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nekojitachan · 7 years

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Consider: Andrew and Neil sharing a bed. Obviously we all know that Andrew has to have his back to the wall and it works best when Neil is facing him so that he doesn't just see the back of a head when he wakes up. Also consider that Neil has spent the last decade or so making sure to never have his back to a door, whether awake or asleep. Neil purposely sleeping with his back to the door to make Andrew more comfortable don't mind me I'm just crying over these fools

All right, in the spirit of keeping this short and sweet… I hope you like this, that this is what you had in mind.

******

The only thing better than their win against UT (seven tosix, and each point hard-won since the Longhorns had done their best to redresstheir loss the previous season and almost managed to do just that) had beencoming into the locker room after the game to find out that their return flighthome had been cancelled for the night and they’d have to stay in Austin untilthey could fly out the next morning due to a string of strong storms movingthrough the southeast. Considering the rough flight in from Atlanta that hadeven given Neil a moment or two of unease… well, Neil hadn’t been certain howthey were going to get Andrew back on the plane short of horse tranquilizers ifthe flight home was going to be as turbulent as the earlier flight.

That and after dealing with Jack and Sheena for the last fewhours, Neil was quite willing to only have to put up with them for another houror so - until Wymack was done with the post-game talk, everyone showered andthey reached the hotel (after a quick detour to a liquor store).

“Aw come on, aren’t you going to join in on the celebration?”Matt asked once they made it to the hotel, an Embassy Suites a few miles awayfrom the airport. “Isn’t it your job as vice-captain or something?”

Neil arched an eyebrow as he looked at a smiling Dan. “Imissed the line in the contract where it said I had to stick around while theteam acted like drunken idiots.”

“Oh sweetie, it was right there between the ones about youselling your soul and being my eternal slave, but I’ll let it slide for one night,”she told him. “Go enjoy having a room by yourself,” she said while shooting ameaningful look in Andrew’s direction, while behind her, Kevin’s expressionbecame rather aggrieved as Jack and Sheena leaned closer to each other andsniggered.

Neil ignored the freshmen – well, at least those two, as hewaved to Michalyn and gave Greg a quick pat on the shoulder in passing as heleft the lobby with Andrew so they could go up to their room while the rest ofthe Foxes wished them a good night.

They were up on the fourth floor in a single room with aqueen sized bed – Wymack had checked quickly before making reservations that itwould all right for the two of them to share a bed, considering the last minutereservations and all, and Neil had been a bit surprised when Andrew had said ‘yes’.It had only been in the last month or so that they’d taken to sleeping together, mostly at the house inColumbia but sometimes in the dorm room when it was a good day for both of themand they wanted the comfort of the other’s company.

Neil hadn’t thought that it would be a good night,considering the flight earlier, but they’d won the game that evening (whichmade it a good day in Neil’s opinion, meant that the Foxes were finally comingtogether and was one less worry on his mind) and Andrew had a fifth of whiskey(so good for him).

The only problem as far as Neil could see was that the bed,unlike in the dorm and in the house at Columbia, was stationed in such aposition that while the one side was close to the far wall (barring about twofeet of space), the other side faced the door. Neil was used to being able tolook at the door no matter what side he laid on, but to see it on this one, he’dhave to lay on his right.

That would put his back to Andrew, which wasn’t a good ideashould Andrew wake up unexpectedly.

“What, never seen a hotel room before?” Andrew chided as hegave Neil a gentle push forward.

“Just waiting for my boyfriend to show up so the fun canstart,” Neil shot back as he forced the thoughts about the bed from his headand smiled.

“Great, he can take you off of my hands,” Andrew said as hetossed his travel bag onto the one chair then groaned as he stretched his armsover his head, then reached into the pocket of his Foxes jacket for the bottleof whiskey before he shrugged off the jacket and tossed it aside as well. “Atoast to the poor fucker,” he said as he lifted the bottle before he twistedoff the lid and sat down on the bed to start drinking.

Neil rolled his eyes as he toed off his shoes then removedhis jacket as well. “I’m feeling the love right now.” He motioned for Andrew tomove over on the bed and, after removing his shoes, the bastard did just that.

“How many hits did you take to that empty head of yourstonight? I keep telling you this is nothing.” Neil smiled at the feel of Andrew’sfingers threading through his damp hair, gentle for a moment before they gavethe strands a quick tug and then gentle again.

“Yeah, yeah.” Tired from the game and the hits he had takenfrom the UT players (none to the head, though), Neil lay down on the bed whileAndrew drank, content to merely be in his boyfriend’s presence and to practice theirRussian for a little while before he grew too sleepy to concentrate and Andrewgrew too contemplative. Before he was unwilling to move, Neil got up to changeinto a pair of cotton pants and a loose t-shirt after he brushed his teeth,then hesitated only a moment before he slipped under the covers facing Andrew.

It wasn’t too bad with the one light still on and Andrewawake as his boyfriend finished the whiskey and a cigarette, as Neil lay in asemi-restful state where he was still aware of what Andrew was doing and theroom around him. Yet soon enough Andrew got ready to sleep as well,double-checked the door and the window before joining Neil on the bed with justa couple of inches between them and his armbands beneath the pillows.

Part of Neil relaxed as always at having Andrew so close, atknowing there was a person nearby whom he trusted, whom he knew would neverharm him, who would keep him safe. So Neil took a deep breath and ignored theitch along his back, at the thought of a door behind him (a hotel door, what afucking joke, he heard his mother’s voice in his head) and everything bad thatcould go wrong, and focused instead on how Andrew was actually in bed with him.How this one person allowed him in bed like this, how-

“Josten,” Andrew’s tired voice rang out, “stop doingwhatever passes for thinking in that junkie head of yours and sleep before Ismother you with a pillow.” His right hand, warm and calloused and large,fumbled its way over to Neil’s face to press lightly over his nose and mouth asif to highlight the threat, his thumb stroking along the scars on Neil’s leftcheek for a moment, before it slid back to give Neil’s nape a quick squeeze.

“Yeah.” Neil nuzzled his face deeper into the pillow as hebreathed in deep the scent of cigarette smoke and smiled as he let out the airin his lungs, suddenly full of peace. “Night, ‘drew.”

“Shut up.”

A smile on his face and Andrew’s warm hand resting on hisright wrist, Neil finally fell asleep.

*******

Can you tell I’m having fun with these prompts?

