ROAD TO GLORY RTG-01 · Underdog Run · Week 0
Fenton

Week 0 · Preseason

Fenton, Michigan · August 17–27, 2026 · Save RTG-01, Underdog Run

Ten days before the opener. The school paper prints a headline that is true when it goes to press and false four days later, a sophomore who outweighs him by forty pounds gets a real shot at his job, three people on Yik Yak spend a week taking shots at him, and two college coaches finally write back.

24
Pieces
0–0
Record
NR
Stars
0
Offers
2
Replies
Start here
The Fentonian
Cover story
Nobody called.
He threw 35 touchdowns and no interceptions and spent the summer bagging groceries. Hudson Villeneuve reports on his own friend and finds the one thing nobody at this school knows.
One-off · Correspondence
Two people wrote back
Ball State's quarterbacks coach answers a coaching question. Michigan State never opens the email. Wyoming's coordinator sends five questions and tells him to reply tonight.
 Yik Yak
Anonymous · 5 mi radius
The herd
Three people spend a week taking shots at him from inside his own building — and one of them is standing next to him in the huddle on Friday.
One-off · From the archive
The column
The 900 words a fifteen-year-old band student wrote about a Fenton loss in 2024, reprinted in full. This is the document that got him in the building.
The school
The Fentonian
Vol. 79, No. 1
The rest of the issue
Ben Haijcar's profile, five things about this team that are not Nick Mansour, Hannah Swain on the student section, the band's impossible show, four letters, briefs and corrections.
Tiger Television
Season premiere + Game Day
Two complete transcripts. Setzke will not stop walking, Shaffer says the quiet part into a camera in front of the entire school, and a kid in a black hoodie has first hour in the pool building.
 The Fentonian
Unedited
Sixty seconds in the north hallway
Two lunch periods, one recorder, three questions. Printed in the order it was recorded, including the answers that weren't helpful.
 X
Search: "fenton football"
The timeline
The athletics department, a pinned recruiting post nobody has replied to, Setzke telling Troy to delete a tweet, and one post with nine likes that matters more than the rest of the page combined.
Ambient
Around Fenton this week
Announcements, the forecast at kickoff, the rumor mill with corrections, what the Wing & Grill marquee says, and an eight-message exchange at 11:04 on a Wednesday.
Music
The other schedule
Mr. Perkins sends an audition timeline, a deadline that does not move for a playoff run, and one sentence about nine hundred students that he probably should not have written down.
Private
Messages
Family
Mom on flank pain and what college costs. Dad printing 61 schools in color at work. Ari's spreadsheet. Karenna telling a girl he isn't her brother.
Messages
Friends, jazz, school
The group chat, Tommy getting the honest version, Hudson deciding what he's allowed to print, Dane discovering what a read is, and an AP Gov group that is going to make Nick do the whole project.
Messages
Team, position groups, coaches
Fifteen threads. Josh Czarnota finds out what pointing at the Mike actually does, Setzke answers a protection question six hours and forty minutes later, and Nick reads every word Brendan wrote about him and says one syllable to one person.
Beyond Fenton
MLive
Ryan Zuke
6 Division 3 teams that could crash the party
The first coverage that exists outside Genesee County — and Zuke says twice that it is not recruiting coverage, which is exactly why it changes nothing.
 Tri-County Times
Prep football
Flint Metro League preview
Dale Ostrander picks the league, explains the plan three coaches gave him for defending Fenton, and says plainly that he cannot find anybody who has called about the quarterback.
 Tri-County Times
Sunday feature
Credit
One coach found him and one coach taught him, and the town keeps swapping which is which. Setzke declines, on the record, to be the coach who saw something in him.
The Mitten Board · Issue 211
He is not in it
The regional newsletter most likely to find him prints its 2027 quarterback board, answers a mailbag question about the Fenton kid honestly, and states the exact conditions under which it would look again.
Tracker
Outreach log & recruiting board
Twelve messages, what each one said, whether the link was ever opened, and how many minutes of film an unidentified person in Allendale watched at two in the morning.
The file
Canon
Player profile
The save declaration, the junior line, the scouting report, and the six concerns written the way an evaluator would actually write them.
Canon
How it happened
The chronology, assembled from the people who were standing there. Most of the versions circulating in this town are wrong.
Canon
Fenton, the program, the roster
The school, the league, the staff, and who all thirty-odd of these people actually are — now with faces, plus Josh Czarnota, Nick Barchichat and Michael Fabatz.
Tracker
Relationship ledger
Trust, comfort, resentment, protectiveness and volatility, tracked separately, because a good conversation can move two of them in opposite directions.
Tracker
Who knows what
Six facts, twenty-odd people, and the active misconceptions — including the one the whole school believes and the one Nick believes.
Canon
Canon tracker
The save profile, permanent player canon, RTG-01 state, active storylines, this week's additions, and the exclusions list.
Next: Week 1, Friday, August 28, 7:00 p.m. — Clio at Fenton. Orange-out. New Clio defensive coordinator, a two-high structure Fenton has not seen from them, a sophomore center, the first time Nick Mansour has been hit by a stranger since October 17 — and a slot receiver who has spent a week calling him the clipboard kid and is about to need him on third and four.
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RTG-01 — Underdog Run
Phase I · Week 0 / Preseason · 24 pieces
Everything in this folder is true in RTG-01 and in no other save.
Photographs are stand-ins used to give the universe faces. Real reporters named in this archive (Ryan Zuke, MLive) appear fictionally; nothing attributed to them was written or said by them.