Sarah Spain

But for Sherman, it's zero to 45-year-old son with no warning.

He hasn't been looking for that.

He has a happy wife and family and kids.

But he almost doesn't want to imagine that he could be the kind of person who made a choice that resulted in other people having to be responsible.

He had always told his players, there's no such thing as irresponsibility.

When you're irresponsible, someone else becomes responsible for what you didn't do.

He has led a life leading young men and telling them how to be.

And then he recognizes that he might not have been the guy he always thought he was.

And so at first, he's not overjoyed the way Dylan would hope.

He needs some time.

And then he starts thinking about how the story isn't his, it's Dillon's.

How Dillon has spent his whole life looking for this piece of himself and how he needed to stop centering himself and consider what it meant to Dillon to find him and really consider that it could be true.

They get a paternity test.

It's 99.9999999%.

And as he's waiting for those results, he realizes that he will in fact be very sad if he is not his father.

By this point, he's come around to the idea that they've had this connection, that this story is almost faded.

It isn't crystallized until they see each other in person for the first time after knowing their connection as father-son.

Dillon's actually got recruiting trips that allow him to get near Tennessee and where Sherman lives in retirement and goes there for the very first time to see his dad as his dad.

There's this just incredible moment, and I cry every time I think about it.

I cried writing it.