#nekojitachanfics #fic prompt #tfc #aftg #andreil #of course there is snark #another short one omfg #andrew's unique brand of affection

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ahouseoflies · 7 years

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1st Quarter of 2017 If you had told me a few years ago that a sequel to Trainspotting would come out in 2017, and I wouldn’t be able to make the time to see it, I wouldn’t have believed you. But here we are. Work and family life have really started to put the squeeze on my moviegoing. These are the best things I watched in an admittedly light quarter--one of them is a 2016 film that I caught up on. 1. The Lost City of Z- James Gray Knowing that I would see this movie, I avoided reviews, but I have no doubt they're employing the word "sweeping." To me though, that word implies a shorthand of emotion sacrificed at the altar of grandeur, a "they fall in love yada yada" that you have to exchange for scope. The Lost City of Z is not sweeping in that case because every minute of its running time seems essential, and the passage of twenty years only enhances the emotional acuity. It's lean and Lean. "Atmosphere": That's another word that people use for a vague visual texture. James Gray and Darius Khondji extend their collaboration to create visual layers--planes of smoke or fog that makes the images heavy in a literal sense. By the time they shoot the dappled sunlight and the faded green of the jungle, the screen already has a lather of sweat. On a more specific note, I appreciated that Gray found the through-line of such a complicated historical tale, and that through-line is his pet theme of obsession. Driven by the deficit of his ancestry, Percy Fawcett is motivated by risk down to his bones. On some level the film is something that we've seen before--though Robert Pattinson has never been better than he is as the obligatory shrewd guide. But the film taps into such a primal call to adventure that it feels as if it has always existed, as if it's The Story, and that's a compliment even if "sweeping" and "atmospheric" aren't. 2. Song to Song- Terrence Malick If you don't already like what David Ehrlich calls Malick's "twirling horndog" era--I prefer "metropolitan trilogy of self-absorption"--I won't be able to convert you by now. Especially when Rooney Mara is fingering meats in a Costco, this feels like a film made just for me. I do think that, compared to To the Wonder and Knight of Cups, this film's journey of mercy is fairly direct for Malick. (As far as that group of films goes, there might be a loose progression of detachment, wandering, and return/restore.) Fassbender's devilish Cook waves at his possessions early in the film and says, "None of this exists," and his empty promises pervert innocence at every turn, sometimes tragically. For a hedonist, he isn't being-in-the-world in the way that Malick would prefer. It's telling that, by the "end" of the film--and I say that hesitantly since the events seem to loop back on themselves--Faye inverts Cook in her narration. She says: "This. Only this," referring to love. Or at least, like, authentic experience. That's why Weightless is such a better title for this: As an insult for "having no mooring," it describes Cook; as a compliment for "free," it describes Faye and BV. How Malick is this, besides that interpretation of planes of existence? Very Malick. There's a sequence in which Gosling's BV returns home to console his bereaved family, and his brother says something like, "After being so hung-up on Dad for so long, he finally dies and--" Malick cuts to something else, so wary of something that feels like a treacly Movie Moment. And in avoiding those cliches, he creates his own. Characters still fall out of relationships and drift toward other thin, unnamed beautiful girls with hair in their faces, and it has become such a pet trope for him that a woman even gets in on the trend this time. But how many filmmakers have enough style in the first place for you to be able to make fun of their style? If it all adds up to a moment as alive as Gosling sliding in his sock-feet, then make fun of it all you want.

When Malick the classicist first started making films that take place in present-day, it was jarring to spot, say, a Target in the background of a shot. But now that I've adjusted to it, that topicality means...very little at all really, and that's why it's foolish to get hung up on why Mara has blonde hair in this scene or why Gosling is driving a different car in that scene. Austin City Limits or a Longhorns game are specific events, but the relationships are so elemental that they might as well be revealing themselves in a Middle Ages castle or a prehistoric cave. In fact, sign me up for Rooney Mara fingering meats in a prehistoric cave. 3. Personal Shopper- Olivier Assayas A film way more about the language it's told in than the end result of what it's telling. [initiate conceit] These most recent Assayas films feel like fancy cocktails with different levels of separation. There's the base, which is a woman who is stalled and unhappy. One of the sweet liqueurs on top of that is her job--meaningless for her taste--as a shopper for a celebrity, a go-between for someone too famous to interact in public. The Kahlua to balance that is her status as a spiritual medium, a go-between for someone too dead to interact in public. She has a heart condition that tethers her emotions, she has a boyfriend who is absent yet present through Skype, she has Youtube videos as conduits for the past, she has a person who has emerged as a literal replacement for her dead brother's widow. Maybe you just want a beer, but I don't mind paying a little extra to see a real bartender get all of those pretty colors together. [close conceit] The film's elliptical final third provides closure in one sense but not another; it verges on cop-out. Maybe more importantly, the film is a step backwards for Kristen Stewart, who is still magnetic but has slipped back into being mannered. There's a scene with a police officer in which the stammering is out of control. She has earned such goodwill, however, that I'm willing to evaluate anything the character does as a productive choice. Why does she take one sip out of drinks and leave them to make a ring on the table? Why does she type a space before a question mark? Why does she use default ringers and not turn off the clicky-type setting? She always gives me something to do. 4. Win It All- Joe Swanberg It ends abruptly and doesn't get as psychological as it could, but Win It All is designed for maximum pleasure. There are a few inventive gestures that make for a jaunty hang--I loved the superimposed counter that showed how up or down Eddie's bankroll was. Jake Johnson, who co-wrote, has real rakish chops. 5. Train to Busan- Yeon Sang-Ho Have you ever written a sonnet? You have to understand the form before you start writing, and part of the writing is understanding how powerless you are to the form. It's one of the only mediums of art that squelches originality: A great sonnet is one that exemplifies the form, not necessarily one that transcends it. Zombie movies are kind of similar, and Train to Busan gets the form through-and-through. The rules are clear about how people become infected and what the zombies can and can't do. Then we meet fully-realized characters, some of whom we're rooting for, some of whom we're not sure about, and some of whom definitely have a bite coming. The economy with which the film makes those divisions is breathtaking. "Oh, he let the girl go ahead of him at the bathroom. Cool guy." "He told that colleague to straighten her tie. He needs to die." The effects are SyFy channel quality, and everything runs a bit long. But the film barely ever missteps. The central character's journey to, ahem, humanity is a familiar one, but it's not like I would want the final couplet of a sonnet in lines three and four.

#film #movie reviews #quarterly report #The Lost City of Z

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junker-town · 6 years

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Someone help Jimbo Fisher look less awkward doing Texas A&M things

The Aggies new head man is diving headfirst into A&M tradition. He needs a hand.

Texas A&M has one of the most unique fan cultures in college football. The former military school is steeped in tradition and it holds onto it fiercely.

That puts Jimbo Fisher in an interesting position. Fisher’s personality isn’t exactly that of the hokey variety. As coach at Florida State, he wasn’t much for the fun fan traditions like the Seminoles’ tomahawk chop. It’s just not really his speed.

Most recently, he’s done Texas things like judging a rodeo:

Given his personality, it’s an inherently humorous visual.

Our celebrity judge today! Thanks Jimbo Fisher for helping us out here in Houston! Doesn't he look great on horseback? pic.twitter.com/b4Crnt86Yc

— Chris Boleman (@ctboleman) March 6, 2018

Dad with Coach Fisher judging the Trophy Longhorn Steer show. Today is a good day at HLSR! #gigEm pic.twitter.com/IlsjmVYY68

— Chris Boleman (@ctboleman) March 6, 2018

Look at how at ease he looks:

Hung out with coach at #hlsr What a great guy. #jimbofisher #aggies

A post shared by Roger Creager (@rogercreager) on Mar 8, 2018 at 10:43am PST

But Fisher’s been getting the distilled Texas experience since Day 1.

