Coombs remembers Jason walking into a coaches’ meeting that season, tears in his eyes. He was there to stake his substantial reputation on getting his brother back in the fold, and he came armed with a straightforward argument. “Basically, it was, I’ve got this, and you’ve got to trust me on this,” Coombs says. “You’re talking about a man who had earned the right to give his word and have his word listened to.”
“I never really asked him how he got me back on the team,” Travis says. But he returned for his junior season in 2011 as a full-time tight end and made the dean’s list that fall—“which was unheard of,” according to Ed.