Fourth and Long

In the days before the contest, Dwight had begged for an offensive line. "I'm getting old and soft in the back of my head,'' he had said, "and I don't want to spend the game on my back.''

Poor Dwight. He spent the game on his back. Each time he went down, he rose more slowly, and finally they came for him and helped him off the field.

It remained a titanic struggle from one 40-yard line to the other. Ratcliff, who had survived to play, managed to get quite bloody, and Pruitt, he always seemed to be at the bottom of every pile. He had ten tackles and two fumble recoveries that day, one of which he ran back 60 yards for the team's only score. The Express eventually lost to the Bayou Bandits nine to seven, but they might actually have won, if the kicker hadn't been ejected for throwing his tee at the ref.

The season was young, but it was clear after that game the Express was falling apart. One of the coaches quit, and the quarterback did, too. "It's not benefiting me," Dwight simply explained.

Pruitt confessed then that, "really, to tell you the truth, we're just not a good football team." But since the Terror never called him -- or James Germany or Ratcliff or Dwight or E.J. Cobb -- since the Terror left them all quite alone, Pruitt said he was going to stick with the team through the remaining seven possible games, because "going out and getting beat up, I kind of enjoy it.''

Ratcliff, meanwhile, has been on the phone networking. The coach of the Hamilton Tigercats of the Canadian Football League tells him they're always looking for good American players. In fact, they're having a tryout in May up in Ohio, and why doesn't he come? That's what he's going to do. The Express is a waste of time, he said. He's got to start running every night and lifting weights, getting enough sleep and eating his vitamins.

"Gonna get my body right,'' said Ratcliff. "Two months, man, I'll be awesome!