I'm Thinking of a Drastic Measure
13 07 21 10 — 51 Kahuku
07 07 07 07 — 28 Punahou
#. August 11, 2018
#-1. Oahu, Hawaii, USA
#-2. Honolulu CDP, Kahuku
#-3. Kahuku High School
“See you Monday, then.”
“Yeah. You get some good rest too.”
“Rest or not, there's nothing I can do on this ankle anyway.”
“...It's that bad?”
“Nah—a few days off and I'll be fine.”
“Take care of yourself.”
“I will.”
After finishing my goodbyes with Jeremy, I rolled up the passenger-side window.
Weeee—
We'd beaten Punahou today, but the win had handed us a whole stack of problems. What on earth were we going to do about the defense? And the offensive tackles? Whatever the final score said, there was almost nothing about that game I could bring myself to like.
Aunt Mel glanced over from the driver's seat, trying to console me.
“Cheer up. You won, didn't you?”
“If we keep playing like this, we're going to lose at least two games.”
“The tackles didn't protect you at all, I'll give you that.”
“The weak side is way too soft. The guards are elite, the center still hasn't gotten his head straight, and Marcus has completely let himself go.”
“...It'll get better soon.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
There's a line from a twelfth-century book called Old English Homilies that goes:
[“Hwa is thet mei thet hors wettrien the him-self nule drinken?”]
Who can water a horse that refuses to drink of its own will?
That, right there, is exactly what I want to say to this year's team.
They've almost completely stopped showing up to Muscle Men. I do my best to round them up every session, but there isn't even a trace of the passion and energy from last year. Only five kids have perfect attendance. On a good day, we barely crack fifteen. Last year, we never dipped below forty.
God, I miss those days.
“They're all acting like they've already won the championship.”
“Maybe it's because they trust you that much?”
That's probably it. This year's guys, how do I put it... they all just assume I'll take care of everything. That if they simply stand next to me, they'll shine on their own.
Very funny. Do they have any idea how hard the guys who went D1 last year worked, grinding through their paperwork all the way to National Signing Day this February? Honestly, I was the one caught off guard—I'd planned to start slow. That's how full of fire last year's teammates were.
“Want to grab dinner before heading home?”
“Oh, right—you two are going out tonight, aren't you?”
“Yep.”
“Let's do it.”
On the road from Kahuku to Honolulu, you pass through a town called Kaneohe, and there's a phenomenal seafood restaurant out there called Haleiwa Joe's—wait, no, Haiku Gardens. Locals just call it Haleiwa's, and our family has been back countless times.
“Hello? I was wondering if we could be seated right away.”
—Oh, I'm so sorry. We're fully booked.
“Hmm—one moment, please.”
At the word fully booked, my aunt shot a sidelong glance back at me. With no other choice, I took the phone from her hand and held it to my ear, listening to the click-click of the turn signal while I spoke.
“Hi, this is Dwayne Moi Stone...”
—Oh!
“I know you're busy, but could you possibly find room for a hungry nephew and his aunt?”
—Of course! Come on down. We'll keep a window table open for you.
My aunt made a gesture that clearly said, you have got to be kidding me, and I just laughed and handed the phone back.
“Thank you soooo much!”
Click.
Hanging up, my aunt shook her head, checked the side mirror, and pulled the car out onto the road.
“That's twice now we've ridden on our famous nephew's coattails.”
“Oh~ Mel. Don't tell me you're upset?”
“I bet it was Rosalynn who called it in. That woman's had it out for me from the start.”
“Haha. In exchange, dinner's on me today.”
“What? Where would you even get money?”
“Come on. You know exactly where.”
Every month, I receive an allowance somewhere between four and six hundred dollars from my parents and my grandparents. Even that much only exists because they forced agreement after agreement out of me until we'd settled on the bare minimum I couldn't refuse.
Frankly, I don't need money in my day-to-day life. The school takes care of pretty much everything. Sleeping and showering are handled, the cafeteria is free for me, and my drinks and snacks get restocked every week. The most I ever spend is the occasional team dinner—and lately I've been going down to Paia so often that helping out in the restaurant during rush hours somehow leaves cash tucked in my pocket before I know it. Everyone is desperate to shove an allowance on me, no matter how many times I say I don't need it.
