jdhmnovel Chapter 297: So close
Chapter 297: So close
"So..." Sean said in his usual calm, warm tone, "how’d the week go, chief?""Good. Intense," Andrew replied.
Little by little, he started talking far more openly than he had during the first session.
It wasn’t like he had suddenly become someone super expressive or completely willing to open himself up emotionally one hundred percent. But he also understood that if you went to a therapist and they asked how your week had been, you couldn’t just answer "good" and leave it at that.
It was inevitable that football came up. It had been his debut.
So he started by telling him about the preparation throughout the week, the atmosphere leading up to the game, the day of the matchup itself, and how much he had enjoyed finally playing and seeing all the work they had put in over the past months turn into a real result.
He talked about the win, some of the feelings he had on the field, and how intense everything had felt.
Not about the statistics, or being named MVP, or becoming the offensive player of the week in both the nation and the Pac-12. There was no need to mention those things.
He also mentioned that he had followed him advice from the previous session about switching off after the game.
Allowing himself to enjoy the accomplishment with friends, a victory and a successful debut. And doing something different instead of simply falling back into the same routine of staying home playing video games with friends.
He told him about the party and that he had fun, even if it had been a little chaotic and he ended up getting home much later than he originally expected.
Sean listened attentively from his armchair, wearing a small relaxed smile as he nodded every so often. Sometimes he would comment on something or make a light joke, making it feel more like two people calmly talking than a rigid therapy session.
At certain moments, Sean even ended up sharing small anecdotes of his own from his college years and some of the parties he had gone to.
For several minutes, the conversation drifted between relatively normal and mundane topics like friends, family, adjusting, living alone, and the difference between high school and college.
Until Sean finally changed the subject.
"And how are you feeling about the Nebraska game?" he asked in that same steady tone as always.
Andrew looked at him but didn’t answer immediately.
Sean knew perfectly well how the week had been.
Sports shows constantly talking about the debut. Highlights replaying over and over again on ESPN. Analysts reacting as if they had witnessed a historic event, which, in a way, they had, and the national attention around him growing a little more every day.
That was precisely why Sean steered the conversation there.
Andrew hadn’t started therapy just to talk about life.
He had gone because, even if he would never say it outright, he knew he needed to learn how to live with everything that came along with football.
And to help him with that, sooner or later Sean had to start digging into all of that pressure.
"Ready," Andrew finally answered, giving a small nod. "I’ve got a good feeling after the first game and after these last few days of practice too."
Sean took the opportunity to dig a little deeper.
He specifically asked what the last three days inside the program had been like.
Andrew told him, and he wasn’t lying. He genuinely felt confident.
He trusted the team and he trusted himself. For the first time in months, all the work they had put in during the offseason had finally produced something tangible.
They had played and they had dominated.
There was also something he especially liked about the way the locker room had reacted.
He didn’t see anyone drunk off the victory. No excessive confidence. No players acting invincible after a single game.
Rice had been a good start, yes. But inside the team, there was still a feeling that it hadn’t really proven much yet.
They were still a program in reconstruction with an enormous amount left to prove, and Nebraska represented a massive jump in difficulty.
Andrew talked about all of it almost with satisfaction.
As if seeing the team so focused gave him peace of mind.
But Sean, listening from the armchair, started noticing something else beneath the words.
Not something bad exactly.
But a certain tension.
Because the more Andrew described those practices, the more it seemed like the atmosphere inside UCLA had become extremely rigid and obsessive after the debut.
As if everyone now felt the need to prove that what happened against Rice hadn’t been a fluke, and Andrew was no exception.
Even though he spoke calmly, Sean could clearly sense the intensity with which he was living through those first few days preparing for Nebraska.
The almost obsessive way he had thrown himself completely into the next game the moment the previous one ended.
"They’re working hard," Sean commented, slightly adjusting his glasses in a casual tone that didn’t sound critical at all.
He paused briefly before continuing. "Especially you. You get home and keep watching film with Steve. Staying up late going over everything."
"How much have you slept these last few days?" he added, now sounding more like a direct question.
Andrew only took a second to answer. He knew his sleep schedule perfectly, "Between four and five hours."
Sean immediately raised an eyebrow. "That’s not good."
Andrew shrugged as if to say it is what it is.
"I’ve watched some of your videos," Sean continued. "You always talk about discipline, habits, and you constantly repeat how important rest is. Seven or eight hours."
