The Plane From Minnesota: A NFL Nightmare

Big Bob Backland, the jowly offensive line coach, always enjoyed tormenting running back Billy Will about his fear of flying.

Big Bob would crack Buddy Holly jokes or sing stupid snippets of old Lynyrd Skynyrd songs as he passed Billy Will nervously squeezing his seat rest before every team take off.

Billy Will did not know, or care, who the hell Buddy Holly was, but Big Bob did annoy and aggravate him on every flight.

Matter of fact if Billy Will wasn't so frightened at the moment he be laughing at the widening stain in Big Bob's pants. The stain on Big Bob's pants was caused by the last, big bump of their team plane, the bad bump that sent a screaming stewardess bouncing so hard off the plane's ceiling that she folded, unnatural twisted and suddenly silent, onto a pile of fallen carry on luggage rolling wildly about the aisle.

Big Bob was bawling. But than so were a lot of hard, grown men gone suddenly soft. The always loud,show boating, big mouth million dollar a game wide out, Bixby "Mister Big" Jones was begging God and bawling loudly in the front row.  

When the team plane had left snow stricken Minnesota after a late Sunday night game Billy Will had been nervous about snow and ice.

After bumping through the air for an uneasy hour everything seemed fine until a roar, his Momma used to call it Thor's roar, filled the plane and it shook violently, went black and sank as the air filled with screams and air bags.

370 pound defensive tackle Kerry Truth was making his way back from a long bathroom break and his bulk was flung on-top of an unlucky running backs coach whose badly broken arm bones crunched loudly as he shrieked in pain and fear.  

The plane rolled hard right and Truth, and most of the overhead luggage, phones, laptops, and gadgets, were swung like a thrashing giant manatee and its poor pilot fish across the cabin onto a pair of back up defensive backs.

One defensive back cursed, punched and pushed at the sudden crushing weight while the other player, his head unnaturally bent, just gurgled and bled from the nose and mouth.

360 pounds of Truth crashed head first into a window then bounced up hard as the plane righted itself briefly and rolled hard left.

The kicker, a small Cajun called Pirate LaFitte, saw the daisy cutter like tackle coming towards him but, like a doomed b movie star in a bad sixties science fiction flick, all he could do was look at the giant monster about to crush him and scream hopelessly.

The Cajun was crunched under a half ton or so of bleating blubber.

The plane righted itself and the pilot came on suddenly and snapped.

"Stay in your seats. We are experiencing some problems but everything is under control."

Nic Cage, droning on in yet another boring plane movie, flickered and disappeared from the plane's televisions.

After Bob Bob screamed "We are all gonna die." most of the Christian players began to hold hands and pray.

When Big Bob would not stop screaming the always calm and devout Christian Head Coach Mike "Mac" McKole shouted "Shut the  F*** up Bob" and then puked pasta in the aisle.

Somehow, maybe it was the pain pills, the concussions or the Jack Daniels, linebacker Bobby Joe Bentley thought Big Bob's blubbering was amusing and begin to berate him with mangled lyrics, punctuated by loud, laughing Ye Ha's as the plane bucked, from Lynyrd Skynyrd's That Smell, a song of coming disaster.   

Famous for his two minute drill courage, both on the field and with groupies, the quarterback, Ice Tee Thomas, was sniffling and holding the giant paw of his long time center Jack Raff.

Billy Will had often dreamed of this. The big final crash. He hated them but he had to watch all the plane crash movies especially the We Are Marshall one.

Billy Will watched the ones where they ate their teammates and picked out which fat teammates he would have to devour first if they went down somewhere high in the desolate Rockies.

He made his wife watch the one with The Dude following the light and saving his fellow passengers. He even dreamed he was like the Dude in a plane crash.

Go towards the light he mumbled for a whole summer as he watched that flick over and over. He even had an old tape of that plane going down in the icy Potomac.

Planes and snow scared him. So did terrorists, even though he only flew charters he still nervously eyed the passengers and crew for any Al Qaeda looking sons of bitches.

Those undercover Jihad Joes were not going take Billy Will easily.

Last summer after his wife and his weasel faced agent toasted his new deal Billy Will had reminded them both that sports was way over due for a major team wrecking in a deadly air accident.

They both laughed and told him the odds were better that the Lions would win the Super Bowl and told him he worried way too much about silly, silly things.

Well it wasn't silly to Billy Will now not silly at all. His heart was thumping madly it seemed about to explode. His throat was tight, his stomach hollow and his butt was doing funky, frightened air aerobics.

He just did not want to crap his pants like a cursing player was saying Big Bob just did but he feared he just might make a mess.

Billy Will always counted the seats to the emergency exit. He always wore non flammable cloths and brought the same lucky charms, a cheap voodoo necklace from a Barbados beach and a St Christopher medal, with him on every flight.

Religiously Billy Will practised his plane exit run at home, with model seats aligned in his yard and his bored wife with a stop watch, until his planned plane exit was faster than his forty yard time.