But it does come in handy, so thanks to that, my bank balance hasn't moved an inch.
“Anyway, this can't go on.”
“Mm—and how do you plan to fix it?”
“Good question. I'll have to think on it.”
How do I solve a team of horses that refuse to drink? First things first—I needed to fill my stomach.
#. August 12, 2018
#-1. Oahu, Hawaii, USA
#-2. Honolulu CDP
#-3. Aina Haina
Just like last week, LSU came calling this Sunday. Ed Orgeron stepped through our front door, handed my grandparents a gift he'd prepared for them, presented me with an LSU uniform and hat, and then said there was someone I simply had to meet.
Who else could it possibly be this time?
“Whoa.”
“Hello.”
Wait. This is an insanely famous person standing in our living room. Even my grandparents went wide-eyed.
Who was it?
“You know who I am?”
“If I didn't, I'd have to be a spy.”
“Takes one to know one.”
“Oh, come on. I'm not quite at your level yet.”
“Mind if I sit here?”
“Oh! One second!”
That dainty little chair—one sit from him and it would shatter into splinters on the spot. I scrambled to fetch another one: the sturdy kind the men of the house used.
“Could I get an autograph later?”
“As many as you want. And I'll be taking one of yours.”
“Whoa—wow. That's genuinely unreal.”
To recruit me, LSU had brought out none other than Shaquille O'Neal. One of the greatest centers in NBA history, the very symbol of the LA Lakers—the franchise that, alongside Kobe Bryant, built the whole BEAT L.A. culture.
I knew Shaq had gone to LSU, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine they'd fly him out to win me over.
“Try the hat on.”
“This one?”
“Yeah.”
While my grandfather—a basketball fan long before he ever cared about football—filmed on his phone, I put on the LSU cap at Shaq's urging.
“Looks good on you. That's your path right there.”
“Haha. LSU is a great school.”
“The best. Purple & Gold. It's the Lakers' color—and the color of kings.”
“Oh—huh, now that you mention it, it really is?”
Forget the king part—I mean the colors. The LA Lakers are Purple & Gold. And so is LSU.
“You know...”
“?”
“Grandma really outdid herself with the menu today.”
“Ohhh?”
“Have you eaten?”
“Nope. Starving. Ed told me not to eat a thing before coming because the food at that place last time was so good—and then I demolished two plates of wings on the plane. But hey, you know? That doesn't even put a dent in this belly.”
Of course it wouldn't. The man is 7'1" (216 cm) and 370 pounds (168 kg). Even now he's easily clearing 150.
Grandma, who had headed off toward the kitchen, suddenly bellowed my name, and I got up from my seat, saying I'd help bring the food out.
“Oh—goodness gracious. Shaquille O'Neal.”
“I know, right?”
“Your daddy would've lost his mind over this.”
“Oh, right.”
Dad's a Raiders fan—though when he first started cheering, the team was still in L.A. They moved the franchise to Oakland in '95, and next year they're moving it again, to Las Vegas. Oakland's environment was just that bad.
Anyway. As you can probably tell from all that, Dad cheers for L.A. teams in everything. Raiders. Lakers. Dodgers. Galaxy. The only exception is that he refuses to root for their division rivals—no Clippers, no Angels, and no Chargers or Rams either.
If Dad had been sitting here right now... wouldn't he have absolutely lost it?
“I'll have to video call him later.”
“You'd better.”
“I just carry these out?”
“No, no. Those are for us to eat later.”
“...Whoa.”
I followed Grandma's pointing finger. There sat a cloth-draped mound shaped like a mountain peak.
Don't tell me. That's all—
“You picked today's menu very well indeed.”
“See?”
The moment the cloth came off the mountain of food, a scene unfolded that made me want to observe a moment of silence for the chickens.
Good Lord. It was all chicken wings.
But what a magnificent spread. I picked up two plates and headed toward the dining table, and I could see Shaquille O'Neal flinch for just a second.
See that? I'm not exaggerating. I just made Shaq flinch.
“Whew—eat as much as you like.”