"Yeah..." Andrew said with a slight uncomfortable grimace, though he quickly recovered and raised a finger. "There can be a period of time where you maintain fewer hours of sleep if it’s for something important."
"It’s not ideal, but if you go back to your previous routine afterward, there won’t be irreversible consequences."
Sean nodded, but countered him.
"The problem is that if you start thinking that way, eventually the entire season becomes something important."
Andrew opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again without saying anything.
Sean was right.
Sean didn’t push much further in that direction either. He didn’t seem interested in scolding him or turning the conversation into an argument about habits.
He simply let a few seconds pass before speaking again, "Do you know what premeditatio malorum is?" he asked calmly.
Andrew shook his head, "Premeditatio malorum... What is that?"
"Translated loosely, it means something like ’the premeditation of evils,’" Sean replied as he shifted slightly in his armchair. "It’s a Stoic technique."
Andrew listened in silence.
"It’s about consciously imagining things going wrong," Sean continued calmly. "Not to obsess over them or mentally punish yourself. The opposite, actually. The idea is to take power away from the fear of uncertainty."
Sean elaborated a little further.
"The Stoics understood that you can work as hard as possible to achieve something, but the final result is never completely under your control. So when you mentally accept the possibility that things might go wrong, anxiety loses part of its paralyzing power."
Andrew made an unconvinced expression.
Sean let out a faint amused smile when he noticed it, "What don’t you like about it?"
"I don’t know..." Andrew replied, leaning back slightly against the chair. "I don’t think I have the kind of anxiety that paralyzes me."
Sean slightly raised his eyebrows, partially conceding the point.
Because clearly Andrew was not someone paralyzed by pressure. If anything, that week had proven the exact opposite.
The same had been true in the past.
"It’s not only about freezing up," Sean clarified. "It helps with other things too."
Andrew paid attention again.
"If you consciously imagine negative scenarios, your mind starts emotionally preparing itself for them. Almost like a drill before a real crisis."
Sean let a brief second pass before continuing.
"For example..." he said calmly. "Let’s say you lose to Nebraska."
Andrew kept his eyes fixed on him.
"How would you react?"
There wasn’t an immediate response.
"Probably you don’t know," Sean continued. "Because you’ve never really allowed that possibility to exist inside your head. And when something never exists in your mind as an option, if it does happen, the emotional blow is usually much more devastating."
"Mm, I see..." Andrew murmured, analyzing the method. "But I don’t like thinking about losing. I prefer positive thoughts."
Sean didn’t answer immediately. He simply let him continue.
Andrew ended up explaining it more clearly.
The way he dealt with the fear of losing wasn’t by accepting it in advance. It was by denying it space inside his mind.
He didn’t flirt with the idea of defeat to emotionally prepare himself.
He simply removed it from the mental map beforehand.
How?
Through complete focus on the present. One hundred percent focused on what he wanted to happen. Thinking about losing was energy wasted, energy he needed in order to win.
He trusted that his desire to win and his instincts were stronger than any ghost in his head.
Sean listened carefully to all of that before slowly nodding.
"Another very good technique," he finally said. "Although also a riskier one."
"Why?" Andrew asked.
"It’s a fairly well-studied mindset too," Sean continued. "Unlike Stoicism, which seeks peace of mind by accepting tragedy in advance, this method tries to completely eliminate cognitive interference. Doubts. Fear. So the body can execute at one hundred percent."
"And it has real advantages," Sean admitted. "When you block out the fear of losing, you usually play looser. You’re freer."
He made a small gesture with his hand before continuing.
"On the other hand, if you think too much about the worst-case scenario and don’t know how to handle it properly, you can end up playing tense, overly cautious, and predictable."
"Exactly," Andrew said immediately.
Then he clarified that while it sounded like he was ignoring the problem, it wasn’t that he didn’t know he could lose. It was simply that he had trained himself to redirect his attention.
If a thought of defeat entered his mind, instead of analyzing it and lingering on it, he acknowledged the thought, let it pass without judging it, and redirected his attention back to the immediate present.
Sean smiled faintly. That sounded far more conscious and refined than he expected from an eighteen-year-old.
"Competitive mindfulness," he commented.
Andrew let out a small sideways smile, "I guess."
Sean remained quiet for a few seconds before leaning slightly forward.
"The risk," he said, "is that when you build your entire mental structure around winning... defeat can hit you much harder."
Andrew didn’t respond because he knew that was probably true.
"But I also understand something else," Sean added. "That pain is part of the price of competing with total mental freedom."
