Fast and Loose

As the prom winds down, a girl Tigney has flirted with more than once wanders over to talk to him again. Her date sees this and walks over as well, placing his right hand over the date's right breast.

One player signaling to another, perhaps: "This girl is my property."

Players' Conscience?

Away from their buddies, the players admit some doubts about playing. "I'm not saying having all these girls is right," Huston says one day at school. "It [is bad] for the girls. Sometimes I feel sorry for them."

Over lunch at a country club, Albrittain says: "I have a lot of respect for girls' feelings." The star quarterback says he hates it when other guys grab a girl's behind or call a girl "bitch" or "ho."

"I can see in the girls' faces, they don't like it," he says. He also dislikes the double standard: "If a girl hooks up three times at a party, she's a slut. If a guy does, he's a player."

Mark Landis claims that he and some of his friends are playing less frequently these days. Why? "We're sick of hurting our girlfriends, sick of the drama from doing the crap we were doing."

Maybe he will get hurt someday. Maybe they all will.

For sure, the cozy paradise of high school is over. These players will move into newer and bigger worlds. So will their girlfriends. High school status was determined by one set of rules. College will have another set, the working world yet another. Popularity will mean less, and achievement will mean more. Cliques will mean less, social class more.

For instance, Tigney, the number one player of Yorktown, will attend military school in hopes of getting his grades up high enough to get him into a football college. Meanwhile, Brookhiser, his girlfriend, will go to Duke University, a private school full of bright, rich boys and its share of players.

"I don't think we're going to break up," she says. Privately, Tigney acknowledges he's worried.

In his poem "To an Athlete Dying Young," poet A.E. Housman describes young stars whose fame fades as they mature. "And early though the laurel grows," he writes, "it withers quicker than the rose."

Michigan's Kruger says it this way: "These guys shine bright and then burn out. Their lives don't have that happy, settled-down ending."

Some settle contentedly into marriage, he says, but others don't or can't. Some cads don't make good dads.

Is this wishful thinking on Kruger's part? A lust for revenge from a non-player?

Kruger, who is happily married, admits that may be part of it.

"In high school, I'd see these guys in the locker room and couldn't believe girls would be attracted to them."

They were, but not forever. He continues: "When women are looking to settle down, they want someone who will be good to them and give them a long-term investment."