If it came down to getting off a burning plane Billy Will would show his teammates tough running that would make Jim Brown blush. Some slow soul was going to catch a Larry Czonka forearm if he, or she, did not move their big butt.

Still he almost retired, so sure was he that a plane was going to get him, but he defied his doom and signed an extension.

For five million dollars with incentives what's a man to do?

After vowing a plane free life of sweet cars, smoking trains and swift boats, and walking blessed walking, he let his wife talk him into one more year so they could get that dream house in Barbados.

And it was a long boat ride to Barbados but Billy Will bought a yacht and hired a captain to keep it in the Keys where he loved to fish.

As the plane shook again and the lights flickered Billy Will thought his wife might end up enjoying that boat to Barbados with his bastard of a agent. 

Billy Will wished he was fishing right now.

"We gonna be okay? Right?" Billy Will always sat next to Johnson "JJ" Jefferies, who had gone to the Air Force Academy and flown a fighter plane in Afghanistan before returning to football.

JJ was always calm. Nothing bothered him. Now he was still calm but Billy Will noticed his clenched jaw, jutting forehead veins, and white knuckles. 

"Hang tough." JJ said and stared out the window at the wing.

"A thunder storm in a snow storm, damn the luck. How the hell did they hit it?"

This did not particularly calm Billy Will and neither did the shrill screams from the front of the plane. At first he thought it was the owner's wife and teen  daughters, and it was partly the daughters, but it was mostly the owner, Dot Com Danny Edyer, who was emitting a loud not me, not, not now mantra combined with a doomed sheep like bleat.   

Billy Will thought bitterly that the cheap ass owner had forced this flight, despite the swirling snow and wicked weather. The owner, angry at the loss, did not want to stay another night in cursed Minnesota and screamed that he had a big business meeting in the morning that he could not miss.

The always impatient owner, dubbed last year the Little Dictator by a Charlie Chaplin loving linebacker, stomped, stormed and shouted at the pilots that he bought this expensive plane and he paid them well to fly it not to stay another damn night in the hell that was Minnesota.

The plane jumped and bumped, bouncing a team trainer, who was desperately working on the downed stewardess slumped in the aisle, into a rolling food cart.

Small bottles of rum broke and poured on the trainers bleeding head. Another stewardess, the strikingly beautiful, blond one the players had been flirting with on the smooth flight in yesterday, was crying, crawling seat by seat toward her co worker.

Cheerleaders, lost in the blinking lights, sobbed uncontrollably from the red lite darkness.

"Come on keep, her steady." JJ grunted silently beside Will. "Come on boys. Steady."

Many of the players had fallen into a grim, shocked silence. Some hoped it was all a dream that was happening to someone, anyone else.  

Coach Mac was calling for calm even as Big Bob continued to bellow. Coach Mac had just a few hours ago given the ball club a ball breaking and belittling vicious speech about how the last minute loss to Minnesota wrecked their season and maybe most of their pathetic careers.

That overtime loss, even if it might cost Coach Mac his job, seemed a small thing now as the plane jumped and jerked rapidly.

Truth, the giant tackle, was jammed unconscious between the seats as the kicker moaned he was suffocating, slowly dying, and then desperately began to bite the big man on top of him.  

Suddenly the plane dropped and righted itself.

It was then Billy Wills swore that this was it. No more football, no more planes, if this bird lands he was walking away from everything.

Screw the house in Barbados, screw that second Bentley, screw one more year, Billy Will just wanted to walk somewhere, anywhere on God's green earth.

Billy Will vowed to walk to Texas and do good works all along the way if only the plane would land.  

Billy Will promised to buy a bigger bus than John Madden and give out turkeys to everyone in Texas.

The plane steadied, lights came on, strange silence and scattered prayers filled the plane.

The deranged, drunken linebacker yelled to Big Bob. "Big Bob, the slob, do you like gladiator movies? Bob ever been in a Turkish prison." and then laughed fiendishly as he fingered his flask.

The star wide-out, Mister Big Jones, began to loudly thank Jesus for saving him.

After a few moments, that seemed like an eternity to still hollow bellied Billy Will, JJ, the old Air Force pilot turned defensive end, looked at the wing and patted Bill Will's shaking hand and grinned his famous redneck smile.

Somewhere in the back someone cheered.

"Pardner it looks okay..Looks like we made it." JJ squeezed Billy Will's shoulder because he knew how much his friend hated flying.

Someone laughed nervously, someone sobbed. The kicker moaned help me and gnawed like a mad mouse on the neck of the collapsed giant crushing him.

Billy Will looked outside, they had passed the storm, Minnesota, and football, were in his his rear view window and he was never going back.

It had only been a few mad minutes but it seemed like forever. Billy Will's heart slowed its thumping just a tiny bit.

"Time for a drink to celebrate my last god damn flight." Billy Will said as his friend, the fighter pilot, JJ took a long last look out the window and watched the wing break off.

"Oh shit." JJ said as the plane began to spin.