensive coordinator John Scott, another black man with a Syracuse baseball cap pulled low over his brow. He thumbed methodically through a packet of documents laid before him, barely participating so far beyond the occasional grunt or nod.
Across the table sat the governing members of the One Orange Alliance, Syracuse’s third-party NIL collective responsible for helping facilitate endorsement and compensation opportunities for Syracuse athletics.
At the end of the table sat Valerie Goodwin.
The middle-aged white woman carried herself with the polished sharpness of someone who had spent decades controlling rooms exactly like this one. Her long cherry-red hair had been pulled tightly into a pristine bun, matching almost perfectly with the deep red lipstick painted across her lips. Every movement she made felt deliberate.
To her immediate right sat Andrew Bishop, a heavy-set white man squeezed tightly into a charcoal suit that looked like it had fit comfortably several years ago and had been fighting for survival ever since. He dabbed lightly at sweat near his temple before glancing back down toward the papers in front of him.
Valerie folded her hands neatly together atop the table.
“So,” she began smoothly, eyes shifting toward Fran, “how are we forecasting retention for some of our more talented underclassmen heading into next season?”
Fran leaned back slightly in his chair.
He rubbed his large hands together slowly, thinking.
“I don’t foresee Ajani hitting the portal again,” he finally answered. “I think we’re solid there at quarterback moving forward.”
He paused briefly.
“Yasin might explore his options, though. But honestly, I think that’s manageable. A slight bump in what he’s getting now could probably keep him around.”
Andrew still hadn’t fully looked up from the paperwork.
“What about Damien Williams?” he asked.
Nixon immediately started shaking his head before Fran could even answer.
“No,” he said bluntly. “He almost certainly gone.”
His deep voice carried frustration now.
“He already feeling slighted about his playing time, and honestly, I get it. Zane came in and exploded immediately. Damien older than him and getting completely overshadowed.”
Valerie slowly clasped her hands tighter together.
“Speaking of Zane,” she said carefully, “where exactly are we at with that?”
Fran shrugged. “That kid just keeps his head down and plays football,” he admitted. “There ain’t really nothing to suggest he paying attention to what his market gonna look like after the season.”
Valerie leaned slightly toward Andrew.
“What do you think it’ll take?”
Andrew finally looked up from the documents for the first time all meeting.
He contemplated the question carefully before giving an uncertain shake of his head.
“I honestly don’t know what someone like Zane even wants,” he admitted.
Fran gave a low chuckle under his breath. “Quietest superstar I ever coached,” he said. “Kid don’t care about attention. Don’t care about social media. Don’t care about being famous.”
Fran leaned forward now, elbows resting on the table.
“He just wanna win.”
There was genuine admiration in his voice when he said it.
Then his tone shifted back toward reality.
“But I’m telling y’all right now,” he continued, “that boy gonna be one of the highest-paid players in the country next year.”
Andrew’s eyebrows lifted.
Fran nodded firmly. “High six figures minimum. Maybe a million.”
Valerie actually scoffed slightly at that. “For a wide receiver?” she asked. “Even one that good?”
Fran didn’t hesitate. “That’s probably what it’s gonna take to keep him here.”
Silence settled briefly over the room.
Fran’s gaze swept across the collective members.
“Once the wolves start sniffing around,” he continued, “Zane gonna see exactly how much money out there waiting on him.”
He leaned back again in his chair.
“We Syracuse in the ACC,” he said plainly. “I don’t play games lying to my boys about opportunities elsewhere. If somebody can change they family life somewhere else, I ain’t gonna shame ‘em for it.”
His eyes settled directly on Valerie.
“And I ain’t gonna lie to him either.”
The room went quiet again after that.
Even Nixon finally looked up from the table. Valerie nodded slowly in understanding.
Then she straightened the papers in front of her and regained her businesslike composure.
“Well,” she said evenly, “the collective will start putting together a retention package regardless.”
Her red-painted nails tapped softly against the folder. “Because whether he realizes it yet or not…”
She exchanged a look with Andrew.
“…Zane Jones is becoming the face of Syracuse athletics.”
Zane sat hunched over at the desk in the corner of his condo, the glow from his laptop reflecting against tired eyes. The rest of the place sat quiet around him. Upstairs, his bedroom remained dark. The television downstairs had long since been shut off. Outside his window, Syracuse’s campus had settled into the eerie calm that only came late at night, when the buzz of student life finally dulled into distant footsteps and the occasional passing car.
His fingers dragged around the trackpad absentmindedly as he scrolled through NIL evaluations, endorsement rankings, and projected market values for college athletes.
He couldn’t stop thinking about what Johntay had said.
At first, Zane had tried to brush it off as just more locker room talk. More noise. But the words had rooted themselves somewhere deep in his brain and refused to leave.
