



RICHMOND, Calif. -- Cora Wilcots' life unraveled in just 20 minutes.

She was at work in downtown San Francisco on Dec. 7, on the phone with Fred Thompson, her only son, a 6-foot-4, 317-pound defensive tackle for Oregon State. A "big teddy bear" who intimidated people with his size and melted them with his smile, Thompson was planning a surprise trip home from Corvallis to celebrate his 20th birthday in Oakland four days later.

He never made it.

Thompson cut the call short that evening because it was his turn to join a pickup basketball game at the Dixon Recreation Center on OSU's campus. He said he would call Wilcots back.

"Love you," he told her.

"Love you more," she responded.

Twenty minutes later, Wilcots' phone rang again. But this time, it was Ryan Murphy. Frantic, Thompson's best friend described what was going on: Thompson had collapsed playing basketball, and medical personnel were working on him.

He's not breathing, Murphy said, but I'm going to stay on the phone with you.

"A minute later I heard this coldness in Ryan's voice," Wilcots says, her own voice catching at the memory. "And in that moment, I knew I had lost my whole world."

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Athletes and heart attacks

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Eleven months later, Murphy still aches for his best friend.

He knows Thompson isn't coming back, but still feels a little lost without him. Thompson would have loved this season, Murphy says, a nod to the No. 15 Beavers' surprising success, sitting at 7-2 in a year everyone wrote them off. From offseason workouts through last week's game back in Thompson's native Bay Area, his legacy has played a key role in inspiring his teammates to exceed expectations.

The night before Thompson died, to celebrate the end of fall term, he and Murphy had stayed up late, talking about football and life and video games. They slept in the next morning, then decided to clean their apartment before heading to Oakland for winter break. But Thompson got bored quickly, and suggested they go play basketball. After much cajoling, Murphy relented.

"Sometimes," he says now, "I just wish we would have kept cleaning."

When Thompson fell to the court at Dixon, teammates initially thought he was messing around. But when he didn't move, players panicked. Someone called for help, and backup quarterback Richie Harrington dialed Mark Banker, Oregon State's defensive coordinator. Almost every OSU coach was on the road recruiting. But when news was relayed that Thompson had died, everyone headed home.

In the days that followed,

that Thompson suffered from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the heart becomes thicker than usual, putting people at risk for heart attacks, especially young athletes who work out extensively. Wilcots says doctors told her that Thompson had developed an extra layer of skin over his heart, a result of excessive weight lifting workouts. They also said that even if medical personnel had been on the sideline, they probably wouldn't have been able to save Thompson.

But late that Wednesday, all Murphy knew was that he had to deliver awful news to a woman he considered his second mom.

The thought made him sick. How do you call a mother and shatter her world? Surrounding him in the waiting room, other Oregon State football players wept. Brandon Bennett-Jackson, another defensive tackle, screamed and yelled, heartbroken. Murphy picked up the phone and dialed, not knowing what to say.

"That was the worst phone call of my life," he says softly. "I didn't want to do it. But I didn't want her to hear it from the doctor."

It would become the first of many calls between Murphy and Wilcots where they talked about Thompson. Almost one year after Thompson's death, his mom and his best friend are still figuring out how to move on.

"When we talk, I always bury my hurt," Wilcots says. "It's so hard, because every time I talk to him, I think Fred is supposed to be right there with him. But I bury that, because I'm the adult, and he's the kid. I don't know how he grieves.

"Some days I wonder if he has."

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Like any mother, Wilcots worried about sending her baby so far from home for college. But she knew that with Murphy, Thompson would be safe.

Thompson and Murphy were fast friends when they met freshman year of high school at Oakland Tech, bonding over a shared loved of sports and video games and the Oakland Raiders. Both children of single mothers, Murphy says he and Thompson "fathered each other through high school," something that became truer when Thompson's dad died from sleep apnea when Thompson was 16.

Wilcots worked the graveyard shift at a desk job most of Thompson's life, scraping together a living. Sometimes, when Murphy's mom would give him $20 for the week for lunch money he would immediately give half of it to Thompson. From the beginning, they looked out for each other. "We got close because we were all each other had," Murphy says.

Because of that, Wilcots knew going to college together was the best thing for both.

"I knew Fred would get homesick going to Oregon, but if he went with Ryan, it would be like he was home," Wilcots says. "They were always together. They were supposed to be together."

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At first, Murphy and Thompson had no intention of being a package deal.

Thompson was a junior when Oregon State coaches first saw him on video. Banker was impressed by someone with a big frame who was light on his feet, but doubted Thompson would consider OSU.