Fisher was greeted by quite a bit of fanfare right as he got off of the plane for his introductory press conference in December. He didn’t really acknowledge it beyond a half-hearted thumbs up at all as he walked the maroon carpet into a waiting car.

Jimbo Fisher’s trumpeted arrival to College Station: pic.twitter.com/GUmttygt2R

— Brent Zwerneman (@BrentZwerneman) December 3, 2017

Later that day, he attended a women’s basketball and got roped into doing the “saw ‘em off” move to the fight song. It mocks bitter rival Texas to the lyrics “saw varsity’s horns off.”

It’s supposed to look like this when a whole stadium does it:

youtube

Fisher’s was a little less polished:

All Aggies have Rachael Fargerson ‘18 to thank for getting Jimbo Fisher to saw ‘em off for the first time in Aggieland. pic.twitter.com/2APYPPQA7w

— My Aggie Nation (@MyAggieNation) December 4, 2017

Now, this was his first day on the job, so you can’t really grade him too harshly, but there was his first interaction with Reveille, the Aggies beloved mascot.

Glad I got to meet you, Mr. Coach Jimbo!!! See you soon at Kyle Field! pic.twitter.com/iZQldSmVgd

— Reveille IX (@reveille) December 4, 2017

And that brings us to the best joke message board post I’ve ever seen.

That spawned a hilarious message board post that is clearly satire although I’d love to believe that it isn’t. Like any good satire, its humor is derived in the fact that it’s not too far off from plausible reality.

I’ve seen a lot of weird shit from Aggie fan in my life, but this is the weirdest shit ever, maybe by anyone. pic.twitter.com/ARkFPxUQml

— AJ Hoffman (@AJIsTheReal) December 5, 2017

The fact is, A&M loves its traditions and its fanfare, and if Fisher can get the Ags where they want to go, he’ll be in many more spots to hopefully be less awkward in public.

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fullysobouquetstuff-blog · 6 years

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Cars and truck Hacking Code Discharged At Defcon.

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This could require its personal post, for out of the way locations my out-of-date recommendations are Discover and Intrepid Travel. Here is where the reality of Hitler's possession" from the car becomes an issue from semantics. Quickly there was a great deal damages to the hood of Nitch's cars and truck that the padlock busted as well as the wind opened it. The motor began ablaze and Nitch was actually blinded due to the upright bonnet. That sorts via available satisfied sources like Wikipedia Flickr, TouristEye as well as World66 for evaluations and also data at that point creates personalized traveling manuals for users. The car that passed Matt pulverized right into the edge from the Oldsmobile and pushed that in to the Cuda's backside. If you have actually been in any latest auto or even have viewed any sort of aftermarket stereo, you've possibly discovered that it includes an audio port that resembles an earphone port. Why this concerns: While journalism launch does not disclose just how much of the body will count on a smart device, it is actually crystal clear that Google.com's vision for Android Vehicle is actually one where switching on your auto is actually an extension from your mobile phone. You could have the ability to conserve some even more loan this way as booked in advance flights between major areas may be here FIFTY usd one way. Passat shoppers will get accessibility to CarPlay and Android Automobile as soon as they acquire the auto. Our team believe that travel opens thoughts to originalities, cultures and also mindsets. Along with his outgoings figured out at ₤ 371 each week before tax (consisting of every thing off three automobile washes each week, pair of MOTs annually, and also the deterioration on his tires), Miah was actually still capable to take home greater than ₤ 800 regular, partly due to a ₤ 99 every week incentive system that Uber was running to attract brand-new motorists. I have not spent sufficient opportunity with the XC90 or S90 to determine Volvo's infomercial system, yet the automobile inside seems remarkable. The Well worth Ave Team insurance policy covers unintentional damages, fire, criminal damage, flooding and also burglary. You will certainly locate applications that allow you search for spending plan hotels or even planning multi-city stops effortlessly, online areas that share as well as showcase traveling itineraries in amazing sites, or even travel applications that can function offline, like Google.com Trip. Gauging the specific impact is actually sophisticated due to the fact that there is no chance of knowing without a doubt what the patterns in roadway trip would certainly have been had 9/11 certainly not happened. Considering that you state you desire to spare approximately purchase a condo, after that spending FIFTY% from your gross income on a vehicle remittance functions heavily against that target.

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jaymebyers1971 · 7 years

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Christmas 2016

17 December 2016

Hello Everyone –

Happy Holidays. Here’s wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful start to the New Year. I am doing okay. Had a little bit of a setback (please see enclosed copy of email I sent to my former pastor). And those events came after having to fight him for my pay the week before. Our boss is on the East Coast and was paying us by making a deposit to our bank accounts. That week he was in Florida and there were no branches of my bank. So he deposited both of our pay in Caleb’s account – and Caleb went on a bender and then didn’t want to come off the money owed to me. So you can see why perhaps I had reached the end of what I was willing to put up with.

I was able after a 5 day fight and being forced to go over my companies head to the Contractor, to get my final paycheck. However since it wasn’t the $2500 I was counting on and would have gotten if I had not quit I have definitely had to rearrange my holiday plans. First, for you guys behind bars, I am so sorry. This was supposed to be the month I got it all back on track and I would have been able to do eComm’s for you guys. Unfortunately that is out of the question right now. I do hope to have the phone account paid so you can call on Christmas but no promises.

I feared I would have to cancel my trip home. I am very grateful to my parents for both understanding the situation and agreeing that I did the right thing. I am also very grateful for them buying me a plane ticket home this close to Christmas (almost $800 for the round trip as opposed to a normal cost of around $400 when I book early). I had initially intended to rent a car so I could stop and see a couple of friends on the way there and stop to see an old college professor on the way home. Obviously that was no longer an option – the car rental coupled with gas, food, and an overnight hotel stay was most definitely not in the budget.

I have been enjoying the opportunity to detox a little from the very negative environment I have been in with myself and Caleb for the last 8 months. I am looking forward to spending some time with my parents and doing some sightseeing in Washington D.C. I fly out the 21st and fly back the 26th. I have some job interviews lined up for the week I come back and hopefully can find something fairly quickly so I don’t go back in to the hole any deeper.

De Colores

In His Peace

Always,

Msgr. Bridges -

I hope you don't mind but I feel the need to vent and don't have anyone here to do it with. First though I have attached some pictures. I know you always like to have pics of the guys you correspond with and help out. I think the only one you have of me is the one with my parents while I was still at Lynaugh. The photo in the Longhorns shirt was one of the last pics while I was at Stepping Stone. The one in the black tank top was out on my job site several months ago and the other two are within the last several weeks.