The room fell silent for a few seconds until Sean spoke again.
"I also don’t think you necessarily have to choose one extreme or the other. You can keep using your method to compete. Clearly, it works."
Andrew nodded.
"What I’m suggesting isn’t that you go into games thinking you’re going to lose. I don’t want to ruin your confidence or change the way you compete. I’m just saying that maybe it would be good if a small part of you had a plan for when things eventually go wrong."
"Eventually...?" Andrew repeated, looking at him with one eyebrow raised.
Sean nodded calmly, "Yes, chief. You and I both know that, no matter how much the NCAA tries to sell this as amateur sports... this level is already practically professional."
Andrew said nothing.
"Staying undefeated through three full years of college football," Sean continued, "I’d call that practically impossible from a mathematical standpoint."
Even if he wanted to argue, Andrew couldn’t really refute it.
Because the jump between elite high school football and college football was far more brutal than most people imagined. Even for someone like him.
In the NCAA, mistakes were punished much more severely, windows closed faster, players were quicker and more physical, and coaching staffs were years ahead compared to high school.
There was also another important factor.
In high school, Andrew could often carry games even when his defense had a bad night. His offense could overwhelm opposing defenses so quickly and with such a massive talent gap that the game usually tilted back in his favor anyway.
But college football didn’t work like that.
Here, if UCLA’s defense had a bad game, the opposing defense would no longer be easy to break apart.
Not against programs like UCLA’s upcoming opponents: Nebraska, Stanford, USC, Oregon, and others.
Especially considering UCLA was still a rebuilding program.
If Andrew had chosen a fully built powerhouse like the Alabama Crimson Tide, then maybe he really would have had a much more realistic chance of staying undefeated for years.
But even there, it would have been incredibly difficult.
Faced with Andrew’s silence, Sean kept talking.
"Tom Brady lost two Super Bowls," he said. "And that’s only counting the important games. His total number of losses in the NFL is well over forty."
He took a brief breath before adding:
"Roger Federer lost more than two hundred matches. And yet a huge number of people still consider him the greatest tennis player in history. He won more than eighty percent of his matches in an individual sport, and even then he still lost more than two hundred times."
The idea was simple.
Practically all of the greatest athletes in the world, even the ones considered GOATs, had lost many times throughout their careers.
Obviously, their win percentages were absurdly high. That was exactly what made them legends.
But defeat was still inevitable.
That was why what Andrew had done in high school was considered so strange.
Four full years as a starting quarterback.
Four undefeated years and in football of all sports, where far too many variables are involved.
Remaining undefeated for that long bordered on absurd, even for a prodigy.
Sean watched him for a few seconds before speaking again, "I’m not telling you this to bring you back down to earth. Or to convince you that you’re going to lose. I just want you to understand something before this sport forces you to learn it the hard way."
He paused for two seconds before concluding, "Your career is not going to be defined by whether you lose someday. It’s going to be defined by who you are after you lose."
Andrew remained thoughtful after that.
The conversation with Sean hadn’t changed his competitive mentality, but it had left something lingering in the back of his mind. An uncomfortable idea he normally avoided touching for too long.
Shortly afterward, the session came to an end.
On Thursday, UCLA had its final practice in LA. Then on Friday around noon, the entire UCLA roster flew out to Nebraska.
It was the first time for Andrew, Steve, and many of the other true freshmen officially traveling to an away college game.
There was excitement.
But there were nerves too.
Everything felt too big and carried too many expectations for a program that was supposed to be rebuilding after finishing 6–8 the previous year.
The difference from high school was enormous.
The flight was done on a charter plane, a completely private service where the aircraft was used exclusively by the program. There were no commercial routes or normal schedules; everything was built around the team’s needs.
From the moment they left UCLA facilities, the entire operation felt extremely organized. Almost militarized.
Especially because the game was massive: nationally televised on ABC, a matchup between two top-20 teams, and featuring the country’s most famous freshman quarterback arriving after the most talked-about debut of all of Week 1.
The entire group was enormous. More than a hundred people between players, coaches, trainers, assistants, and other members of the program.
When they landed in Nebraska, there was already media waiting. Reporters with cameras, fans, and an enormous amount of attention surrounding Andrew.
The team then traveled directly to the hotel, which UCLA had practically taken over completely because of the sheer number of people traveling with the program.
From that point onward, the schedule became completely strict.
No going out.
Cell phone use was limited.
There were constant meetings and coaches monitoring practically every movement.