"We watch the film, and it's sort of grainy and hard to see, but you can tell, this is a Division-I athlete," Banker recalls. "I looked around the room and said, 'C'mon, are you kidding me? Isn't everyone after this kid?'"

For whatever reason, everyone wasn't. So Keith Heyward, then an Oregon State assistant, built a relationship with Thompson, and convinced head coach Mike Riley to go take a look in person. And when Riley went down to meet Thompson and saw Murphy, a safety, he instantly offered both.

Suddenly, playing college football together, and getting out of a violent neighborhood, was a possibility.

"Coming from Oakland, it's rough," Murphy says. "We had friends who had died from guns, died from drugs, guys who were staring down life sentences in prison. We needed something different."

Thompson and Murphy took three official visits together: Oregon State, UCLA and Arizona State. But from the beginning, Thompson "just fit" with the Beavers, Banker says. Murphy followed suit.

"Other schools show you the glitter but here, we felt like family," Murphy says. "From Day 1, when we visited, it was like, 'You're part of us.'"

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If Wilcots can take any comfort in Thompson's death, it's knowing that "I didn't lose him to something bad. He died doing something he loved, in a place he loved."

But Delton Edwards, Thompson's coach at Oakland Tech, doesn't see it that way.

"Fred was survivor," Edwards says. "How is it he made it out of here, and we've got kids on the streets dealing drugs, shooting at each other, and they're still alive? How is that fair? It eats away at me every day that he's gone."

Haunted by Thompson's death, Edwards went to administrators at Oakland Tech and said he didn't want to coach any more, fearful of growing close with another player only to lose him. But he came back, his spirits lifted when he saw

at the school. In the crowd was a visibly shaken Riley and his players. Heyward, whom Thompson talked to every day, was especially overwhelmed.

"I sat in Cora's living room and promised her that Fred would come home with his degree," says Heyward, now an assistant at Washington. "And now he wasn't going to do it. I had to leave midway through his service because I was crying so hard. He was one of my boys. It was so hard. It still is."

In a strange way, Wilcots found peace watching Oregon State coaches and players mourn the loss of her son. Knowing that coaches and the university cared deeply about players, and that Thompson wasn't just another cog in the giant college football machine, reinforced to Wilcots that Thompson had been at the right place.

But the hurt doesn't go away. Wilcots moved out of her apartment in Oakland because she couldn't bear to stay in the same house he had been. She busies herself with work and school, taking classes at Contra Costa College. She talks to Murphy regularly, and finds joy in how the Oregon State community continues to celebrate Thompson.

Players have dedicated the 2012 season to Thompson, and commemorate him with a No. 92 sticker on their helmets. After big wins that have often included dominant defensive performances, players just smile when asked where this has come from, saying they're doing it all for Thompson.

"When I came up for the Wisconsin game for the coin toss, boy, it was emotional because it's the last place he was," she says. "But the love OSU has for him, all the fans and all the players, it's amazing."

But she worries, constantly, about Murphy.

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If he could have one more conversation with his best friend, Murphy would make a point to tell Thompson thank you.

"I never told him, but I wanted to do it -- to make it in college, to go to the NFL -- for him," says Murphy, a sophomore, tearing up. "If I could tell him one last thing, it would be that I appreciate him for this opportunity to play in college. Oregon State saw me because they saw him first. So I play in honor of him now. I'm going to do this for us."

Watching your best friend die, someone you consider a brother, is not something you get over, Murphy says. Instead, he tells himself each day that he won't let Thompson's death destroy his life, too.

"Growing up in Oakland you see a lot of people who have lost someone," he says. "And you see a lot of people go south because of it -- they drop out of school, get into using and selling drugs, turn to violence. I want to show people there's another way to deal with it."

So he wears the No. 92 sticker on his helmet. And he keeps Thompson's blacklight posters up in their apartment, which he now shares with another friend, Jabree Hunt, from high school. He writes "FT" on his wristband. He is smack in the middle of every defensive huddle when they break by shouting "Brick Squad!" Thomspon's nickname. And every day, he says a prayer for Wilcots.

"It's hard to talk to her, because I know I remind her of Fred," he says. "I want to be strong for her. I worry about her all the time. I don't want her to get lonely. Fred was her best friend."

Though she had always considered him another son, Wilcots' relationship with Murphy runs deeper now. They will share a bond forever, a constant reminder of what the other lost, and that they have to keep going for each other.

This season, Wilcots says she has cheered for Murphy as loud as she would have for Thompson. She "goes crazy, like one of those people you see on commercials" when watching the Beavers on TV. And clearly, her presence in the stands gives Murphy a lift.

He has two interceptions this year -- they came against Wisconsin and Stanford, the two games Wilcots attended.

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