I feel very frustrated right now. I left my job last Friday. For the last several months I and one coworker have been running the job site here in Austin. Our boss went back to the east coast and had been running other sites, first in Roanoke, Virginia and now in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. My coworker is a young man (well, 34) named Caleb. He came to Encore House, the halfway house I am at back in March. I immediately got him a job with me as he has extensive experience in construction (I was working building and installing cabinets and granite counter tops). He is also the one who from late April to late July I was smoking crack with. In July I started getting myself back together. At that time he began talking to a woman in Florida and they began a relationship. He continued to struggle with the drugs and began drinking heavily. On the job we had been having a lot of problems with lack of productivity and shoddy work from other employees. So Caleb and I convinced our boss to drop the others and the three of us could handle it. Initially this worked okay and by early September when our boss needed to head back east I convinced him that Caleb and I could handle it. The first few weeks went all right. Then Caleb, who has what I thought was mild paranoid schizophrenia, began having blow ups with his girl every few days. The paranoia was getting much worse along with worsening psychotic episodes. And his only way of dealing with any of it was to drink more and smoke crack. He was doing less and less work. I was unable to do a lot of my work because it was dependent on him doing his.

I made a lot of stupid mistakes this year. Last year things were going well. I ended the year on a high note. Things changed in early January. After being used and abused in the management position I was in at the hotel I was burnt out and parted ways with them. But I did so without having a job lined up and sunk into a severe down cycle in my bi polar. This led to some very bad financial decisions with loans and credit cards and I ended up over $15,000 in debt. In February I got the job I just left and by April I was catching up on everything. Then the torque converter went out on my Pathfinder and with it the transmission. Left without a vehicle I began to get frustrated with life again and this time I started getting high. Sinking myself back further into debt. But I got a handle on it in July. I am not claiming to be an angel - I indulged a few times with Caleb over the last few months. Maybe a half dozen times since the beginning of September. But I was doing fairly well. Paying down debt, getting caught up with my landlord, etc.

But emotionally, and by extension spiritually, physically and mentally I was a wreck because of the dysfunctional co-dependent dynamic between myself and Caleb. It kept getting worse and worse. Last Friday, again caught up in the middle of one of his psychotic episodes I finally reached a point where I could not take it anymore and found the strength to break away. I did the right thing for myself but it is leaving my life in a wreck. I have no job. No money, as I was still using everything I make to catch up on debt. Instead of the $2500 pay out I would have gotten this week if I had stayed and finished the building we were in I am owed only $480. And now my boss's brother who owns the company is refusing to pay me even that. I have to cancel my trip home for Christmas, start job hunting and worry about how I am going to feed myself, pay my phone bill, rent, etc., between now and when I get a paycheck again.

For my own mental sanity I had to get out of the situation I was in. But why is it when I try to do the right thing my life just ends up worse. I seem to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. I can't seem to maintain stability long enough to really start moving forward. And I'm tired. Tired of carrying it all. But knowing I have no other choice. Every day I struggle to not give up and throw in the towel. I believe in God. I trust in God. I genuinely see God in my life regularly. But I don't feel like I have the strength to do it anymore. My faith just doesn't seem to give me the strength and comfort it does others. And honestly, my faith doesn't pay the bills.

And I am so alone. I am so tired of not having physical love and affection. A shoulder to cry on, someone to hold me and say it is going to be all right, I'm here for you. Someone to curl up on the couch and watch a movie with. I may be a loner by nature but we are not meant to go through life as solitary creatures. Life's burdens are so much easier if you have someone to share them with and I haven't had that for so long I forget what it is like. I only know that I ache because of it's absence. And it makes all of this so much harder to deal with. And again I know there are those who say Jesus is all they need. I envy that. It doesn't work that way for me. And I am terrified to look for anyone to be with because of all the baggage I come with.

I just feel completely lost. Right now I feel like I don't know what any of the answers are. I don't know where to turn for help/support - tangible or intangible. Or even if I have the nerve to step out there and get it if I did know. And since my welcome at the local parish was so negative I haven't even pursued finding another parish here in Austin. I don't really expect you to have all the answers or to solve my problems. You are always so incredibly busy I don't really expect a response at all. I just really needed to vent a little bit and if you can't vent to a priest then the world truly is out of whack.

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junker-town · 6 years

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Someone help Jimbo Fisher look less awkward doing Texas A&M things

The Aggies new head man is diving headfirst into A&M tradition. He needs a hand.

Texas A&M has one of the most unique fan cultures in college football. The former military school is steeped in tradition and it holds onto it fiercely.

Most recently, he’s done Texas things like judging a rodeo:

Given his personality, it’s an inherently humorous visual.

Our celebrity judge today! Thanks Jimbo Fisher for helping us out here in Houston! Doesn't he look great on horseback? pic.twitter.com/b4Crnt86Yc

— Chris Boleman (@ctboleman) March 6, 2018

Dad with Coach Fisher judging the Trophy Longhorn Steer show. Today is a good day at HLSR! #gigEm pic.twitter.com/IlsjmVYY68

— Chris Boleman (@ctboleman) March 6, 2018

But Fisher’s been getting the distilled Texas experience since Day 1.

Jimbo Fisher’s trumpeted arrival to College Station: pic.twitter.com/GUmttygt2R

— Brent Zwerneman (@BrentZwerneman) December 3, 2017

Later that day, he attended a women’s basketball and got roped into doing the “saw ‘em off” move to the fight song. It mocks bitter rival Texas to the lyrics “saw varsity’s horns off.”

It’s supposed to look like this when a whole stadium does it:

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Fisher’s was a little less polished:

All Aggies have Rachael Fargerson ‘18 to thank for getting Jimbo Fisher to saw ‘em off for the first time in Aggieland. pic.twitter.com/2APYPPQA7w

— My Aggie Nation (@MyAggieNation) December 4, 2017

Now, this was his first day on the job, so you can’t really grade him too harshly, but there was his first interaction with Reveille, the Aggies beloved mascot.

Glad I got to meet you, Mr. Coach Jimbo!!! See you soon at Kyle Field! pic.twitter.com/iZQldSmVgd

— Reveille IX (@reveille) December 4, 2017

And that brings us to the best joke message board post I’ve ever seen.

I’ve seen a lot of weird shit from Aggie fan in my life, but this is the weirdest shit ever, maybe by anyone. pic.twitter.com/ARkFPxUQml

— AJ Hoffman (@AJIsTheReal) December 5, 2017

The fact is, A&M loves its traditions and its fanfare, and if Fisher can get the Ags where they want to go, he’ll be in many more spots to hopefully be less awkward in public.

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junker-town · 6 years

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The 14 steps along the path to a college football coach getting fired

Barring a sudden surprise firing, it goes something like this every time. Where’s your coach right now?

Think back to the day your college football coach was hired. He was the right guy. He was excited to be there, and you were excited to have him. His intro press conference filled you with optimism.

But that was then. Your team’s falling on hard times again, and it’s time to make a change.

There is a rhythm to the head coach exit. The ebbs and flows that beget the pink slip are largely the same at each school. While there are always going to be unpredictable, overnight breakups, programs tend to progress through the same stages, and it usually plays out over a two-season stretch.

So, where is your program on the progression?

1. The first bad loss.

Maybe the coach has had some time to tear the program down to the studs and rebuild. Maybe he’s an institution, and things are just starting to stale. Either way, the fanbase needs some proof this thing is going to work long-term.