After getting settled into their rooms, they had a team meal and immediately began the scheduled activities.
First came a general meeting.
Then a light non-contact practice at an auxiliary field. During most of the afternoon, Andrew was practically glued to Norm Chow and Rip Scherer, the quarterbacks coach.
Dinner came later that night.
The atmosphere inside the hotel felt strange.
There wasn’t complete relaxation, but there wasn’t fear either.
More like a silent tension.
Finally, before every player headed off to sleep, Jim Mora gathered the team for one final speech.
It wasn’t especially long.
Nor emotional.
And then Saturday arrived.
While Andrew finished getting ready with the team inside the hotel before heading to the stadium, part of his family had also flown to Nebraska earlier that same Saturday afternoon.
For major games against big programs, the Nebraska Cornhuskers normally reserved around four thousand tickets for visiting fans inside Memorial Stadium.
Most of them were distributed between one main visitor section and several smaller upper-level blocks.
Even so, it was still tiny compared to more than eighty thousand Nebraska fans completely dressed in red.
Cam, Mitchell, Phil, Jay, Gloria, and the rest of the family arrived early enough to experience the full pregame atmosphere.
They even ended up walking through the tailgate, the traditional college football pregame party held around the stadium.
The first thing that hit them was the color.
Red everywhere.
Even Jay stood there silently observing the atmosphere for a few seconds.
It was enormous. But what surprised them most was something else: how kind Nebraska fans were.
Because normally, going into an opposing team’s tailgate is not the best idea. Especially in college football.
In many stadiums across the country, visiting fans get insulted, mocked, provoked, or thrown into environments hostile enough to sometimes end in fights.
And even more so when the opposing team is bringing in the most famous quarterback in the country after an entire week of national hype.
But in Nebraska, the exact opposite was happening.
The famous concept of "Nebraska Nice" was completely real.
People greeted them, started conversations, asked about California, talked about Andrew with curiosity, and there were even fans asking for pictures.
At one point, a Nebraska family ended up offering Jay free beer while talking football with him as if they had known each other their entire lives.
That left Jay completely bewildered.
Because for years he had always insisted that the whole "football gentlemen" image was just university marketing meant to look good on camera. Especially in a sport as competitive, emotional, and territorial as college football.
But there they were.
Deep in enemy territory, and people were still absurdly kind.
"Creepy," Jay muttered with a grimace as he took a sip from his gifted beer.
Even Phil seemed surprised by how friendly everything was considering they were right in the middle of opposing territory.
Precisely because of Nebraska’s historical reputation, many visiting fans genuinely felt comfortable participating in local tailgates.
Finally, ten minutes before seven in the evening, it was time to take the field.
The Bruins entered first. Andrew ran out in front alongside several team leaders as they came charging through the tunnel of Memorial Stadium.
The moment they stepped onto the field, the impact was immediate.
Steve, who was coming a few yards behind him, couldn’t stop himself from blurting out:
"Holy shit!"
It was impossible not to react. The stadium was completely full. More than eighty thousand people and practically all of them dressed in the same color.
They had expected it, of course. They knew about Nebraska’s legendary sellout streak, but seeing it with your own eyes was completely different.
An enormous red ocean covering every single section of the stadium. From field level, it looked endless. The lights illuminated the entire mass of fans while the ambient noise constantly crashed down over the field even before the game had officially started.
It wasn’t just volume.
It was density.
A permanent murmur mixed with shouting, music, the marching band, and thousands of people moving at the same time.
Amari let out a nervous laugh while looking around, "This feels like the fucking NFL."
Andrus kept staring at the stands with an expression somewhere between impressed and focused, "No..." he muttered slowly. "This is worse."
"At least those guys are millionaires," Alexander said, making the others laugh.
Andrew felt the impact too.
Even though he had heard all week about Nebraska and the reputation of its fanbase, experiencing it from the inside was something completely different.
The people outside the stadium had been kind when UCLA arrived on the buses. Nobody had booed them. Maybe a few competitive comments, but respectful ones.
But inside the stadium, with kickoff only minutes away, the atmosphere was still intimidating. The feeling of being completely surrounded was impossible to ignore.
So his eyes automatically searched for the visitor section.
It took him a few seconds to find it among all the red, but eventually he spotted the small patch of blue and gold buried within the stands.
There they were: his parents, little sister, and the rest of his family.
UCLA fans were an absolute minority inside that stadium. It was almost a little pathetic.
The moment they saw him, several of them raised their hands waving somewhere between excited and nervous because of the atmosphere around them.
