Chapter 42

Bob Costas was in the screening room going over the tapes of the most remarkable football play he had ever seen. Costas was the star of the NBC pre-game shows for its NFL schedule. Since NBC was the network with this year's Super Bowl, he was handling the expanded multi-hour pre-game show before the five-thirty (Eastern) kickoff.

The video tape he was viewing had been made at a game played the day before between four Chicago Bears and four girls. He had been told that they were the men's fiancées. Technicians had been working almost all night long running, re-running, and endlessly editing a single play: the pass Sue had completed to Cathy after Ken had almost broken it up.

It was amusing to think about what had happened. Virtually every scrap of high-tech video equipment the network had was now in New Orleans. As a result, they had re-taped the original in ultra slow-motion, then used the latest in electronic editing equipment to produce synthetic close-ups. Costas was watching the final tape.

There was no end to the technical talents the network could bring to bear under conditions such as the Super Bowl. For example, using the painted yard markers and sophisticated timing equipment, they had determined that the receiver was running at the rate of a 4.0 to 4.2 second forty-yard dash. This would make hers the fastest time of its kind ever clocked. Of course, it relied on the yard markers being precisely measured and on a precise running speed of the battery-powered camera used, both of which were improbable assumptions. Nevertheless, she had been flying.

Now he was watching an ultra-slow-motion shot of the final instant of the play. In the upper left-hand corner of the screen, there was an inset of a clock reading to hundredths of a second: the clock was showing real time that matched the slow-motion image. He didn't believe his eyes. From the instant when Bradley deflected the pass until it settled into the girl's arms after she dove was less than one-quarter of a second.

He shook his head and asked for a rerun. As the technician was setting up, the phone rang. It was a female network reporter, Jane Janis. Janis said she had located the girl from the tape, Catherine Collins, and wanted to know if he would like to see her to do an interview. Costas thought for a minute and said, "Is there any chance you can get her down to the studio? Would she do an interview here?" Jane said she would get right back to him and did, only minutes later. Miss Collins had agreed and it was scheduled for later in the morning.

Cathy had been surprised when she received the call at the suite from the NBC reporter. She had agreed to see the young woman and talk with her. Then, when she received another call inviting her to come to the studio and meet Bob Costas, she was both puzzled and flattered. She had watched enough football on television to both know him and respect him as a reporter and interviewer.

After consulting with Cindy she was wearing a camel's-hair suit in natural tan with a hunter-green cashmere sweater. She also insisted on wearing her gold collar. Going down to the lobby, she met Jane Janis whose eyes widened when she saw Cathy. Jane hadn't realized before either how tall or how perfectly proportioned Cathy was. She led the way outside to a waiting limousine which took them to the studio facilities in the Superdome.

Costas was on his feet waiting for Cathy when Janis ushered her in. She took an offered seat and he began to talk with her to put her at her ease. Then he stopped in mid-sentence, just shook his head and grinned.

"What's wrong?" Cathy asked, puzzled.

"Absolutely nothing at all," he replied. "Except maybe with me. Miss Collins, the purpose of these first few minutes is normally to put the interview subject — you — at ease. The person to be put at ease today, though, is me. You're the most incredibly beautiful and most self-assured young lady it has ever been my privilege to meet."

He then explained the reason for the interview. "Miss Collins, let me show you a video tape made during the game you played yesterday. Incidentally, what appears to be haze in the picture isn't. It's falling rain. That was the heaviest rain I've seen in years and it only makes the achievements of you and your friends even more remarkable."

He first ran through the tape at its normal speed. The cameraman caught Sue perfectly, looking, as always, right down the center of the field. Cathy winced when she saw Ken taking her fake, slip and slide while she blazed by him. Then it caught Ken recovering his balance, flying down the field trying to overtake her, and then leaping and tipping the ball with his fingertips. But Cathy stretched, caught the ball on her fingertips, then pulled it into her chest, and slid along the ground in the mud. Then it caught her grin as she jumped to her feet and jogged in for the score.