This isn’t the loss that signals the end. This is just planting the seed. You shouldn’t lose to this team, but here we are.

Like when Texas lost, 24-0, to Iowa State in Charlie Strong’s second year.

All the good feelings, all the talk about the potential for bowl eligibility and progress? Out the window. This team won't have a postseason and Strong has major questions to answer. Saying that the team is better than it showed will no longer suffice. If there's one positive, it's that he didn't try to do so in the post-game press conference.

Strong would get one more season.

2. The buck-stops-here press conference.

Everyone’s upset, and it’s time for the coach to take responsibility, like Will Muschamp after Florida lost to then-FCS Georgia Southern:

“You got to change the scoreboard offensively. You got to be able to change the scoreboard. We’ve just struggled scoring points offensively. It’s been a week-in, week-out occurrence. My job to get it fixed and it will get fixed.”

Oh, that did not get fixed. Muschamp would exit stage left the next season.

3. The vote of confidence.

There’s blood in the water, but your AD or school president isn’t punting yet. They just need a little bit more time. Like Kyle Flood at Rutgers, when then-AD Julie Hermann pledged support.

Flood is 15-10 in his two seasons.

“Our football program continues to evolve and grow, as evidenced by the changes Coach Flood just announced," Hermann said in a statement. "I support these moves and Kyle’s leadership as we transition into the Big Ten.

Flood would be gone after two more flailing seasons.

4. Firing assistant coaches.

One side of the ball just isn’t working like it’s supposed to. It’s time to axe a coordinator to placate the masses. The new guy can promise the offense/defense will be more multiple and physical.

Finish 97th nationally in total defense like Maryland did in 2014? It’s time for a change.

The Terrapins' defense had declined statistically over each of the past two seasons, culminating in disappointing performances for the senior-heavy unit against Rutgers and Stanford to end the season. Randy Edsall has decided to overhaul the defense[.]

Edsall would get the boot at the end of the 2015 season.

5. “How many wins does he need?”

Is it a magic number, or is it the “right” wins on the schedule? Either way, if media days are dominated by trying to figure out the right combination of wins and losses, the goose is likely cooked.

How good is good enough for Michigan, and Brady Hoke, in 2014?

Not only in regaining the respect the Wolverines have lost since the shocking upset loss to Appalachian State to open the 2007 season, but to justify Hoke remaining as the Wolverines’ head football coach.

Hoke was gone by the end of 2014.

And the jig is close to up if one particular game is make-or-break.

There is a dwindling number of scenarios wherein [Al] Golden keeps his job, but all of them include Miami winning in Tallahassee (and then doing quite a few other things).

Golden couldn’t beat FSU, among other teams, and was out.

6. Benching the QB for a younger guy.

Your QB might be a veteran junior starter, but the offense just doesn’t look like it’s clicking. It’s high time for that backup to play and show the administration how great the future looks under you.

The bye week is a perfect time for this. He’s got the first week to get adjusted to the first-team offense, and the second week to get the game plan.

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Helfrich became the first coach Oregon had fired since the 1970s.

7. Young alum coordinator or head coach is getting it together, wherever he is now.

Y’all see that grass over there? It’s green as hell.

You think it’s time for your AD to make a phone call to that former player coaching somewhere else, damnit. Certainly he’ll come home.

"I left Texas A&M because my school called me," Bear Bryant said when he took the Alabama job 60 years ago. "Mama called, and when Mama calls, then you just have to come running."

You might not have even fired your actual head coach yet, but it’s time for some public flirtation by the fanbase (Lookin’ at you, Nebraska).

This is the type of ENERGY and PASSION we need from a head coach! https://t.co/y5kGvSOpZc

— Scott Frost to NU (@frost_to_NU) October 18, 2017

8. Social media is fed the hell up, way beyond the usual. Your entire timeline is unified.

This one can take a ton of different forms. It could be calling for a Lane Kiffin tarmac firing this instant:

4 years ago, USC fired Lane Kiffin. If Helton doesn’t want a similar fate at the end of the year, he needs to fix his ship.

— Victor The Great ✌ (@vicorly) October 27, 2017

Leave him on the tarmac like Lane Kiffin when he was fired at USC

— #DutchDestroyer (@_Philly_Talk) October 24, 2017

Perhaps the former players start weighing in:

#WAREAGLE http://pic.twitter.com/2Qp0Dm3Zt5

— Heath Evans (@HeathEvans44) October 14, 2017

I think it's time for the UT leaders to have a come to Jesus meeting with Butch!!! #changeisamust #VFL

— Albert Haynesworth (@haynesworthiii) September 23, 2017

Your area’s entire Twitter presence turns entirely to the cause:

And once that crosses over into the real world, you’re REALLY in trouble:

FIRE BUTCH JONES signs have appeared at every pro venue in the state, random colleges elsewhere, a grocery bakery, https://t.co/0jZGVcISfk

— SB Nation CFB (@SBNationCFB) October 21, 2017

9. Plane banners.

The effort here, just to get rid of guys who already seem like dead men walking, is truly stunning.

Annnnnd here's the banner. Says "I Flew 1124 Miles Just To Say #FireAlGolden" http://pic.twitter.com/KKNlsst6uc

— Matt Porter (@mattyports) October 1, 2015

http://pic.twitter.com/1Fes8eMLov

— Matt Scalici (@MattScalici) October 21, 2017

10. Booster shade.

The highest-ranking rich guy has had enough. He’s called the folks he drinks with at suite level and started to pass the hat. Your coach has a buyout number to hit.

Beat writers are getting wind that the people who control the pocketbooks have had it up to here.

But when Ed Hansen — lawyer, multimillionaire, University of Washington alumnus and former three-term Everett mayor — wrote UW President Mark Emmert six weeks ago, he abandoned all sense of delicacy.

Hansen, unhappy with the state of Huskies football, placed a price upon the head of the football coach and the school’s athletic director. His e-mail said:

“By this letter I hereby pledge to contribute a minimum of $100,000 towards a law school scholarship within 90 days, conditioned upon the termination of Ty Willingham as football coach.

Willingham would be gone by the end of that season.

11. Coach is saying some really weird stuff now!

The message board chatter is at a fever pitch, and the season isn’t going well at all. But the head coach is trying to stay positive and wants you to be too, like Gene Chizik in 2011.

“They’re going to say what they’re going to say and discuss what they’re going to discuss, and you have absolutely no control over that. I call those energy vampires. They’re not going to suck my energy out worrying about that. That’s how we work.”

Chizik would last through 2011, but be gone after 2012.

12. The local columnist is finally done.

As media members, we often want to give coaches a bit more benefit of doubt than fans. Particularly if the coach seems like a good guy. Mid-season firings sometimes seem impulsive, after all.

But when the local columnist does drop the guillotine, it’s another indicator that the situation is untenable.

Has Bob Diaco coached his final football game at UConn? He’s done little to earn himself another season. The Huskies lost to Tulane Saturday to finish 1-7 in the American, a game almost nobody attended, and went an entire month — 16 quarters over parts of five games — without a touchdown.