“...I have to eat all this?”
“Of course not. Just take what you need.”
After pulling my eyes away from Shaq, who was blinking those enormous eyes of his, I turned to Ed Orgeron.
“Do you know JJ's been making my life miserable lately?”
“Haha. Seems the boy's taken a liking to you.”
“He was a tremendous receiver.”
“Better than Amon-Ra, even.”
“...”
These were people who'd dug up a phone number I'd only had for a week—of course they'd figured out I was in contact with Amon-Ra. It surprised me none at all. If they hadn't known, I'd have been disappointed.
“Actually...”
“?”
“There's a mighty fine young man in a town called Rustin.”
“Rustin?”
“That's right. A fella named Ray Parker. Some teams see him as a tight end, but I believe he'll make one hell of a shield for you. Six-five, 270 pounds, and he uses his hands beautifully.”
So that's how they're playing the recruiting game. Ed Orgeron laid out the team's plans.
“The boy looks set to commit by October of this year at the earliest. Nothing binding yet, of course, but he's a Louisiana home boy—been hungry to play for LSU for a long time. I intend to drill that boy hard for a full year. So he can keep you protected, you understand.”
LSU's selling point was the guaranteed starting job. Joe Burrow, the junior quarterback who'd transferred in this year, had already declared, “I'll graduate and go straight to the NFL,” and he was entering the 2020 draft. In other words, me starting at quarterback as a true freshman was a fait accompli.
And one more thing: Ed Orgeron balanced the passing game and the running game. That kind of scheme translates well to the NFL.
What worried me was something else entirely—Ed Orgeron's new experiment. The so-called New Spread Offense. It twisted Urban Meyer's spread philosophy—the man who practically invented the thing—into something even more extreme, attempting to field up to six receivers at once to squeeze every last drop out of a quarterback's ability. The program I'd run at the LSU Elite Camp had been built with exactly this in mind.
“Give yourself a clean pocket, son, and you'll shine like nobody's business.”
“...I suppose I would.”
The truth is, at the NCAA D1 level, the spread offense is the single best scheme for making a quarterback look like a superstar. With no rushing option and not even a traditional running back in the backfield, the quarterback has to decide everything. If the QB running a spread offense has an off day, the team's entire attack falls apart.
But that's a D1-level conversation only.
The spread doesn't work in the NFL. Why? The level of play. Specifically, the level of the defense.
First, NCAA D1 whittles the roughly 1.1 million high school football players under NFHS down to about one percent. Take the rosters of 130 D1 football programs at roughly 95 players each, and you land right around that number. Of that filtered one percent, only about two percent get drafted by NFL teams each year.
In other words: from each high school, roughly the single best player makes NCAA D1—and out of that already-sifted D1 pool, only the top two or so make it to the NFL. Of course this assumes talent is distributed evenly across every program, but either way, the gap at each stage of the ladder is beyond imagination.
The spread, at its core, is a scheme that bets everything on one quarterback's ability and his receivers' raw athleticism. Grind that day and night for three years or more, and by the time you reach the pros you're doomed to struggle. The defensive backs' athleticism exists on a different plane entirely. Defensive talent simply crushes the scheme.
More than anything, the reason dual-threat and spread schemes are so beloved at the NCAA level is that—thanks to course loads and strict practice-hour limits—only a tiny handful of quarterbacks can digest genuinely complex playbooks. Of the 130 starting quarterbacks in D1, maybe two or three a year can actually pull it off.
“I'd like to do more than that.”
“And I'm sure you'll be prepared to.”
“...”
Ed's words right now weren't sincere. He was just baiting the hook. Coaches are playing for multi-million-dollar salaries, after all. They'll do whatever it takes to put wins on the board.
For reference: the reason Alabama sits at the very top of NCAA D1 year after year is that Nick Saban treats defensive talent as sacrosanct. Against a team like that, the spread simply doesn't work. And when that day comes—will Ed Orgeron prove to be a man capable of adapting? No way to know yet. I'd need to meet with him a few more times.
“Take this with you.”
“Oh, thank you. That was one of the best hot wings I've ever eaten in my life. What's the secret in that sauce?”
“Gochujang.”
