A Perfect Score of 100
#. May 17, 2022
#-1. Athens, Georgia, USA
#-2. University of Georgia
The first day of summer classes had just ended.
Stepping out of the building, I stretched my arms toward the sky as hard as I could.
Bzzt—
“Hm?”
The phone in my hand buzzed, and when I checked the screen, I found a short message from Coach.
«Come to my office.»
With summer break in full swing and most of my teammates back home, only about fifty students were still coming and going on campus.
Roughly half the roster had cleared out.
Either way, I needed to head to Butts-Mehre.
I walked to the parking lot and got in my car.
Thud.
The car I drove around campus these days was the Model S I'd received from Elon Musk, and I only took the Toyota Land Cruiser out when heading into Atlanta.
It wasn't part of any sponsorship deal — the thing was just big enough to haul all kinds of gear around. My fishing equipment lived in there too, and it came in handy whenever I took Raki along, all that cargo space.
The drive from my classroom building to Butts-Mehre took barely three minutes, and the place was in the middle of a full renovation.
Construction had started on the first day of summer break, the school having invested a staggering $68 million into upgrading its training facilities.
Another $54 million had gone into renovating Sanford Stadium, making Georgia the first university ever to spend a combined $122 million on athletic facility improvements.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat—
Bang! Bang!
The sounds of construction echoed from every direction, and I followed the makeshift walkway they'd set up until I reached Coach's temporary office.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Oh, good timing. Have a seat.”
“….”
As you could see, with Butts-Mehre in this state, we'd been borrowing Stegeman Coliseum — the basketball team's facility — for our workouts.
The basketball squad, last season's doormat of the SEC, was in the middle of a complete overhaul, having replaced their head coach and the entire coaching staff.
Their season had already wrapped up in March, and I heard the players wouldn't even gather for training until late August.
Train for barely a month or two, then play a thirty-two-game season.
Basketball really is an easy, comfortable sport.
“You're retiring my number?”
“That's right. It was the President's idea.”
“…What about you, Coach?”
“I think it's a great idea too.”
“Wow. I did NOT see that coming.”
On the condition that we won the National Championship again this year, the President would announce at next year's celebration on the Sanford field that my number 14 was being retired for good.
There was a championship clause attached, sure, but I was confident. And if I became the fifth player in Georgia history to have his number retired, that would be an enormous honor.
It would also make me only the second player ever to have his number retired upon leaving the university — and the first was the great Frank Sinkwich.
Born in Croatia, Sinkwich came to America after the World War and, during his time at Georgia, was the biggest sports star the school had ever known.
Professionally, too.
In the 1942/43 season, the one in which he delivered Georgia an SEC title and a Rose Bowl championship, Sinkwich earned the honor of being named the Associated Press's Athlete of the Year for 1942.
For the record, the man he beat out that year was a baseball player named Ted Williams over at the Boston Red Sox — a man who posted a Triple Crown that very season, his credentials were that monstrous.
And a college football player had edged out that Ted Williams. The following year, Detroit selected him first overall.
In his rookie season he was named AP All-Pro and NFL MVP, but after entering military service, he suffered a catastrophic knee injury that ended his football career for good.
After hanging up his cleats, he spent the rest of his life here in Athens, passing away on October 22, 1990, at the age of seventy.
“….”
I was standing there now, staring at a wall that hadn't yet been torn down.
Spread out before me in panoramic style were photos and achievements of the unforgettable moments and the men who would be remembered forever across the entire history of Georgia football.
My hand reached out toward Frank Sinkwich's photograph, and the realization truly hit me — I was going to become like this great quarterback.
This is... kind of overwhelming.
I had no intention of making a spectacle of it, so I wouldn't tell anyone yet. But I would wait happily for the day the President made his announcement, and I would give everything I had to win it all this year.
A very good reason had just been born — one that demanded I achieve my goal no matter what stood in my way.
#. May 29, 2022
#-1. Flowery Branch, Georgia, USA
#-2. Atlanta Falcons Front Office
#-3. General Manager's Office
By any historical standard, if you graded the Atlanta Falcons' offseason, every single person would hand down an F.
First, right as the offseason began, starting wide receiver Calvin Ridley was exposed for betting on every game he'd played in and slapped with a suspension covering the entire 2022/23 season.
They'd patched the hole with first-round pick Drake London, but it was unquestionably a loss of firepower.
Then, shortly after, they shipped franchise icon Matt Ryan off to the Indianapolis Colts — and with no move whatsoever to bolster the quarterback position, declared their intention to ride the previous year's backup through the season.
The result: Atlanta now possessed a quarterback room ranked somewhere in the league's bottom five, an offensive line even worse than that, and a front seven worse still.
In any normal year, this roster would be a lock for dead last. The problem was, the other TFM contenders were no pushovers either.