A month after that story got published, Diaco was shown the door.

13. The death-knell loss.

It could be a blowout, or it could be a close shave, but there’s always one loss that signals that the end is truly nigh. An example? Losing to Kansas, if you’re Texas.

The Texas Longhorns, a titan of college football, just lost to Kansas in overtime, 24-21. This is the first time the Horns have lost to the Jayhawks since the Great Depression.

Strong would get canned the next week.

14. The actual end.

It’s probably a Sunday morning, and your coach is about to have a closed-door meeting with the AD. The loss last night was rough. It’ll all be over soon. Players start finding out on Twitter or via their news apps, just like the rest of us, and begin to voice their displeasure. The news is leaking, but they are yet to have their team meeting to make things official.

Gotta love finding these things out through twitter.... a heads up would’ve been nice

— Luke Del Rio (@Ldelrio12) October 29, 2017

Whatever happens today just know that @CoachMcElwain has been a father figure and a great mentor in my life and family’s life. #GotyourBack

— Eddy Piñeiro (@eddypineiro1) October 29, 2017

— Drè Massey (@D1Masseyy) October 29, 2017

Recruits who are experiencing the business end of college football for the first time start chiming in.

Im not answering any interview questions about whats going on, that isnt my place to speak about. Nothing is changing this class.#AllBite18

— M A T T Y (@corral_matt) October 29, 2017

I will not do any interviews about the situation with Coach Jim. #GoGators

— Ja'Marr Chase (@10jayy__) October 29, 2017

#Gators WR commit Corey Gammage posted this, deleted it a minute later. http://pic.twitter.com/FBTID9pW3P

— Graham Hall (@GrahamHall_) October 29, 2017

The team meeting is announced.

#Gators players meeting now expected to be at 5:30 p.m.

— Graham Hall (@GrahamHall_) October 29, 2017

And around the time the meeting goes down, the end comes.

McElwain, UAA Mutually Agree to Part Ways Details: https://t.co/QsGUA7spfI

— Gators Football (@GatorsFB) October 29, 2017

The official statement brings an end to the often long (but sometimes short) march through the hot seat stages. It could termed be a “mutual parting of the ways,” could be a firing, or a forced resignation.

Either way, your team’s coach is gone, and it’s time to reset the program to try all over again.

Certainly the next hire won’t end like this one did, right?

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junker-town · 7 years

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How France is bringing romance back to American football

Illustrations by Brittany Holloway-Brown

Finding the romance in football américain

By taking football out of America, the French made it more communal and passionate than ever

Louis Bien •

La Courneuve may not have become France’s football powerhouse if Bruno Lacam-Caron hadn’t chased a girl. They were dating when she introduced him to a classmate named Yazid Mabrouki, who told Lacam-Caron that he wanted to start an American football club — football américain, in the parlance — in their dirty little Paris suburb 32 years ago. Lacam-Caron thought that joining the Flash might bring him even closer to her.

His relationship with football endured longer than his relationship with the girl, who he later married then divorced. He has never left the Flash, through the long period when the team was a glorified group of friends playing in a park, to now as a European Football League powerhouse. The Flash have won the French championship nine times and claimed a European championship. They have never been relegated out of France’s Élite division. Lacam-Caron has been the team’s general manager since 1994.

American football is a sub-chic sport in France, fervently practiced but in just a few small, insular places like La Courneuve and Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône in the Paris suburbs, or Thonon-les-Bains in the Alps. It has become French like so many things that define France — simple and good, rough and beautiful, like red wine and two-top cafés. It isn’t ubiquitous, but the sport is growing. There are now approximately more than 22,000 American football players in France, up from 2,000 20 years ago.

Lacam-Caron was one of the first few.

At age 14, he was living in the middle of France when his older brother died of leukemia, then he went — “psheeewwww,” he says — to Paris to live with his mother. Lacam-Caron’s parents were divorced and he didn’t like his stepmother or stepfather. He laughs and admits he was “a big asshole.” He says that maybe 80 percent of the original 26-person team was in trouble with the law, including him. He stole car radios and sold them. The other guys stole money, cars and wallets.

“It was a good salvation for me and my friends to be on this team,” Lacam-Caron says. “Because we create a new thing, a new family. We didn’t have a past. We come in like virgin people.”

Lacam-Caron didn’t care that he was playing an “American” sport. The sport shaped him as he and his teammates were simultaneously interpreting it 5,500 miles from the States.

France’s first American football club formed in 1980, four years before the Flash. In the years since, Lacam-Caron has helped build the Flash into a self-sufficient football machine, just as other programs are being molded in hidden places around France. French football exists. It isn’t a secret. It is spreading as a whisper you must be privileged enough to hear. And to the sport’s closest caretakers, that’s just fine.

“What does La Courneuve mean?” Mike Leach is wondering. “Is it some dude’s name, you think?”

I think the Washington State head coach thinks I know because of my name, and because I pronounce French words better than he does. I say it may have something to do with roosters, which isn’t even a little bit correct.

“They like roosters and frogs,” Leach says. “Why the fascination with roosters and frogs?”

The rooster is the national bird, and I think they just like to eat frogs.

“Well you know Benjamin Franklin thought the wild turkey should have been our national bird.”

The question I asked was about Flash de La Courneuve’s pro style offense and whether that was Lacam-Caron’s influence. Leach has been a friend and consultant to the program since 2010. He knows the Flash almost as well as anyone, but curiosity gets ahead of him a lot.

Leach loves history and wants to travel more, talk to more people, and see more things. His first head coaching job — 11 years before he took over Texas Tech, and 23 years before he took over Washington State — was with the Pori Bears in Finland. He had to have an interpreter tell his players what he wanted them to do. Physical demonstrations often translated better than words.

“Sometimes they’d laugh at inopportune times, and I’d be like, ‘Uh, hey, well hopefully you got that,’“ Leach says. “They were probably goofing on me, which would be understandable.”

Shortly after Leach was fired from Texas Tech in 2009, he met Lacam-Caron in a roundabout way through a former Flash quarterback named Braxton Shaver.

Shaver came from McMurry University, a small Methodist college in Texas, to play two seasons in La Courneuve before trying to find “a real job.” Then he decided he missed his friends in France and went back to La Courneuve to play three more.

Shaver’s last season in France was in 2006. In 2009, Lacam-Caron reached out to Shaver because Hal Mumme, the godfather of the Air Raid offense, had become McMurry’s head coach, and he wanted to know if the coaching legend was interested in visiting the Flash.

Mumme declined the offer, but he put Shaver in touch with Leach, who was living in Florida without a coaching job. Leach had wanderlust and a lot of time on his hands. He and Lacam-Caron exchanged a few phone calls, and then Leach was on a plane to spend a week in La Courneuve as a guest of the Flash.

“I was in touch with him, he said, ‘It’s not a joke. It’s Mike Leach,’” Lacam-Caron says. “And fuck, Mike Leach came.”

