TGS Chapter 97 Show Them What You Are (Patreon)

The locker room at the Memorial Coliseum held the specific sound of locker rooms before kickoff—a noise Wyatt had learned to recognize during his days at Clemson's Memorial Stadium. Over the weeks of training camp, he had come to associate it with a unique state of mind: not nervousness exactly, but something closer to the tuning of an instrument that had yet to sound, but would in just a few minutes, already containing in that quiet interval everything it was about to become.

Some players adjusted their shoulder pads, others sat with headphones on staring at the floor, while a few laughed at something Wyatt couldn't quite hear. The strength coach moved down the rows of lockers calling out instructions that also faded before reaching where Wyatt sat on the bench across from his locker, helmet held between his hands, elbows on his knees, eyes fixed on the concrete floor.

He had finished adjusting his chest protector four minutes ago, and since then he had done nothing but sit there with his helmet, reflecting on something that hadn't quite taken full shape yet. It was tied to the fact that the game starting in less than an hour was a preseason matchup—games that didn't count toward any official standings. Yet it still represented the first time Wyatt would play professional football in a stadium packed with fans. It was a moment coming into existence for the very first time, and after tonight, it would have happened, never to be a "first time" again. There was something in that irreversibility that felt worthy of the four minutes he had spent sitting quietly, helmet cradled in his hands.

Gurley walked past and offered a soft tap on his shoulder without stopping. Wyatt registered it, looked up briefly, and returned his gaze to the floor, thinking that the regular season calendar was less than a month away. But tonight there was a field, and there was a football—and that was all that needed to exist for the next three hours.

Casey stood at the far end of the locker room in full gear, gloves in hand, talking to one of the receivers with the relaxed posture of a man who had been in this situation before and for whom tonight held nothing new. Wyatt looked at him for a second, then returned to the helmet in his hands. He thought about what Casey had said in the hallway, about Fisher putting Wyatt in on the first possession of the first day of practice—something coaches didn't do with backups—and about Fisher mentioning that he would rotate quarterbacks tonight starting with Casey. Wyatt didn't know yet how many possessions he would get, in which quarter, or against what coverage. Those were variables outside his control from the bench; the only thing within his control was what he did when his turn arrived.

The locker room door swung open.

Fisher entered with the same deliberate stride he brought to the practice field—not a rushed pace, but that of a man who knew precisely how much time he had and refused to waste a second more than necessary getting from one spot to another. Players wearing headphones pulled them off, and those laughing fell quiet without Fisher uttering a word. The room settled into the ambient hum of stadium noise filtering through the concrete walls—a sound that wasn't yet the roar of the game itself, but the nervous rumble of waiting for it.

Fisher stopped at the center of the room and scanned his players without rushing.

"Two weeks," he said. "Two weeks working the system. Two weeks out on the turf in the heat. Two weeks sleeping in those dorms, eating in that cafeteria, doing the exact same thing every single day so that when tonight arrived, the system wouldn't be something you read on a piece of paper, but something wired into your muscle memory."

Nobody said a word.

"Tonight doesn't show up in the standings," Fisher continued. "Preseason games don't move the needle on the regular season board. Everyone knows that." He paused. "What it does move is what I see with my own eyes. Every single man in this locker room is walking out onto that field tonight to earn his spot on the final roster. That's what's on the line tonight. Not the game. You."

Wyatt listened, staring down at his helmet.

"There are sixty-five thousand people out there," Fisher said. "Most of them have been waiting twenty-one years for tonight. We don't owe them a show. We owe them the truth of who we are. Go out on that field and be what you are."

Fisher looked around the room once more, nodded as if confirming a thought he had come in to verify, then turned and pushed open the door. The roar of the stadium poured in for a split second before the door swung shut. In the locker room, silence held for two or three seconds before the noise resumed—now carrying a sharp, focused direction it hadn't possessed moments ago.

Wyatt put on his helmet.

The tunnel of the Memorial Coliseum carried the deep shadow typical of older venues—stadiums built long before anyone overthought aesthetics. The light at the far end was the stark, blinding glare of Los Angeles stadium lights on an August night—a pure white illumination that turned the field into a world entirely detached from the rest of the city, even with the city sitting right outside its walls.

Wyatt marched in line with his helmet secured, the roar swelling as the tunnel narrowed toward its mouth, following the rising arc of sound that grows as you draw closer to the source. When the first Rams player broke into the open air, the stadium noise erupted into something Wyatt hadn't fully calibrated, despite having played in massive venues and high-stakes games. Sixty-five thousand people inside the Memorial Coliseum for the first night of professional football in Los Angeles in decades possessed a distinct frequency—unlike any noise that stadium had produced in a generation. Wyatt realized it the moment the tunnel ended, revealing the green turf below and the grandstands towering around and above him as the swelling roar reached its peak.

He paused for a single second at the tunnel's exit before stepping down.