So they were trying to gut their rosters even further.
—Who do you want?
“Steven Sims.”
—And what are you offering?
“Flash. Damn it, Omar, how many times do I have to say it? This is a lottery ticket!”
Negotiation tables were usually thick with lies, but every word out of Terry Fontenot's mouth right now was one hundred percent genuine.
And it was true.
With Calvin Ridley gone, Cordarrelle Patterson was supposed to step up as Atlanta's number-one receiver — and they were trying to send him to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
In exchange, they'd demanded nickel receiver Steven Sims, a guy whose production had fallen off so badly he could barely crack the lineup even as a backup.
They did ask for draft picks on top of that, of course — but not 2023 picks. A fourth-rounder in 2024 and a sixth-rounder in 2025.
The voice on the other end of the line asked again, and this time you could hear something in it that couldn't be hidden: delight.
—And nothing in 2023?
“Right. I swear on my life — check one more time and I'm calling Cincinnati or Baltimore. Or Cleveland, even.”
—A-alright. Deal.
“Good. I'll send the paperwork from my end. I'll call back in ten minutes, so have everything ready by then.”
Click.
Having sealed the trade, Terry Fontenot exhaled a long breath and turned his mind to the next battlefield.
Backed by owner Arthur Blank's support, he was pushing through sweeping reforms with a bold hand — but he was still butting heads with head coach Arthur Smith.
These days things had gotten so bad that making eye contact in the hallway was awkward, and the moment the Cordarrelle Patterson trade went public, there was no doubt another eruption was coming.
But it would be worth it.
Reaching to switch off the speakerphone, Fontenot changed his mind, rose from his chair, opened the door, and told the secretary at the desk directly outside to summon Arthur Smith to the GM's office.
“Right now?”
“Yes! Right now!”
“Uh... may I... disappear for a bit after I call him in?”
“...Damn it, do what you want.”
“Yes sir. Calling him now.”
Rather than letting an enraged Arthur Smith storm into his office unannounced, he would strike first.
Terry Fontenot believed this strategy was the best he could manage, and sure enough, a short while later the Atlanta Falcons' general manager's office was once again filled with the furious voice of Arthur Smith.
“If this is how it's going to be, then just FIRE me!!”
If the organization fired him, he'd collect the remainder of his contract.
But if he walked away on his own, the money dried up.
Arthur Smith's strength had always been constructing an offense — but with his quarterback gone, and now his number-one and number-two wide receivers as well, there was simply nothing left to build with.
Worse, this was his first head coaching job. If it ended in a humiliating failure, he might never get a seat like this again for years.
And then how many more thankless years as an assistant would he have to grind through?
That was why Arthur Smith hated tanking.
“You might as well just kill me.”
“Oh, you think I can't?”
“Deal with it. There's no other way.”
“….”
Furious, Arthur Smith snatched the chair in front of him and hurled it toward the window. Then he stormed out into the corridor, cursing Terry Fontenot with every fiber of his being.
Today, as always, the mood inside the Atlanta Falcons' front office was absolutely toxic.
#. June 2, 2022
#-1. Athens, Georgia, USA
#-2. University of Georgia
#-3. Stegeman Coliseum
#-4. The Gym
The first day our team used the basketball program's training facility, the workout started about thirty minutes later than usual.
The reason: the weight plates.
Even scraping together every plate this place had, we came up comically short, so we had to haul over the equipment that had been stashed in a storage warehouse — donations earmarked for later use.
A few of the guys filmed the whole thing and posted it to social media, and the basketball team seemed a little salty about it.
Not that they could say a word — the football team's influence on campus dwarfed every other athletic program, and we were the reason their training facility got upgraded in the first place.
For the record, $14 million had been poured into this place last year, gutting and rebuilding the entire training floor and court facilities.
That money had come from donations, too.
Donations generated by the football team.
Or more precisely, by me.
Well.
I didn't feel like bragging quite that hard.
“Come on, come on—!”
“LET'S GO—!!”
With every freshman and every teammate still on campus cheering me on, I set the barbell and plates — six hundred eighty pounds in total, roughly 308 kilograms — into position with perfect precision.
Then I took a few deep, heavy breaths, summoned every ounce of strength in my body, and ripped the barbell off the rack.
The voices from all sides grew louder, more ferocious, and staring at my blood-red face in the mirror, I held my breath after my final inhale and hinged at the hips.
Every part of me wanted to drop this miserable hunk of iron right that second, but my pride wouldn't allow it. So I decided to defy gravity.
Is that even the right expression?
My mind was a blur.
“Nnngh—!”
Clamping down on the mouthguard with everything I had, grinding my molars against it, I rose — slowly, teeth clenched, a hiss squeezing out between them.