In La Courneuve, a street market envelops the games. The city is a popular place for artists and writers who want to live in “Paris” without paying the rent. A good deal of the population, 36.3 percent, was born outside of France’s five-pointed continental footprint. Booths outside the stadium sell dishes from Guadeloupe, Martinique and Tahiti. Inside the stadium, music will be blasting, “and the best way to describe it is ‘explicit,’” laughs Shaver.

He and Leach became close friends after that first meeting. They explored Cuba together. In 2015, Shaver traveled to the Middle East by himself, a trip he says he could only do because of the confidence he developed when he continued his playing career in La Courneuve instead of some Texas arena league.

American football clubs in France need American imports to succeed. American players are simply better — they start playing football at an earlier age, in better facilities, with more quality coaches, and a more rigorous practice schedule.

The way Leach and Shaver landed in La Courneuve is the same way that players in far-flung schools come to France. Few people seek it out. The opportunity has to come to them, often by word of mouth, and then players have to be daring enough to go.

“There’s a story you always hear, a kind of agreed upon story, of Division I football players from big schools sometimes don’t do so well when they go to the European leagues,” Shaver says. “They carry their pads to practice, they’ve got to ride the subway, they’ve got to wash their own clothes when they get home.”

They’re good players, but they have to be a little scruffy to end up in France. Ryan Perrilloux, former five-star prodigal son of Louisiana football, started last season for the Argonautes in Aix-en-Provence. Josh Turner, once a top-150 high school recruit for Texas, was the offseason’s prize signing for the Thonon-les-Bains Black Panthers, even though he was never much more than special teams ace for the Longhorns. He served a two-game suspension in 2014. Black Panthers president Benoit Sirouet calls him “the best athlete of his time here in France.”

Thonon-les-Bains is the most secluded of France’s football cities, hugged between the French Alps and Lake Geneva. The town is next to Évian-les-bains of Evian Water fame, and the Black Panthers play their games in full view of the real life three mountain tops on the bottle label. Players joked that they were showering in Evian water after games: The water from the shower heads really was that clear.

Thonon is small, a town of about 40,000 people where football is bigger than even soccer or rugby. American football is the only sport in which Thonon can claim a top-league team all its own. Sirouet says the club now has almost 500 members. The Élite squad won back-to-back titles in 2013 and 2014 behind French national team head coach Larry Legault.

Sirouet attracts a lot of athletes who are tired of France’s obsession with soccer. The Black Panthers regularly draw 1,000 to 2,000 people to watch home games at perhaps the best American football facilities in the country.

“It’s pretty weird seeing like a full turf practice field in the middle of France,” says Sam Poulos, a former dual-threat quarterback for Grinnell College in Iowa. He will be going back to Thonon to play a second season. “That’s a lot of money for a town or team to put in.”

American players get paid, too. The monthly stipend isn’t much — 500-800 euros a month depending on the club — but most of their French teammates pay dues, and often buy their own equipment.

The perks are better than the pay. Poulos gets housing and a car that he shared last season with former Idaho State linebacker P.J. Gremaud. The team was sponsored by local restaurants, so Poulos and Gremaud could go to a different establishment every night and get a free meal.

Clubs practice just two or three times per week and play games every other weekend. There’s no comprehensive film study. Most of the French players have to work jobs, or go to school, or be parents. Poulos and Gremaud, free of the football regimen as they knew it, took mid-week trips into the surrounding nature, up into the mountains.

“It was absolutely incredible,” Poulos says. “One of the more beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”

Shaver has been back to La Courneuve from Texas five or six times since his last season. Leach visited a second time in 2015 to host a football camp, and hosted three Flash coaches to shadow his staff for three weeks through the Boise State game in September. Lacam-Caron once asked Leach if he would like to coach for the Flash. Leach said no, but the offer stands.

“I’ve actually thought about if and when I ever retire,” Leach says. “Just pick out someplace over there and I guess rent a house … satellite from there and kind of saturate the region.”

Shaver will will hop on a plane for any flimsy reason to come back. He likes the idiosyncrasies.

“After a game in college, we’d all gather around on the field and say the Lord’s Prayer, right?” he says. “At La Courneuve, at the end of the game they bring out Heinekens.”

Anthony Dablé would rather he never play in France again. Just a handful of French players have ever made it to the NFL for even a tryout. Richard “Le Sack” Tardits, born in Bayonne, set the career sack record at Georgia before spending three seasons with the Patriots until 1992. He is the only French person to ever play a regular season game in the NFL. Dablé could be second, and the first who was entirely Euro-raised.

Dablé came close last year. In February, he signed a one-year minimum contact with the Giants to play wide receiver, but was cut from the team at the final roster deadline. He bided his time in Boca Raton, training at XPE Sports Academy, throughout the season. He had tryouts with the Jets and Patriots in September. In early January, he signed a reserve/futures contract with the Falcons and may finally take the field in 2017. At 28, his opportunity is now and only now.

When he was 17 his cousin showed him the video game NFL Quarterback Club ‘98. Dablé didn’t understand the rules, but he understood big plays when they happened — long passes and kickoff returns — not just by the yards they gained but by how scarce they were, even in the polygonal universe.

“And you know that it’s special because it doesn’t happen all the time,” Dablé says. “You have a lot of runs, and short gains and everything, so when you have a big pass and a big play, you understand.”

Dablé calls football his father. His biological father wasn’t around as he grew up, something he was OK with until he was 19 and rudderless. He had dropped out of his university psychology program and was working in fast food when he joined the Grenoble Centaures, his local team.

The machinations that wear down some players invigorated Dablé. He spent hours, daily, watching clips on NFL.com. He watched so much American football that he learned how to speak English from the commentary. His 6′4 frame is prototypical in the United States, and mammoth in France where football doesn’t usually attract many of the best physical athletes. With the Centaures, he had several coaches teaching him the game, hands on, no translation needed.

Dablé became a specialized big play weapon.

“The mindset and the lessons that you get from football, and the game of football is so similar to life,” Dablé says. “It tells you not to give up, and to have a plan, and help each other, have each other’s back.”

Dablé’s first career reception was a slant he housed in his first game in front of a crowd made up of friends and family. The first big game he played was in front of 7,000 people for the Élite division championship against the Flash in 2011, in which he caught another touchdown.

“It’s like practice is the way it works,” Dablé says. “Whether it’s one person or 100,000, that’s the same. You just have to do your job.”

In 2011, Dablé watched a man who looked a lot like him go No. 4 overall in the NFL Draft. A.J. Green was 6’4, 211 pounds, with a 4.5 in the 40-yard dash — like Dablé, or close enough. He set his eyes on the more competitive German league, joining the Berlin Rebels, then the New Yorker Lions, Europe’s preeminent club. In two seasons, Dablé caught 145 passes for 2,437 yards, and 32 touchdowns. He won two German titles and the Euro Bowl — Europe’s Super Bowl.

