Whether they’re aware of it, they both wear them — scarlet letters reminding the duo of the day everything changed.
Somewhere buried in the rubble are the now ancient remains of a crumbled friendship forged on the pillars of coaching bonds. Once close, J.B. Gerald and Mike Locksley have become embittered adversaries, stung by the same set of unyielding emotions.
Some 11 months after the now infamous dust-up between him and Locksley, Gerald’s emotional wounds are still as fresh as the laceration he received to his upper lip Sept. 20.
“I feel it every day,” Gerald said.
The day-in-day-out pain became so intense that Gerald packed his bags and jetted back to Maryland, where he has since landed a job teaching underprivileged students at a Washington, D.C., charter school.
When the season was still in swing, Gerald watched the team every Saturday from afar. During weeks that the team traveled, Gerald invited some players that didn’t make the trip to eat wings and watch the game at a local establishment. Yet throughout, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of emptiness.
“You work all year to get up to that point,” Gerald said. “The season is like a coach’s reward. You put all that hard work — blood, sweat, tears — into preparing for a season. It’s like watching it all kind of, I don’t want to say go down the drain, but kind of that way.”
And in his own way, Gerald said, he was robbed of the joys of coaching.
“I never thought I’d be on the receiving end of those types of explosions,” Gerald said.
Especially not from a friend.
Thin line between love and hate
To this day, Gerald has fond memories of Locksley.
Throughout Gerald’s high school career, Locksley was known in the Maryland area as a recruiting juggernaut. The two became more acquainted when Locksley, the up-and-coming assistant at Maryland University, snagged one of Gerald’s best friends, Madieu Williams, to play for the Terps.
After Gerald’s collegiate playing days at Colgate University ended, he served as a graduate assistant at Penn State for three years. There, while under the direct tutelage of legendary coach Joe Paterno, Gerald said he and Locksley crossed paths on a number of occasions, including at coaching conventions.
While Locksley was at Illinois, Gerald came to a professional crossroad.
More than anything, Gerald longed for professional stability and security. So before Penn State’s 2008 season began, Gerald took one of the biggest gambles of his life. He informed Paterno he was leaving Penn State to pursue other coaching endeavors.
Shortly thereafter, Gerald joined Locksley at Illinois, where he served as the offensive quality control coach, while Locksley was the offensive coordinator. At best, Gerald’s decision was a
lateral career move because he took a pay cut at Illinois. But, he was convinced that the “probability of turnover” and the opportunity to make other coaching contacts outweighed his choice to leave Penn’s program.
No more than five months later, Gerald’s decision paid off, and Locksley accepted the head coaching gig at New Mexico, taking the young assistant with him. Gerald’s career seemed primed to take off. In such short time, he and Locksley built a strong rapport at Illinois, both professionally and personally.
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Even now, after all that’s happened, Gerald said Locksley was the “life of the party” at cookouts and functions. When it came time to punch the clock, though, Gerald remembered Locksley was a studious workaholic, possessed by the craft. They’d work demanding schedules, sometimes 16 hours a day. On several occasions, after an eventful, nonstop day at the office, Gerald said the two unwound by grabbing a bite to eat.
All that would soon come to a halt.
Little by little, things deteriorated. Not long before Gerald and Locksley were involved in a Aug. 13 verbal spat, in which the former wide receivers coach said Locksley threatened to slap him, the two’s relationship soured.
In early August, Gerald missed a mandatory weekend coaches’ retreat. Gerald said he told Locksley he would be unable to attend on Friday because his fiancée, who just started work that week, couldn’t get Friday off. He said the two planned to leave first thing Saturday morning.
Since it was about a 40-minute trip, Gerald said it didn’t make sense for him to go up Friday, come back for his fiancée Saturday and head back to the retreat. He said he and his fiancée took another assistant coach’s spouse with them, because she was also working Friday. Apparently, Locksley took issue with Gerald’s decision.