Legacy mattered. A challenge mattered. That meant where he played mattered too.
Syracuse had made perfect sense when he had committed. It had honestly been exactly what he needed at the time. Close enough to Pittsburgh if things ever went sideways back home. A head coach in Coach Brown that kept things honest with him instead of selling fantasies. A place where could step on the field immediately and prove himself against solid competition.
But now? Now the cracks were starting to show.
Syracuse had come off an awful season and looked headed toward another disappointing one. The roster just wasn’t where the top schools were. He had barely gotten on campus and already felt like the best player on the team.
That realization bothered him more than he wanted to admit. It was almost too easy to enjoy now.
Practice wasn’t even a challenge anymore.
Sure, Johntay kept things interesting. He was still the one guy that pushed him daily. A real mentor. Somebody who understood the gave at a level Zane respected deeply. But outside of that, Zane already felt himself going through the motions half the time.
Syracuse was safe.
He understood the environment already. Understood the locker room politics. Understood how to maneuver through campus life here.
But was this all college football was supposed to offer him? Zane leaned back slowly in his chair, rubbing both hands over his face.
His eyes drifted back toward the screen.
Jeremiah Smith at Ohio State. Malachi Toney at Miami. Cam Coleman at Texas.
Serious numbers. Serious players.
Serious teams.
Every single one of them played under the brightest lights in college football. Top programs. National Championship expectations. NFL pipelines.
Meanwhile, Zane was torching New Hampshire and getting his brains beat in against USC while Ajani scrambled for his life behind an offensive line that collapsed every other snap.
If the ball wasn’t getting to him, the offense barely moved. And when it did get to him, half the passes felt like suicide balls thrown directly into incoming traffic.
It had to be more than this. Didn’t it?
Zane’s jaw tightened. For the first time since arriving at Syracuse, he seriously allowed himself to imagine wearing another uniform.
Michigan - the school that never seemed to leave him or his situation. The warm beaches of Miami. Maybe even heading back home to Penn State.
Big stages. Big games. The thought both excited and disgusted him.
Part of him still felt guilty for even thinking it. Coach Brown had believed in him. The staff had handed him the keys immediately. The city already adored him. The fanbase treated him like a savior.
And yet, he still felt restless. A hunger not yet quenched. Still felt unfinished.
Zane shut the laptop harder than he intended and leaned back deeply into his office chair. He rubbed at his eyes again before staring blankly out the nearby window.
The Syracuse campus looked still tonight. Calm. Orange streetlights washed softly over the sidewalks. The quad looked almost peaceful from up here.
His hand reached for his phone almost instinctively. He scrolled down his contacts until Johntay’s name appeared. Zane hesitated for only a second before typing out a message about looking for representation.
Zane exhaled slowly and tossed the phone onto the desk in front of him before leaning back once more.
Outside, the campus remained still.
…
Needing to get out of his own head for a while, Zane threw on a hoodie and stepped outside into the cool Syracuse night.
He decided to keep his walk short. He had an early-morning lift tomorrow, and Coach Brown’s strength staff had already made it painfully clear that showing up slugging was not tolerated. Still, he needed air. Needed space away from the condo walls that suddenly felt too tight around him.
The quad stretched out quietly beneath the dim glow of campus lights. Fallen leaves scraped softly across the pavement whenever the wind picked up. The buzz of Frosh Week and the chaos surrounding the start of football season had finally begun to die down. Students had settled into routines now. Fewer crowds wandered around screaming into the night. However drunken packs moved between dorms and frat houses.
This was the version of campus Zane liked. Quiet enough to think. Quiet enough to hear himself.
His hands stayed buried in the pockets of his hoodie as he wandered slowly across the sidewalk, his sneakers scuffing lightly against the pavement. His mind kept circling back to everything at once. Football. Syracuse. Bianca. His father. NIL. Transfer thoughts.
Every thought felt unfinished.
He exhaled sharply through his nose and kept walking.
As he passed the campus cafe, he noticed the lights were still on inside. Through the front windows, he spotted outside wiping down the patio tables with a rag.
Zane slowed his pace instinctively.
The girl moved methodically between tables, earbuds tucked into her ears as she cleaned. He wandered over carefully, not wanting to sneak up on her in the dark.
She sensed him approaching anyway. Her eyes narrowed slightly at first before recognition flickered across her face.
“If it isn’t our coffee thief,” she said, amusement woven through her voice.
Zane immediately felt himself grin despite the heaviness that had followed him outside.
He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and chuckled softly. “Oh, you remember that?”
She smiled to herself as she continued wiping down the table in front of her.
“It’s not every day you see karma go to work live.”
Zane laughed quietly under his breath. “I don’t really know what came over me there,” he admitted. “I guess she caught me in a bad ass mood.”
