Chapter 1

By the end of my sophomore year of high school, my future was set.

I was a solid student, starting quarterback on the state champion football team and certified cock hound. I was untouchable. I had colleges lining up scholarship offers — the big boys.

People flocked to my little hometown come Friday nights just to catch a glimpse of me in action. Men and boys wanted to be me and girls and women wanted to be with me.

I wouldn't dream at night. Who needed to dream? Nothing could stop me.

I'm older now. My future didn't quite turn out the way I thought it would. With a couple of notable exceptions, it turned out better.

My path to glory started when I was 10. I was a gangly kid — all arms and legs. But my right arm was my ticket to fame. I could throw a football like nobody's business. By instinct, finely honed on the sandlots of our town, I knew when to throw hard, when to throw soft and just how much arc to put on the ball.

My peewee coach was no fool — and pass blocking was well beyond the skill set of 10 year olds — so he taught me the roll-out pass. By the time I was 12, our offense was unstoppable and the middle school coach couldn't wait for me to hit seventh grade.

By the summer I turned 12, I was 6-feet tall and could throw a football 50 yards — farther when rolling to my right. I was the starting middle school quarterback two days into summer practice — much to the chagrin of last year's backup who was now an eighth-grader. Too bad. He wasn't as good as I was. I knew it. He knew it. The coach knew it. The only person who didn't know it was the boy's dad, who threw a hissy fit and forced his son to quit the team.

I also played basketball, so I was king of the school — a fact I didn't let anyone forget. I was an insufferable bastard — literally. I've never been told who my father is. It didn't matter. My mom was always enough. She worked her tail off to raise me. My mom is the smartest woman I've ever met — even now. She ran a small television station in a town about 20 minutes away. When she took over, the station was about to close. When she left, it was outperforming stations in the Pittsburgh area about 100 miles to the north.

Her work schedule didn't matter. She always made time for me. I don't think she missed an event in my scholastic career — and not just football. She went to basketball games, soccer games, class plays and choir concerts. You name it. If I did it, she was there. And I didn't appreciate it.

That's OK. I didn't appreciate anything at that point in my life. I don't know where I learned to act that way. It certainly wasn't from my mother. I think I just figured out I could act like a jerk and people would let me get away with it. So I did.

It seemed like the bigger jerk I was, the more girls liked me. And the crappier I treated a girl the more likely it was I was able to date her best friend. I've said it for years (and the YouTube craze only confirms it), teenaged girls are the dumbest creatures on the planet.

After an 8-0 seventh grade year (the seventh consecutive undefeated season for the middle school), we followed up with an 8-0 eighth-grade year, too. Not surprisingly, I became even a bigger jerk when I started getting letters from college football coaches. It's sad to think a college football coach has nothing better to do than check to see how well a middle school kid in West Virginia is doing. But, given the volume of mail I received after my eighth-grade year, it seems they don't.

I made quite an impression during summer camps before I started high school. I finally was paired with a coach who could take what I already knew and teach me how to do it better. With a summer of learning fundamentals and unlearning some bad habits I'd picked up I entered ninth-grade thinking I'd be able to compete for the starting varsity quarterback job.

If you know anything about the politics of small-town football, you know that competition is not how most starting jobs are determined.

I was arrogant and condescending to everyone — coaches included. I was at my worst when I didn't get my own way. Midway through the first week of freshman football camp, I proved how big a pain in the ass I could be.

The varsity coach hadn't even shown up at practice to see me play and I was pissed. So, instead of working harder, I turned into a petulant, snotty brat. I refused to participate in drills and I told the freshman coach I wouldn't be back for the second half of two-a-days if the head varsity coach wasn't going to bother to check out how much his future star quarterback could help him.

The freshman coach told me that was fine with him. He was tired of my prima donna act already. So I could stay at home for all he cared.

My mom got home about 30 minutes before the start of evening practice and asked me why I wasn't ready to go.

When I told her I quit, my mom got a look of fury in her eyes I've only seen on two other occasions — neither directed at me, thank God.

"Robert James Hartley," she said through gritted teeth. "You get your shit and you get your ass in the car. You gave your word. You made a commitment. It may not mean a shit to you, but it does to me."

A few things you need to know. My name is Robert James Hartley, but I'm only called that by my mother when she is truly angry. Everyone called me Jay. The second thing is my mother never, ever cursed. I mean never a "shit" when someone cut her off in traffic. Never a "damn it" when she hit her thumb with a hammer. By the time I was 12 I had learned all the curse words and believed I needed to mix at least one into every sentence.

But not my mother. So to get a "shit," an "ass," and another "shit" in one sentence, I did what every teenaged boy in my situation would do — I argued with her.

