Page 17 of The Backup Plan
Hayden
Seriously?
Ethan
The last Auburn QB we had in here set the record. It was something like 112 people in two days.
Cameron
Jesus Christ.
Ethan
The SEC is… different.
Cameron
You don’t have to tell me. I remember learning Southern sportsmanship. I’m a robot with the same feedback any time someone hits me with a complaint.
Hayden
Y’all fuck off now, ya hear?
Cameron
Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.
From a long conversation with Cory, Cameron learned the ins and outs of the secure message app and the QB1 chat. The chat predated the app by many years, and Cory declined to tell him how far back in college football that quarterbacks had a social community to both support one another and keep one another in check. Former players, whether they went pro or not, were welcome to remain as legacy members in whatever format the current chat operated, and were kept on a dark list only the admins could access.
Only active college quarterbacks could be paged by members, and only if they had been active in the chat in the past three months. Anyone else could be paged by the admins only. Groups were maintained to sort everyone by conference in case of reasons Cory refused to define. Incognito mode was a privilege granted only to current and former professional players.
Cam let out a low whistle when Cory paused for a breath. “That’s a lot,” Cam said. “And you won’t give me one good name of someone who’s been in this group?”
Cory laughed. “The settings allow us to protect the privacy of the people who need it most—the pros—and gives the college guys a lot of options to dip in and out and participate however they want. Some people disappear for a season and we see them back the rest of the year.”
Ethan had been an admin the year before, along with a player who went pro, and selected Cory to follow up. They stuck to the rules handed down to them with few exceptions.
“We don’t always allow photo sharing, and most of the time, we don’t allow screenshots. The photos are fun sometimes, but some people get a little over the top. We turn off screenshots, for obvious reasons. No one wants college chats floating around. Things can get heated. That’s why we never get into it about games we play against each other. The chat only shows first names by design, but sometimes we let people grab a picture if something was really hilarious. We’re not total fascists.”
“But slightly fascist.”
“We do what it takes to survive,” Cory said, affecting a dramatic voice. “But in all seriousness, I hope it’s been useful for you.”
“You have no idea. I was supposed to get another year as Jordan’s backup, and kind of hoped the guy behind me would be the starter when Jordan left. It’s all out of order, and none of my non-football friends are any help. Hell, none of my football friends are any help except for a little moral support. I think they think like Hammy. Bunch of girls following me around, why complain?”
“Is that really what’s happening?”
“I don’t have an entourage or anything, and maybe I’ve gotten a little paranoid, but there are a lot of stares. A lot of giggles and whispers and girls asking if I’m Cameron Porter the quarterback, and then they obviously don’t know what that even means besides I’m the big football guy. The art building is the only place I can hide because no one in the studios gives a shit about football. But even there… there’s a girl I see there a lot, and honestly, I’m beating myself up for not talking to her, but I’m frozen because I don’t want to talk to anyone.”
Cory let out a low whistle. “It’s a lot, but it’ll pass. This place pinned its hopes on me when I was a freshman, and there was some attention like that, but I went a little over the top posting about my girlfriend on my social media. It’s not something I usually do, and I don’t know if it directly made a difference, but the weirdness died down after the season was over. This year, it’s less weird.”
“So I just have to survive the first season, and possibly get a girlfriend in the meantime?”
“Yes, and it might not hurt.”
Cam thought about the blonde girl in the lounge for the dozenth time that day. He wondered if she was at the game, and if she liked what she saw or if he came off as a cocky jock asshole, which is what the media crew seemed to prefer. Pippa yanked off his glasses just before she shoved him behind the podium for a blurry post-game press conference, so maybe the blonde girl didn’t even recognize that guy. He wondered if she would go to the lounge every day at the same time like she had the whole first week, and worried he’d already shot himself in the foot by being such a grumpy, silent jerk the first five chances he had to speak to her.
She didn’t look like one of the girls who giggled and whispered. She looked like an art student, with smudgy hands and doodles in ballpoint pen on her arm one day, and a fistful of expensive colored pencils shoved in the pocket of her backpack. The way she stared at one sketch with a gaze so ferocious she might set it ablaze both enchanted and terrified him. She was either really good at stalking him, or she was so captivated by light and dark that she might understand the twitch in his hands for a chisel when he saw a beautiful rock.