Still, Gerald could’ve never predicted what was to come.
Falling out
Almost as quickly as it began, Locksley’s head coaching honeymoon ended.
First, news broke of an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint by one of the first-year coach’s administrative assistants, in which she alleged that Locksley fired her to replace her with younger, more attractive workers in an effort to entice recruits.
Then on Aug. 13, Gerald and Locksley were involved in a heated exchange after practice. Gerald said during practice Locksley directed a profanity-laced tirade toward him because the wide receivers weren’t lined up properly. The former wide receivers coach admitted firing back: “Well, get them (expletive) lined up, then.”
The quarrel picked up again after practice as fans and members of the media looked on. Eventually, the two went separate ways, and Gerald stormed off in the opposite direction toward the Lobos’ facilities.
At the time, what appeared to be a minor quibble among coaches became the bedrock to the Sept. 20 confrontation, as Gerald later claimed it forever altered his relationship with Locksley.
Whatever the case, as the losses mounted, frustration grew within the program as fan morale steadily dipped. Behind closed doors, the tension was building.
With the team’s continued struggles came murmurs from fans and local media, many second-guessing Locksley’s offensive ingenuity.
Before anything could change, Locksley once again found himself embroiled in controversy, and suddenly, the Lobos’ on-the-field struggles became postscript to off-the-field controversy.
During a coaches’ meeting Sept. 20, Gerald claimed Locksley punched and choked him. To this day, details remain murky, with Locksley and Krebs vehemently denying that Locksley punched or choked Gerald, findings that were later verified by a UNM Human Resources probe.
More than once after the incident, Locksley contacted Gerald, but Gerald said he couldn’t muster the nerve to have an effective dialogue, still angered by what has transpired.
“In my heart, yeah, I forgive the guy,” Gerald said. “I don’t bad talk him. I don’t wish ill will on him. I want the team to be successful, but that still doesn’t excuse his (behavior).”
It seems safe to say that neither Locksley nor Gerald have fully recovered from the incident. While undoubtedly there are staunch Locks supporters, much of the UNM community hasn’t forgotten about his indiscretions.
Locksley declined to comment, but in a separate interview during the Lobos’ 2010 spring practices, Locksley said his reputation has been marred by selective public memory.
“A good majority of my career, I’ve been touted as a guy that does things the right way, a guy that was climbing the food chain in this profession,” he said.
Gerald, on the other hand, seeks closure.
As Locksley looks to start anew, Gerald’s litigation will serve as a constant reminder until it’s remedied.
Inasmuch, Dennis Montoya, the New Mexico-based attorney representing Gerald, refuses to let the embers of a dormant-but-not dead issue burn out. Recently, Montoya filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque against Locksley and UNM’s Board of Regents, alleging that the ex-wide receivers coach was assaulted, discriminated and retaliated against.
Gerald said he wasn’t given an alternative. The administration, he said, is fraught with a lack of leadership. Without naming names, Gerald said the situation was gravely mishandled.
“I don’t want to point fingers, but it’s pretty hard not to know what went down when you had coaches there that broke it down,” Gerald said. “… All I can say is if that was me who threw a punch at another coach … I would have been terminated.”
And if it were up to Locksley, and he had a another chance, that would have been the outcome for Gerald before everything spiraled out of control.
Looking back, Locksley said he should have dismissed Gerald.
“Maybe as a first-time head coach, I was more likely to work through it,” Locksley told the Associated Press. “I was more willing to stand by guys when certain things happened. Maybe I should have been more willing to pull the plug and say, ‘We’re going in another direction.’”
Instead the course has been set, the scarlet letters forever singed.
But cover the mark as Gerald will, the pang of it will never burn out.
“I’m not going to look away from him,” Gerald said. “It’s a situation two adults have to deal with. Unfortunately, it had to go this route. But it’s something that has to be done. So we’re going to do it.”