I'm pleased to say I made it my entire life without being struck above or below my ass by my mother. I was spanked a few times when I was being a little butthole as a kid, and I deserved a few cracks in the chops as I got older, but she always managed to restrain herself. I truly believe this was the closest she every came to striking me. A couple of fathers took shots at me after I used their little girls and discarded them, but that's a story for later.

In the end, let's just say I grabbed my stuff, got my butt in the car and returned to practice.

You've never quite tasted humiliation until your mother accompanies you to practice. My coach took one look at my mother leading me to practice and I know he thought, "Oh, no. Another parent is going to tell me how to run my team."

He couldn't have been more wrong.

My mom stopped in front of the coach and said in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear: "My son is here to apologize to you and his teammates. I am here to make sure he is sincere in his apology. From this day forward, during practice and games, he is yours to use as you see fit. If you want him to be the water boy, he'll be the water boy. If you want to run laps every practice, he'll run laps the entire practice. What he will not do is quit."

Then, using Robert James Hartley again, she told me I had some fences to mend with my coach and teammates and I'd "better damned well mend them right."

When I muttered, "Uh, sorry coach," she told me that wasn't good enough. And she stood there, hands on her hips, until I apologized thoroughly not just to the coach but to each teammate — right down to the kids who spent the rest of the season filling cups for the ones who actually played.

I was humiliated, but I was not broken. In fact, I was madder at the end than I was earlier in the day. I ran for what seemed like days while the rest of the kids practiced. Then I did the same the next morning and the next evening. With every step, I got madder and madder at my mom. In fact, it was almost a week before I spoke to her at all. That's OK. She wasn't real pleased with me at the time either so we were even.

The third day after my walkout, I came to practice ready to run some more, but coach pulled me aside and handed me my red "do-not-hit" quarterback's pullover.

"You've got a cannon for an arm and a peashooter for a brain, boy," he told me. "If you listen to your mom a little more I think you'll be OK and be able to get out of this town."

He told me he knew I'd gotten recruiting letters, but those letters would stop as quickly as they started if I wasn't playing. He said he'd let bygones be bygones, but the next time I pulled a stunt like that I wouldn't have to quit. He'd toss me off the team and let my mom handle it.

That was not a prospect I wanted to face, so I kept my mouth shut. In fact, I rarely said anything to anybody. Maybe no one else could see it, but I knew I was too good to be playing with these yahoos.

Fortune smiled on me (or misfortune befell another, however you want to look at it) midway through summer drills. The JV quarterback broke his collarbone when he was hit by a car. The JV team had a game a few days later, so in one fell stroke, I was on the JV team. High school rules dictated I could play five quarters not including overtimes per week in any combination of freshman, junior varsity or varsity competition.

The way the schedule fell (Friday to Thursday), I could play two quarters of JV, which played Wednesday, play two quarters of freshman the following Monday and still have three quarters left to backup up the starter on varsity the next Friday night.

The junior varsity game was a laugher — we scored the first three times we touched the ball — and I was done by halftime, giving way to the JV backup who would have to play at least a quarter or two each week until the other kid healed.

The freshman game wasn't much of a contest either. I played a quarter before coach pulled me in favor of the kid who had taken all the snaps (and hits) in practice.

I wasn't happy, but I kept my mouth shut and sat on the end of the bench sulking the rest of the night. I got an earful from my mom on the ride home about being a member of a team and how those kids worked harder than I did (mostly because they had to) and I should respect and cheer their efforts as much as they cheered mine.

In one ear, out the other. The varsity game Friday night was a laugher the other way. We got the crap kicked out of just like we did every year by the same team in our opener. Sure, we got manhandled, but I didn't get a single play.

Our second game of the season was against another good school — in fact, it's the second-largest school in the city our first opponent came from — and we trailed by 21 entering the third quarter.

The freshman coach served as an assistant for the varsity and he grabbed my arm on the way out of the locker room.

"Keep your helmet on and stay about two steps away from coach the rest of the game," he told me. "Keep your head in the game and your mouth shut."

My foray as coach's shadow lasted one series into the second half. After our third-year starter, who'd managed to produce back-to-back two-win seasons as starting quarterback, tossed his fourth interception of the game, the coach turned around and started scanning the bench.

He saw me standing two feet from him. "Jesus Christ, it looks like at least someone is ready to play," he said. "You're in next series."

I think this decision, more than any other he made, cost coach his job at the end of the year. First, the starter's dad was a school board member. But, more importantly, I was a freshman who had no problem telling anyone who'd listen just how good I was.

No one had a problem with coach benching the starter, and coach probably could have kept his job if he'd put in the junior I shared back-up duties with.