The girl nodded like she understood more than he had actually said out loud.
“Happens.”
She straightened up after finishing the table and nodded her head toward the cafe entrance.
“Come on. I’m closing up.”
Zane followed her inside. The cafe felt completely different without the usual flood of students crowding the counters and tables. The low hum of refrigerators and coffee machines filled the silence. Chairs sat flipped upside down on several tables while the scent of espresso still lingered heavily in the air.
Under the warmer lighting inside, Zane got a better look at her.
She was light-skinned with long black braids cascading down past her shoulders. There was something strikingly balanced about her appearance. Softness and sharpness blended together seamlessly. Feminine without trying too hard. Poised in a way that felt natural rather than practiced. The kind of face that looked effortlessly photogenic no matter the angle.
She caught him studying her for a second too long and raised an eyebrow slightly.
Zane cleared his throat. “I never actually introduced myself, he said. “I’m Zane.”
He extended his hand. The girl looked at it for a moment before taking, a small smirk tugging at the corner of her lips.
“Marie,” she replied.
Her hand felt warm against his. For the first time in what felt like weeks, Zane realized his mind had gone quiet.
***
Cam sat on the floor of his dorm room with his back pressed against the wooden bedpost, staring blankly across the room at the open suitcase laying on the ground.
Half-packed was generous. It looked more like a pile of frustration than luggage.
T-shirts hung halfway out of the zipper. Socks and hoodies had been thrown in carelessly. A pair of cleats sat beside the suitcase instead of inside it, like even they hadn’t fully accepted he was leaving yet.
The room itself felt hollow already. Like Purdue had started erasing him before he had even officially gone.
Cam rubbed both hands over his face slowly before letting them fall into his lap. He hadn’t meant for any of this to happen.
That was the part of eating at him most.
He hadn’t walked into Coach Odom’s office trying to quit football. He hadn’t gone in there trying to get pushed off the team entirely. He just wanted consideration. Opportunity. Some acknowledgement that he belonged.
He felt like he had earned at least that much. Instead, he had walked out feeling smaller than he ever had in his life.
Not even on the team anymore. Deferring most of his classes this semester to online courses until he could figure out his next move.
His phone buzzed again beside him. Another text. Cam barely looked at it.
The last few hours had been full of them. Some teammates sounded annoyed with him. Others sounded disappointed A couple had tried reaching out sincerely, telling him not to spiral or make any rash decisions.
Then, there was Brice. His quarterback had sent exactly one word.
“Pussy.”
Cam scoffed bitterly under his breath at the memory.
They hadn’t even been close like that. Brice just carried himself that way naturally. Crude. Arrogant. Hints of disrespects. The type of dude who treated every interaction like a competition he needed to win.
Still, the text stuck with him more than he wanted it to.
His eyes drifted back toward the suitcase. Here he was thinking he was some real Division I receiver.
A year ago, barely anybody wanted him coming out of Upper St. Clair. He hadn’t been some five-star prodigy with schools lined up around the block begging for his signature. He had worked for this.
And now? Now he was flaming out before had even finished his first term of college.
The thought made his stomach twist violently.
Cam grabbed his phone again despite himself. He already knew what he was about to do before he even unlocked it.
Safari opened automatically. His recent searches sat right there waiting for him.
“Zane Jones Syracuse.”
Cam clicked it. Immediately, article after article filled the screen.
Highlights. Interviews Graphics. Watchlists.
“Freshman sensation.” “College football’s breakout star.”
His jaw tightened harder with every scroll. Zane was everywhere. The country’s leader in receiving yards. Already appearing on Biletnikoff Award watchlists as the best receiver in college football.
Zane. His former best friend.
Cam’s thumb stopped moving. A bitterness spread slowly through his chest like poison.
The friend who had abandoned him. Who always needed the spotlight. Who couldn’t stand the idea of Cam becoming his own person.
Who overreacted the second Cam stopped accepting being Robin to Zane’s Batman.
At least, that was the story Cam kept feeding himself. The alternative hurt too much.
Could he have been wrong/ The thought crept in unwanted. Cam immediately shoved it back down.
No.
Coach Odom was blind. Rebecca didn’t care enough about what he was going through. Zane had held him back.
He needed those things to be true. Needed someone else to blame.
Otherwise all of this landed back on him. And he wasn’t ready for that yet.
***
Head coach Fran Brown sat at the long oak conference table with his coordinators flanking either side of him, the atmosphere inside the room carrying the stale heaviness of a conversation nobody particularly wanted to have.