In early 2016, the NFL called. His agent had forwarded Dablé’s tape to the NFL United Kingdom office, where it found former Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora, now working as a league ambassador. Umenyiora brought Dablé to London the next day for a workout, then — upon confirming that Dablé was the same athlete he saw on tape — told him to take a trip to Florida to train for the NFL regional combines.

The Giants hosted Dablé for a tryout two weeks later, then signed him right after. He was wanted. His mother cried. He couldn’t stay on the roster, but he knows now that he belongs to a class of people who can call themselves the best in the world at something. His future is in football, and he says he will only play it at the highest level before heading off to the sport’s peripheries, into coaching or broadcasting.

“When you get to a certain level, it’s harder to go back down,” Dablé says. “It’s going to be boring.”

Dablé misses the kinship of small-time French football and where it has brought him. It’s hard to make friends with NFL players, especially as a complete outsider, he admits. Rosters turn over rapidly. Some cliques have been in place since high school when many professional players remember playing against each other.

But returning would be like admitting he needs the coddling of a parent. France doesn’t get the external attention that mounts pressure and creates prestige.

“Because really a game of football is just four quarters,” Dablé says. “What’s happening is advertisements and a show — before the game, the tailgate, and all the family comes and they have a barbecue together — that dynamic that brings the game of football has to happen in France so that it can grow.

“Because even in France, it’s not called football it’s called American football, so people know it’s American. That’s not our sport.”

The French don’t genuflect. John McKeon, a former NC State offensive guard, played in La Courneuve after a stint with the Helsinki Roosters in Finland. He thought he had a chance to make the NFL as a 38-game starter who had helped protect Philip Rivers. When he didn’t stick, he said “oh shit” and went abroad. McKeon had NFL size, but his new teammates stood up to him.

“A lot of these guys are paying to play, they come in after work, after they’ve had a long day at work, they’re tired,” McKeon says. “There was this defensive end who I think played Division II or Division III ball here in the U.S., but he was a French citizen. … He comes in right off that bat, head down, trying to take out the new American kid, who they’re paying to be here.”

McKeon now runs American Football International, a website chronicling American football as it is played outside the United States. Joining the Flash allowed him to go to places like Moscow, Barcelona, and Vienna. Culturally, it felt more like football as he wanted it to be.

“It’s that community aspect — ‘I’ve played next to this guy for five, 10 years,’” McKeon says. “We love the game, we love each other, it’s not because I’m getting paid a lot of money. And that kind of goes back to why I fell in love with football. I was disenfranchised with college.

“College is not a friendly sport. College is a professional sport.”

Formal American football has existed in France for more than 30 years now, despite its barriers to entry. Few major sports are as unintuitive, or require so much space, expensive equipment, and bodies. Marc-Angelo Soumah remembers when teammates used to play in motorcycle helmets. “[We] didn’t know much about the game, but we had a lot of enthusiasm,” he says.

Soumah was a Flash player in the 90s before joining Browns training camp as a 29-year-old wide receiver in 2003. He later became president of the Fédération française de football américain (FFFA) and is now head coach of the second-division Fontenay-sous-Bois Météores. He once had to work an entire summer so he could buy his own equipment. Back then there was just one supplier called Trocasport, and cleats, a helmet, and a full set of pads could cost $2,000 in French francs.

American football was too expensive to be played on a whim back then. Today, newcomers to American football can afford to play more casually. Xavier Mas, head coach of the two-time defending French champion Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône Cougars, has noticed that his under-19 players seem to have different motivations than he did.

“Some of these kids, they only have two practices, and they are like asking for, ‘Do you have this type of glove?’“ Mas says. “And I’m like, ‘Dude, you don’t even know how to play football and you’re already talking about how you will look on the field?’

“I’m trying to find a football player and not a model.”

The clubs do a good job of managing themselves, but they lack strong central organization. The FFFA doesn’t have the resources to do much more than sponsor the teams in France. The most equipped organization in Europe, the International Federation of American Football (IFAF), is a farce of leadership disputes and dysfunction, exemplified by the 2015 IFAF World Championship.

In France, club-level caretakers like Lacam-Caron, Sirouet, and Mas are the most competent drivers of the sport’s development. They are first-generation football players, so their stake is personal. They are inclined to protect what they feel is best about American football, even if it means neglecting attention and profitability.

The word “American” in the name of the sport works against it. The French are notoriously wary of anything they think might impinge on their cultural identity. The government has been trying to beat back marauding vacationers for decades, and has resisted the English language’s global takeover. Media coverage of American football largely centers on head trauma and domestic abuse scandals.

French football clubs have agreed on a few small gestures to distinguish themselves. There’s a reason the name of the France’s championship game — Le Casque de Diamant, the diamond helmet — is not a “bowl.”

“I am French,” Soumah explained in a 2015 interview. “For me, if I call it a ‘Bowl,’ I’m going to have the impression of copying the Americans. A French name shows that it is appropriate [for France].”

The growth of the sport would accelerate if international players started popping up in the NFL — say, if Dablé or Vikings receiver Moritz Boehringer from Germany became American football’s Tony Parker and Dirk Nowitzki, respectively. The NFL is understandably hesitant to invest in an unstructured system, however, leaving the sport to move at its glacial pace toward mainstream relevance.

“Players are here for passion, because they love the game,” Soumah says. “And that’s the way we play it, for the guys next to them, for their coaches.

“You know Bill Belichick, ‘Do your job?’ That will never work in France.”

On Nov. 13, 2015, 130 people died in terrorist attacks around Paris. Three explosions occurred near the Stade de France where an international friendly soccer match was taking place between France and Germany, just four kilometers away from where the Flash de La Courneuve play their home games. Two Flash players worked at the Bataclan, the night club where 89 people were killed. They both called in sick with the flu that night.

La Courneuve doesn’t get many visitors. It has one of the highest rates of violent crime in France, and has become associated with acts of terrorism that have taken place in the last year. Many of the perpetrators had been living in Paris banlieues like La Courneuve. France, like many Western nations, is dealing with a rise in racism and anti-Muslim sentiment.

Lacam-Caron brought his players, many of them Muslim, closer together after the Nov. 13 attacks. Insulated them. The Flash quickly set out trying to get updates from every member of the club to make sure no one had been hurt or victimized. They organized discussions between players, coaches, and the organization’s board to iterate in no uncertain terms that it did not equate “Muslim” with “terrorist.”

“We then refocused on the practice of sport, our social actions, and the organization of [activities] in order to ensure that our members think of something else, and do not fear.” Lacam-Caron says.

La Courneuve as France sees it — and as the world thinks of it, when it thinks of it — is different from how its players and fans know it. The insularity of France’s American football programs has served them well as both a barrier against negativity and a force of communal and personal growth. That incubation means that football in France won’t be big business like the NFL soon, or ever, but it also preserves what’s special about it.

The sport has defined itself in marginal places that are more beautiful and welcoming because football exists in them. The questions of what is “French” football and what can “French” football become assume there isn’t an answer already.

“Very quickly, we understood we have a role on the society, we were the connection, we were an example, and we can do something,” Lacam-Caron says. “We had a mission. And the sport was a secondary goal for us.”

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