It wasn't a long pause, but it was real. In that second, the Memorial Coliseum stood as what it was: a stadium over ninety years old, built with the timeless architecture of venues constructed to endure, and enduring still. Tonight, its stands were filled with thousands wearing Rams jerseys spanning different eras—some of which Wyatt had never seen before, hailing from decades before he was born or before he even knew the team existed. The field was the same expanse of turf and white yard lines it had always been, but marked by the Rams logo at midfield and team colors framing both end zones. Wyatt walked down the steps and set foot on the grass.

Stadium Seats

In Section 104, Row 12, sat a seventy-three-year-old man wearing a faded blue-and-gold jersey with the number 80 on the chest and ELLARD across the back. The cotton had grown soft from decades of washing, no longer looking like the jersey he had bought back in '88, but to Tom, it remained the exact same shirt. He held the rolled-up game program in his right hand, having not yet found the time to open it since arriving.

Beside him sat his twelve-year-old grandson, Scott, wearing a brand-new Rams jersey Tom had bought him that afternoon at the stadium shop. Scott hadn't owned a Rams jersey, and Tom had insisted that had to be fixed before stepping inside. Scott had picked the one with the number ten because it was the rookie everyone was talking about, and Tom had paid without complaint, even though it was an amount of money he wouldn't normally spend on a single shirt.

"Grandpa?"

"Yeah?" Tom asked, his eyes glued to the field where the teams were wrapping up warm-ups.

"Why did they take so long to come back?"

Tom rolled the program a bit tighter, unrolled it, and rolled it back up. "Because money rules," he said. "Always has. Money said the Rams had to move to Anaheim, so they went to Anaheim. Then money said they had to move to St. Louis, so they went to St. Louis. And now money says Los Angeles needs an NFL team, so here we are."

"But you were a Rams fan before all that?"

"Since '59," Tom said. "I was six years old. Your great-grandfather brought me to my very first game right here in this exact stadium. Rams against the 49ers. A chilly Monday in November."

Scott looked up at the grandstands, packed to the upper decks. "Were there as many people then as today?"

"More," Tom said. "Or maybe the same. It's just that when you're that age, everything looks bigger than it really is." He paused. "Though this place was always huge."

The stadium loudspeakers burst to life, and the public address announcer began reading off the starting lineups for the Cowboys. The crowd responded with a mix of light boos and routine applause. Scott stood up on his seat because he couldn't see over the adults in front of him. Tom stayed seated—his knees no longer supported unnecessary standing—but watched the field over Scott's shoulder.

"Grandpa, how many seasons did you lose?"

Tom calculated for a moment. "Twenty-one," he said. "From '95 until today."

"That's a long time."

"Yeah," Tom said.

Scott turned around for a second to look at him. "How do you feel now?"

Tom looked out at the field where the Rams were beginning to line up for the home team introductions. The entire stadium was on its feet, and the roar echoing through the Coliseum was louder than anything Tom had heard in that venue in his entire life—louder even than the '79 and '80 playoff runs when the Rams reached the Super Bowl. Tom had been twenty-six and twenty-seven back then, and while the noise then had been fueled by hope, tonight's roar was fueled by something returning after being gone for a generation—a joy laced with a depth that simple excitement couldn't match.

"How do I feel?" Tom repeated.

Scott waited for the answer, looking up at him.

"Good," Tom said softly. "I feel really good."

The two turned back to the field as the announcer began calling out the Rams starters, each name raising the noise level another notch. When the announcer reached number ten, Scott couldn't help but cheer at the top of his lungs along with everyone around them.

In the ESPN broadcast booth on the far side of the field, Jon Gruden held the microphone close to his mouth, eyes fixed on the monitors before him. He welcomed viewers to the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, California, for the opening game of the 2016 NFL preseason, noting that what they were seeing in the stands was far more than just an exhibition matchup—it was a moment in time.

"Twenty-one years, Lou!" Gruden said to the man beside him. "Twenty-one years without professional football in this city, and just look at those stands!"

"Over sixty thousand people for a preseason opener," Lou Holtz added. "That tells you everything you need to know about Los Angeles and football."

"And there's a major storyline on this field tonight beyond the scoreboard," Gruden continued. "The Rams have a massive decision to make at the quarterback position. Case Keenum is coming off a season where the team finished 7-9, and the Rams used the number one overall pick on Wyatt Sterling, the standout quarterback from Clemson. By all accounts from training camp over the last two weeks, Sterling has been the most prepared player in the entire group."

"Rookies have to prove it in the preseason," Holtz noted. "The question is whether Sterling can do that tonight against a Dallas defense that's going to come out hungry."

"We're about to find out," Gruden said. "The Rams are set to receive the kickoff, and we are underway!"

The roar of the Memorial Coliseum as the ball soared off the Cowboys kicker's boot into the August night air was the sound of tens of thousands who had spent years waiting for this exact second. Tom listened with his eyes closed for a brief moment before opening them to see the ball descend into the hands of the Rams returner, who took off down the field. Beside him, Scott was screaming something Tom couldn't quite make out over the din, but he didn't need to understand the words—the meaning was undeniable. The stands were packed, the field was lit, Los Angeles had its team back, and that was the only thing that mattered in that moment.