Andrew did the same with a small smile before turning back toward the sideline.
And as he walked, he inevitably thought about who was missing:
Howard, Leonard, Rachel, and Monica.
The last two, honestly, he already considered real friends. Not extremely close yet, but people he genuinely trusted.
Especially because Haley trusted them deeply, and that was not something very common.
Haley had always struggled to maintain truly healthy and stable female friendships. Most of the time she ended up surrounded by competition, envy, superficiality, and gossip.
But with Monica and Rachel, it actually seemed genuine.
Andrew had even offered them tickets to the game. UCLA practically gave him as many as he needed.
The problem wasn’t the tickets.
It was the trip.
Flying to Nebraska and back cost real money. Just the plane tickets alone would cost them around four hundred dollars.
Neither of them was exactly in an ideal financial situation.
Especially Rachel.
She had only been living in Los Angeles for a little over two weeks. Independent, as she loved repeating, but she still hadn’t found a job, nor had she seriously looked for one yet.
She was still surviving off her savings, spending them at a speed that irritated Monica, who kept telling her she needed to be financially responsible.
Most of her spending came from going out shopping for unnecessary clothes with Haley.
Rachel had wanted to travel. Very badly. But Monica had practically forced her to stay in Los Angeles.
Not because they didn’t want to support Andrew. They simply needed to be responsible with money.
Before Andrew could keep thinking too much about it, the stadium suddenly exploded.
The home team had just taken the field.
That was when the noise completely changed.
The introduction of the Nebraska Cornhuskers shook the entire stadium. The marching band began playing loudly while the crowd roared at the same time, creating a brutal wall of sound.
The red sea started moving like one gigantic living mass.
Steve stared at all of it and almost automatically swallowed hard.
"Scared, Potter?" Amari asked with a mocking grin.
Steve immediately looked offended, "Not even a little," he answered quickly. "I’m just imagining how quiet they’re gonna get when we beat them."
"Doesn’t look like it," Andrus said while pointing at his forehead. "You’re sweating, man."
Steve instinctively touched his forehead and wiped it off, "It’s the heat..." he muttered, trying to sound convincing. "And because this place is suffocating."
That made several people around them laugh.
Andrew watched the group’s dynamic with a certain sense of satisfaction.
Despite all the national pressure, the locker room still felt united.
Especially among the freshmen, and he liked that. Making everyone hang out together on Sundays had been worth it.
Amari and Steve, both wide receivers and extremely competitive with each other, had ended up developing a pretty entertaining friendship-rivalry.
Both of them wanted to prove they could become the team’s primary deep threat. The kind of receiver Andrew would look for whenever he wanted to attack deep downfield.
They competed constantly. But at the same time, they surprisingly got along well.
Kickoff finally arrived.
Without any doubt, it was the hardest game of Andrew’s entire life from the very first minute.
Everything felt much heavier than it had against the Rice Owls. Much more physical, slower, and exhausting.
Nebraska kept pounding away with a brutal running game, trying to control the tempo of the game while the atmosphere made everything even harder.
From the beginning, it became obvious that this would have nothing to do with the spectacular and relatively comfortable debut from the previous week.
Every drive was difficult.
Every down had to be fought for.
By the time halftime arrived, practically everyone on the UCLA Bruins football was physically worn down.
Nebraska led by only four points:
Nebraska 17 — UCLA 13
Andrew had: 2 touchdowns, 0 interceptions, 1 punt, and had been sacked once.
Internally, he cursed his kicker a little for missing one of the extra points.
If not for that, UCLA would have fourteen points. But at the same time, he completely understood the situation.
UCLA didn’t exactly have an elite kicker. And kicking in an environment like this made everything much harder.
On Nebraska’s side, they had scored two touchdowns, one of them coming on an extremely long drive dominated almost entirely by their running back, along with a field goal.
The third quarter became even tougher.
UCLA’s defense started getting tired, and Nebraska gradually began dominating the line of scrimmage more and more, physically overpowering UCLA in the blocking game and slowly wearing down the Bruins’ defensive front.
Andrew started taking a lot of hits.
Even so, he managed to keep the offense alive. He scored another touchdown. Then he converted a two-point play and later he led a drive long enough to set up a field goal.
That brought UCLA to 24 points. But Nebraska answered too.
The Nebraska Cornhuskers scored another touchdown and tied the game:
24 — 24.
The worst part for Andrew was that the touchdown had come shortly after his first college interception. The throw had come out just a little late. Nothing catastrophic.