"Remember that play, Miss Collins?" Costas asked.

"I sure do. But since I've watched you for years on pre-game shows I would feel strange calling you Mr. Costas. I feel like you're a friend of the family. Please call me Cathy so I can call you Bob?"

Costas grinned and nodded. "Cathy it is, then. What did you think of the play?"

"I was very lucky to catch it," Cathy replied. "Ken's very fast and made a brilliant play on the ball."

"It was a brilliant play," Costas said. "But now look at this." The tape rolled in ultra-slow-motion with the clock in the corner. Costas narrated, "There are a number of things we did with this tape. My people tell me that they haven't had so much fun with a piece of tape in years. First, notice Miss Bradford. She's in the perfect posture for a passer looking right down the middle. There's no way a defender can follow her eyes. Now watch. Here you fake to the inside. But it really wasn't a fake, was it?"

Several cameramen were taping the whole interview scene. It was clear that they would put the show together by cutting from one camera angle to another. Cathy replied, "Not really. If he hadn't taken it, I would have gone for the corner."

"We thought so," Costas said. "Incidentally, a couple of former NFL coaches want copies of this tape. They claim it's the ultimate football pass play — on both sides of the ball. No one knew that Ken Bradley could play such brilliant defense — and he really did. You just demonstrated that a defender can't be in two places at once.

"If he took your fake — as he did — you beat him on a fly pattern. If he doesn't, you're free going for the corner. And on a field that was a sea of mud, to boot. It was a classic case of the advantage being with the offense. The receiver knows where he's going." He looked at Cathy and asked, "How did you keep your feet, by the way?"

She grinned and said, "I guess I have long toes like an ape. I just dug them in." Costas looked closely at the tape and said, "My God, how could we be so stupid! All you girls were playing barefoot and we never even noticed. We saw you kicking barefoot, but there have been some barefoot kickers from time to time. I guess we just never looked. People don't play football in January barefoot."

Cathy laughed. "Sane people don't play football barefoot. We did."

"Back to our tape. Now look at the pass she threw. We timed it. It has as much speed and spin as any we've ever seen thrown. As I said, our people had a lot of fun with this. One of the things we did was take out old material on the best passers in the history of the game. None was better. None! Now watch the time in the corner of the picture. Here comes the ball.

"Incidentally, the coaches were drooling just looking at you. Your eyes are on the ball. 'Looking it into your hands, ' they call it. Furthermore, they tell me that the position of your hands — up to cradle the ball — is also right out of the book. As one said, though, 'It's a shame almost no one ever reads the damned book!'

"Now, here's Ken tipping the ball away. Notice the time. You change direction and somehow dive for the ball. Even at this speed we can't figure out how you did it. It was all done in about one-tenth of a second. No one has reflexes this fast — except you. Now watch. Your body is fully extended and you take the ball on your finger tips, cradle it into your chest, hit the ground, slide in the mud, pop up and coast in. Cathy, that's the most remarkable play we have ever seen. How long have you been playing football, and how did you start?"

She grinned and shook her head, then looked at her watch and said, "About twenty-two hours ago. 'How' is pretty simple. I went out on the field and played. From what you have been saying I guess I didn't screw up too badly."

Costas just whistled and then asked, "Why, Cathy? Why yesterday? Why in such awful weather?"

Cathy straightened her back and looked down at her hands which were folded in her lap. Then she looked up at Costas and said, "Because I'm going to marry Ken Bradley. Because I wanted him to see his wife isn't a quitter — that the children I hope to bear for him won't be wimps."

She looked at him and he could see the love in her eyes as she continued, "Bob, I don't know how much you know about Ken Bradley. You probably know he graduated from Yale. You probably don't know that he was Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude. He was also a Baker Scholar at the Harvard Business School where he graduated last year.