With every centimeter my body climbed, the voices in my head screamed at me to quit — but the roar of my teammates only growing louder let me brush it off. Don't you dare fold.
“GO!! GO!! GO!! GO!!”
“OOOOHHHHHH—!!!”
“GRRRAAAHHH!!!”
The moment I locked out to a full stand, the room quite literally erupted. I stepped my left foot forward and racked the barbell back where it belonged.
Then I turned around, unbuckled my belt, and shouted:
“EVERYBODY BRING IT AT ME!!!!”
Before I broke the record last summer with 640 pounds, the heaviest squat ever posted by a quarterback was Jalen Hurts at 600.
Amid the excitement that refused to die down, Raki — who'd been filming the whole thing — handed me my phone, and I smashed the social media icon immediately.
This had to go up right now.
“You're out of your MIND! 680 pounds!”
I was nowhere near the linemen who shrugged off 700, but a quarterback squatting 680 was insane.
The second that video went up, the world was going to lose it all over again.
“Good. Let's check the reactions later.”
“That was sick. No — sick doesn't even cover it. That RIPPED.”
“Maaan, that's our Hyung for you.”
I was sharing the moment with KJ and the guys still on campus when my phone started erupting — an avalanche of notifications, practically on infinite repeat. I hoisted the phone high overhead, playing it up to the max and pumping energy into the whole gym.
Part of it was boosting my own market value. But I also knew that antics like these lit a fire under the entire team and set the training atmosphere humming.
Hand raised, I bellowed:
“MUSCLE MEN! WHO ARE WE?!!”
“BULLDOGS!!!”
“THEN BARK!!!”
“WOOF!!”
“WOOF!!!”
I silenced the notifications so they wouldn't interrupt training again, then made the rounds, firing up my teammates one by one.
At some point I glanced outside — and there was a group of girls, apparently the women's basketball team, staring over at us with their jaws hanging open.
After seeing nothing but the scrawny guys of the men's basketball squad day after day, catching sight of actual men had apparently short-circuited them.
Which, naturally, fired us up even more, and we were able to close out the session riding some seriously good energy.
“Got your number, hehe~”
“Ohohoho~”
Watching Raki strut over, waving her phone around like a trophy, I felt certain she was going to enjoy her college life quite a bit.
Today's weight session had been pure, distilled manhood.
And for it, I hereby award a perfect score of 100.
Can you believe your eyes?
#. June 3, 2022
#-1. Allen Park, Michigan, USA
#-2. Detroit Lions Front Office
#-3. Head Coach's Office
“I want this kid. Want him, want him, WANT him. It's driving me insane how much I want him. Look at this!!”
In just a single year, Dan Campbell had scrubbed the stench of defeat off the Detroit Lions and, almost overnight, earned a reputation as the NFL's definitive Culture Maker.
Last season's 3-13-1 record had left them one spot above the basement, yet the reviews were glowing across the board.
With a charisma both tough and tender, he commanded the total support of his locker room — the first time the Detroit Lions had employed a coach like this in well over a decade.
Which was exactly why the Lions' front office wanted to win it all alongside Dan Campbell, and he, in turn, was pouring everything he had into making it happen.
“He's the perfect fit. Perfect.”
“You'd say that about anyone.”
“Don't make me laugh. The Saints, the Falcons, the Texans, the Panthers — none of them have a clue what this kid is actually worth. But I do. My head is overflowing with schemes to run with him. We could use this kid like a running back. Like a wide receiver. I guarantee you he can do it, no problem. He'd be scoring in the red zone almost every time.”
Dan Campbell understood it perfectly.
The conservative DNA baked into college football meant Dwayne Moi Stone was nowhere close to using his blessed body to its fullest — and once he reached the pros and that seal came off, the results would be something else entirely.
Virtually every single week, at least one of Dwayne Moi Stone's plays would live forever in NFL history — which meant, in turn, fans flooding into stadiums.
Maybe there would come a day when the Detroit Lions had a nationwide following.
No.
With Dwayne Moi Stone, it was possible.
Dan Campbell believed it with everything he had.
“We're not touching the O-line. If we bring him in, we'll bleed picks for Jared and on the defensive side. Then we're giving up thirty a week. But who cares? We just outscore people by forty with THIS guy.”
“Now that's a thrilling proposition.”
“Haha. So? You gotta admit — that sounds fun, right?”
The excitement Dan Campbell showed after watching Dwayne Moi Stone's 680-pound squat was being replicated, in strikingly similar form, by other men in other offices all over the country.
And it wasn't limited to the front offices of the teams officially competing in the TFM.
A number of NFL general managers were now seriously mulling the idea that if their first four weeks went badly, pivoting straight into tanking might not be such a bad call after all.
June — the month when baseball traditionally owned the American sports calendar. Yet right now, all of North America was losing its mind over a college football player.