Making Nice

Jay Smouse, the Odyssey High School mascot, has gotten himself into trouble: he posted a joke online making fun of the soccer team, and now the soccer players have left a threatening note in his locker. Hoping for protection, Jay begs star quarterback Cooper Calhoun to let some football players watch out for him, but Cooper brushes him off before the big game. That night, Jay "helps" from the sidelines with a megaphone, wandering onto the field and showering players with bizarre compliments that compare their blocking and running to Elvis albums. The distraction proves costly, and after the worst loss in Odyssey history, Cooper snaps, smashes Jay's megaphone, and orders him off the field.

Cooper's father, Coach Calhoun, pulls his son into the locker room. Being team captain, he says, doesn't mean humiliating people; a leader and a Christian can correct someone while still being kind, whether or not that person seems to deserve it. He tells Cooper to apologize to Jay. Cooper does, but Jay quickly senses an opportunity. First he claims the broken megaphone was a priceless pre-Revolutionary War antique, then he bargains for something bigger: full access to the football team, where being surrounded by large, grunting linemen will keep the soccer players away. He even announces he'll serve as the team's "life coach," armed with a certificate from an online course that gives out butterflies instead of letter grades. Worn down and trying to be nice, Cooper agrees, jersey number 35 and all.

Most of the team wants nothing to do with Jay's coaching, but he finds a taker in Myron, an enormous, lonely lineman who wears his shoulder pads backwards and can't find his own truck. Jay fixes Myron's phone, listens to him, and becomes his round-the-clock advisor. Some of his advice is genuinely honest, like encouraging Myron to chase his own dreams instead of his brother's. Some of it is terrible, like telling him to skip sitting with the team and to fuel his football fury by humming songs from The Sound of Music, the musical Myron hates most. The angry approach works wonders at practice, but during the next game, when Myron can't beat a stronger opponent, Jay urges him to play like his old psychotic pet ferret. "Assume ferret," he commands. Moments later Myron is thrown out of the game for punching, costing the team a fifteen-yard penalty.

In the aftermath, the truth spills out: Jay has been calling himself the team life coach for weeks, all because Cooper gave him access. Yet Myron surprises everyone by defending Jay. His advice helped, Myron explains, because Jay was the only person brave enough to be honest with him instead of tiptoeing around his size. Coach Calhoun still benches Myron, strips Jay of his team access, and warns that any more player coaching will cost him his job as the Odyssey Owl. Then he turns to Cooper with the real lesson. Cooper was being nice, not kind, and there's a difference. "Jesus was always kind, but he wasn't always nice," the coach explains, pointing to how Jesus humbled his own disciples with hard truths spoken in love. Strangely enough, Jay's honesty with Myron is the closest example at hand, leaving Cooper to groan, "I can't believe my Christ-like example is Jay."

In the end, Cooper delivers the promised jersey, and when a soccer player shows up to lure Jay to a suspicious "practice" in an alley, Myron, Cooper, and the other football players calmly invite themselves along until the soccer team drops the whole thing. A touched Jay admits he's never been defended before, and Cooper grins that, after all, he does play defense. Jay declares it the beginning of a beautiful friendship, which sparks one last argument with Myron over movie musicals.