Hail Mary

Ultra-conservative, NFL-expansion-team-owner Preston Atwater fires his winless team’s head coach immediately after the first season and replaces him with his defensive coordinator, Martyn O’Banyon. Within hours of accepting the job, Martyn discovers and keeps secret his physician’s diagnosis of liver cancer. Somehow, Martyn must concoct a story that will allow him to have the needed operation (and lengthy recuperation) without his employer’s knowledge. He must also keep it a secret from his ex-wife and undisclosed male lover. Assistance in this predicament comes from an unusual and divine source: a pantheon of gods and goddesses, from a variety of cultures and time periods, who live in a resort-like Eden, where they idle away their time influencing the outcomes of earthly sporting events. With their help, Martyn manages to convince all parties involved that he will be spending time at an isolated Norwegian religious retreat. In actuality, Martyn will have the necessary procedure performed at an advanced surgical center in Denmark. The subterfuge works, but due to a clerical error, Martyn mistakenly receives a different patient’s gender change operation. He also discovers he was misdiagnosed with cancer. Martyn, now Mary, returns home and reveals the truth to her employer, ex-wife and male lover. Atwater, his domineering wife, attorney and a right-wing financial supporter are all appalled at Mary’s intent to fulfill her coaching contract and are prepared to fight it. Only at Mary and her lawyer’s threat of disrupting the upcoming season, do the team’s owners offer a winner-take-all challenge: a preseason game against a powerful and unlikely opponent. When all hope appears lost for Mary, last-second divine intervention procures a miraculous win securing her coaching future.