in all my years of trying to make the teams, of being a gym rat and a scrub, i only ever played for one coach that i did not think believed in me.

i had coaches that i thought hated me. i had one coach that i thought was trying to kill me. and i had several awesome coaches, men who pushed us and challenged us, who made us a team, who let us rise and excel. for me, rising and excelling was mostly getting subbed in to draw a charge; you do what you can. but then there was that one coach who simply didn't think i had it. all the other coaches, they could bust on me, yell, glare, 'do it again! again!' and i was good with that, i was good with all of that. because, a@@holes or not, and some were, all of them believed in me. they believed in my potential, in the potential of the team they were developing, the team of which i was a part. now, the coach who didn't believe in me wasn't much of a yeller. he wasn't even really that much of an a@@hole. he probably recognized i was just a kid with more want to than physicality, and more brains than anything else. and he wasn't interested. he was making his team, and his team had no place for me.

i'm middle aged now, way past the fires of youth, and it has turned out that all the major tests of my life have been academic and professional. but to this day i remember each and every one of my coaches fondly, even the a@@holes. except for that one. the - plug your ears - the f#$%ing shyte monster with his @#$&* shoved so far up his own ^@!~ that he literally throws up in his mouth every time he pees. not that i'm still angry.

the point? how can timmy ever work with john again, regardless if payton signs or not? i remember how i felt. if it were me, i'd try to do the right thing, i'd play my hand as well as i could, but i would be oh so gone, heart and soul, the moment the opportunity arose.

this is a subtle thing. if john genuinely believes in timmy, it's just that he's got this window of opportunity at an all time great, well, that fence can be mended. and who knows what really lies between those two. but i fear that, with or without manning, trust has been lost. we may have lost tebow.