But in college football, against a top-20 team, that was enough.
The opposing defense punished him immediately.
Even though nobody inside the team directly blamed him, Andrew knew perfectly well that turnover had played a huge role in Nebraska getting back into the game.
When the fourth quarter began, the feeling inside the stadium was pure tension.
Everything was going to be decided there, and it ended up becoming the most chaotic period of the game.
Both teams were completely exhausted.
The accumulated hits were starting to be felt on every snap, and mistakes began appearing everywhere.
There were drives dying quickly, punts, sacks, penalties, barely deflected passes, and players cramping up.
Finally, after a drive that practically cost them their physical lives, Nebraska scored the touchdown and the stadium exploded.
The roar inside Memorial Stadium was deafening. More than eighty thousand people jumping, screaming, and shaking the entire red sea while the marching band played at full force.
But the tension didn’t disappear completely.
Nebraska’s kicker missed the extra point.
That left the score:
Nebraska 30 — UCLA 24
There were still three minutes left.
Enough time to give Andrew one final chance, especially considering his reputation for pulling off lightning-fast drives with unexpected deep shots.
After the kickoff return, UCLA quickly took the field fully aware of the situation.
It was all or nothing.
They had to drive seventy-four yards, and a field goal meant absolutely nothing.
They needed a touchdown.
And if they managed to score, they could win outright with the extra point, or even with a two-point conversion.
There was no need for overtime.
The entire stadium knew it, and that made the atmosphere even more unbearable.
Andrew stepped into the huddle breathing heavily, completely exhausted, but with his eyes locked in.
The moment the drive began, something changed.
The offense started moving at a dizzying speed.
From the stands, many Nebraska fans began feeling something uncomfortable.
That sense of inevitability surrounding the myth. Because even after taking hits all game long, Andrew kept advancing.
Nebraska’s band played even louder trying to disrupt communication. Coaches screamed instructions desperately from the sideline while the home defense tried to hold on.
But UCLA kept moving the chains.
Then came the play. A perfectly placed intermediate throw and if Amari caught it, UCLA would practically be inches away from the end zone.
But the ball slipped away by barely anything. Just millimeters. The ball hit his hands before falling to the turf, and the stadium exploded as if the pass had been intercepted.
Andrew closed his eyes for only a fraction of a second before immediately returning to the huddle.
There was no time to think. They kept attacking. Play after play. The clock dropping.
The noise rising. Their bodies completely exhausted.
Andrew managed to reset the downs one more time with a massive conversion, bringing UCLA to around Nebraska’s fifteen-yard line.
After that came an incomplete pass and finally, while UCLA desperately tried organizing the next play. The ball reached Andrew’s hands, and the clock reached zero.
The referee raised his arms.
Game over.
Nebraska 30 — UCLA 24.
The stadium exploded once again.
The roar of Memorial Stadium crashed down onto the field like an avalanche of sound as thousands of Nebraska Cornhuskers fans celebrated an unbelievably hard-fought victory.
But Andrew could barely hear any of it. He remained motionless on the field.
He was still holding the football in his hands, mentally prepared for the next play that never came.
His breathing was completely uneven.
His chest rising and falling heavily after four brutal quarters. Little by little, his fingers started loosening.
The ball slowly fell onto the turf.
Andrew kept staring forward for a few more seconds, as if he were still trying to process that the clock had really hit zero.
"So close..." he barely murmured.
Then he shook his head ever so slightly.
"So fucking close..."
Around him, Nebraska players celebrated, the marching band kept playing, the cheerleaders performed their routines, the crowd roared, and the home coaching staff celebrated wildly.
But for a few seconds, Andrew seemed completely isolated from all of it.
Just standing there in the middle of the field, hands on his hips, staring down at the turf.
On ABC’s national broadcast, the camera stayed focused on him for several long seconds while the noise of the stadium continued roaring in the background.
Then Brent Musburger’s voice rose above the chaos.
[Ladies and gentlemen, what a football game we have just witnessed!] he exclaimed with all the energy of a classic college football night. [The Nebraska Cornhuskers defeat the UCLA Bruins football in an absolute heart-stopper!]
The stadium roared again while the cameras showed Nebraska’s celebration.
But then Brent slowly lowered his voice.
Far more solemn now, as the broadcast returned to Andrew standing motionless on the field.
[And at the same time...] he continued slowly, [we have just witnessed the first football loss of Andrew Pritchett-Tucker’s life.]
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