“Sorry?”
“A traditional Korean seasoning. Koreans eat something called yangnyeom chicken—seasoned fried chicken. I made it that way.”
“Any chance you'd sell this?”
“Hohoho.”
Grandma laughed merrily and told him he could find that flavor at any Korean fried chicken place in L.A. And with that, Shaq lit up like a Christmas tree.
After Shaquille O'Neal and Ed Orgeron left—Shaq having constructed a small mountain of tiny chicken bones right there at his seat—I cleared the table, marveling that even after all that eating and packing food to-go, two-thirds of it was somehow still left.
“Shouldn't this be reheated a little?”
“Just set it on the counter, dear. I'll take care of it.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
Auburn. Stanford. Virginia Tech. Praying that the three schools still to come would at least make a decent dent in the food, I sent a message to the Auburn coach who'd texted that he'd just landed at the airport.
Auburn's head coach Gus Malzahn figured out what I'd meant roughly thirty minutes after that last message.
“It's nothing fancy, but please, eat up!”
“Nothing fancy? Where exactly—”
“I'm sorry?”
“N-no, nothing. Nothing at all. Ahem.”
Welcome to my world.
There I stood, beaming brightly in front of Malzahn.
#. August 13, 2018
#-1. Oahu, Hawaii, USA
#-2. Honolulu CDP, Kahuku
#-3. Kahuku High School
“Shaq? THE Shaq—the one I know—came to your house?!”
“Yep. Want to see?”
“...DUUUUUUDE!!”
When Marcus saw the photos we'd taken together at my place, he exploded—then demanded to know why on earth I hadn't called him over. So I told him:
“Weren't you busy with your new girlfriend?”
“...”
“Damn it. We fought, that's all. If I'd known this was coming, I'd have come over to your place and hung out. Then I'd have seen Shaq too.”
“Break up with her. This isn't the time for that.”
“But...”
“Keep talking about your disgusting love life and I'll punt you so hard you'll roll all the way down the hall.”
“Heh heh heh.”
Last night, Shaq—now back in Atlanta—had sent me a message. Why Atlanta, you ask? Because that's where his job is. TNT Studios. Anyway, Shaq said he'd gift me tickets to the Lakers' Christmas game this year and told me to let him know how many people I'd be bringing.
And I still haven't replied. Because if I accept that... the weight on my conscience is going to be crushing. More than anything, it felt like something I should only accept after I'd decided where I'm going to college, so I'm planning to deflect with something vaguely polite.
Meanwhile, word got out that Shaquille O'Neal had visited our house—and the schools scheduled to come to Grandma's house this coming Sunday began reaching out to their own celebrity alumni. Michigan didn't even pretend to be subtle, messaging me to expect Eminem along on their visit next month.
That's why Aunt Mel had been dancing around the house with joy.
“Invite me this week too.”
“Only if you show up to Muscle Men at 100 percent.”
“WHAT?! What even is that?!”
“Fuck, Marcus! Look at your own arm right now!! It's nothing but flab!”
“...Is it?”
“Where did last year's rock-solid Marcus go?! Give my friend back RIGHT NOW!!”
After delivering one solid kick to the rear of the snickering Marcus, I kept walking toward the cafeteria.
“You gave up 28 points to Punahou.”
“Yeah, that's had me fuming all weekend.”
“Of course it has.”
The more I thought about it, the more absurd it was—Punahou had stripped their entire starting offensive line and fullback, fielding last year's backups, and we still coughed up 28 points. One look told you every one of those kids was a step slow.
Early season, you say? Kiss my ass. Maybe other sports need time to shake off the rust, but football—with its months-long preparation period—gets no such excuse. Three months of preseason alone, and games spaced a full week apart. We manage every detail, every single day. If you don't step onto that field at 100 percent every week, you've earned nothing—not a shot at the NFL, not even a seat in NCAA D1.
And we need to become that kind of team. A team filled with players who've earned the right.
Knock knock.
“Coach?”
“Oh, Moi. What can I do for you?”
“Got a minute to talk?”
“Of course.”
With this year's team discipline leaving such a sour taste in my mouth, I'd been thinking of a drastic measure.