Jeff Nixon sat to Fran’s left, broad-shouldered and heavy-set beneath a Syracuse hoodie stretched across his frame. His bald head reflected the harsh overhead lighting while the black goatee framing his mouth twitched occasionally whenever someone said something he disagreed with. For most of the meeting, though, Nixon kept his eyes lowered toward the table itself, refusing to meet the gaze of the alumni and collective representatives sitting across from them.
On Fran’s right sat defensive coordinator John Scott, another black man with a Syracuse baseball cap pulled low over his brow. He thumbed methodically through a packet of documents laid before him, barely participating so far beyond the occasional grunt or nod.
Across the table sat the governing members of the One Orange Alliance, Syracuse’s third-party NIL collective responsible for helping facilitate endorsement and compensation opportunities for Syracuse athletics.
At the end of the table sat Valerie Goodwin.
The middle-aged white woman carried herself with the polished sharpness of someone who had spent decades controlling rooms exactly like this one. Her long cherry-red hair had been pulled tightly into a pristine bun, matching almost perfectly with the deep red lipstick painted across her lips. Every movement she made felt deliberate.
To her immediate right sat Andrew Bishop, a heavy-set white man squeezed tightly into a charcoal suit that looked like it had fit comfortably several years ago and had been fighting for survival ever since. He dabbed lightly at sweat near his temple before glancing back down toward the papers in front of him.
Valerie folded her hands neatly together atop the table.
“So,” she began smoothly, eyes shifting toward Fran, “how are we forecasting retention for some of our more talented underclassmen heading into next season?”
Fran leaned back slightly in his chair.
He rubbed his large hands together slowly, thinking.
“I don’t foresee Ajani hitting the portal again,” he finally answered. “I think we’re solid there at quarterback moving forward.”
He paused briefly.
“Yasin might explore his options, though. But honestly, I think that’s manageable. A slight bump in what he’s getting now could probably keep him around.”
Andrew still hadn’t fully looked up from the paperwork.
“What about Damien Williams?” he asked.
Nixon immediately started shaking his head before Fran could even answer.
“No,” he said bluntly. “He almost certainly gone.”
His deep voice carried frustration now.
“He already feeling slighted about his playing time, and honestly, I get it. Zane came in and exploded immediately. Damien older than him and getting completely overshadowed.”
Valerie slowly clasped her hands tighter together.
“Speaking of Zane,” she said carefully, “where exactly are we at with that?”
Fran shrugged. “That kid just keeps his head down and plays football,” he admitted. “There ain’t really nothing to suggest he paying attention to what his market gonna look like after the season.”
Valerie leaned slightly toward Andrew.
“What do you think it’ll take?”
Andrew finally looked up from the documents for the first time all meeting.
He contemplated the question carefully before giving an uncertain shake of his head.
“I honestly don’t know what someone like Zane even wants,” he admitted.
Fran gave a low chuckle under his breath. “Quietest superstar I ever coached,” he said. “Kid don’t care about attention. Don’t care about social media. Don’t care about being famous.”
Fran leaned forward now, elbows resting on the table.
“He just wanna win.”
There was genuine admiration in his voice when he said it.
Then his tone shifted back toward reality.
“But I’m telling y’all right now,” he continued, “that boy gonna be one of the highest-paid players in the country next year.”
Andrew’s eyebrows lifted.
Fran nodded firmly. “High six figures minimum. Maybe a million.”
Valerie actually scoffed slightly at that. “For a wide receiver?” she asked. “Even one that good?”
Fran didn’t hesitate. “That’s probably what it’s gonna take to keep him here.”
Silence settled briefly over the room.
Fran’s gaze swept across the collective members.
“Once the wolves start sniffing around,” he continued, “Zane gonna see exactly how much money out there waiting on him.”
He leaned back again in his chair.
“We Syracuse in the ACC,” he said plainly. “I don’t play games lying to my boys about opportunities elsewhere. If somebody can change they family life somewhere else, I ain’t gonna shame ‘em for it.”
His eyes settled directly on Valerie.
“And I ain’t gonna lie to him either.”
The room went quiet again after that.
Even Nixon finally looked up from the table. Valerie nodded slowly in understanding.
Then she straightened the papers in front of her and regained her businesslike composure.
“Well,” she said evenly, “the collective will start putting together a retention package regardless.”
Her red-painted nails tapped softly against the folder. “Because whether he realizes it yet or not…”
She exchanged a look with Andrew.
“…Zane Jones is becoming the face of Syracuse athletics.”
-
Captain Canada
Topic author - Posts: 8021
- Joined: 01 Dec 2018, 00:15
Invictus
I don't think he expected A) How good he would perform or B) how garbage Syracuse would be. Remember, he spent most of his time that he should have been researching where to go play in mourning. Kind of ran out of options and make a knee-jerk decision.
I mean, Sheed's already killed one man since he been out of lockup
You a sick individual
