William Nicholas McMullen says he never wanted to be someone he wasn't.

But one initial lie, a lie that seemed so inconsequential 20 years ago, has led him down a long and puzzling road of quiet deception.

That road came to an end yesterday as the Old Colony High School assistant football coach admitted he is not the man everyone thinks he is -former Notre Dame All-American and Detroit Lions halfback Nick Eddy.

Known around the area as a well-respected coach, umpire and teacher, McMullen spoke at length yesterday about the secret that has haunted him since settling in this area in 1989.

"I just hoped the whole thing would fade away with time," the 58-year-old McMullen said. "But it's something that I knew I was going to have to face sometime in life."

That moment came when the real Nick Eddy, an insurance executive in California, got a call from a friend informing him that a Massachusetts high school coach was using his identity. Further investigation confirmed it.

Not surprisingly, Eddy was stunned.

"I'm not looking to take legal action or anything," a bewildered Eddy said from his home in California. "I just want him to stop pretending he's me."

In 1978, William "Nick" McMullen was down and out. Divorced, and separated from his three children in California, he was struggling to keep a second marriage going and living in a small Boston apartment.

He said he had $15 in his pocket. He needed a job.

"I saw an ad in the Globe that a company down in New Bedford was looking for a production manager, so I applied," he said. "I ended up coming down for the interview, and of course a lot of people had applied for this job. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a Notre Dame poster on the wall, and saw a lot of other Notre Dame memorabilia. It belonged to the son of the owner, who would later take over the business.

"So, when they asked about my college education, I said I went to Notre Dame."

He would not be the first or the last to lie about his education in a job interview. But with this spur-of-the-moment fabrication, his life was forever to be changed.

"I wasn't going any further with that," he continued, "but they asked if I played any sports. Sure, I said, I played a lot of sports, trying to downplay the whole thing, but trying to get my way into a job that I desperately needed. I got the job."

As Eddy recalls, the son returned to him a few weeks later, and said he had looked through the Notre Dame alumni book, and didn't see McMullen's name.

"Thinking quick on my feet, I said it was under Eddy, knowing of Nick Eddy, of course," he said.

And with that, his life as Nick Eddy was born.

Always called "Nick" to distinguish himself from his father (also William McMullen), he also had claim to the name Eddy. His parents divorced when he was very young, and his mother married a man named George Eddy.

So, the name was on the tip of his tongue that fateful day -it was his, sort of.

Six months later, with his second marriage in ruins, he started working with a young woman named Robin.

They fell in love, and in 1979 the two of them moved back to California, where McMullen figured his lie would dissolve into nothing.

"At that point, the whole Nick Eddy issue, as far as I was concerned, was gone," he said.

Still, his wife knew him as former football star Nick Eddy, although he says she has never been interested in that side of him.

"She never talked about it, really," McMullen said. "The hitch there was that she told her father, when we were first seeing each other. And the father had told his friend, and his friend told his friend.

"And there you go."

After almost 10 years of living together in California, the unexpected happened. Robin was pregnant, despite the couple's belief that Nick couldn't father children.

"It was amazing, that this wonderful, delightful joy came into my life, and I thought 'God, I am so blessed.'"

At the urging of Robin's family, the couple moved back to Massachusetts and were married. C.J. was born in 1989, and McMullen moved into a new phase of his life as a 48-year-old father.

He felt he was a changed man. But to his wife's family -and to friends of his wife's family, and their friends, and so on -he was still Nick Eddy, Notre Dame football star.

"I had forgotten competely about the whole thing," McMullen said. "The whole Nick Eddy thing, it never entered my mind. It was never an issue. Her father is a very soft-spoken guy, really the salt of the earth, and I think he was proud to have Nick Eddy for a son-in-law."

As his contacts spread locally with his work in the community, so did his notoriety. As C.J. got older, McMullen started to get more involved with youth sports, umpiring local softball and baseball games and helping out with area leagues.

But there were always the little sidelong looks, the nudges from one onlooker to the next -"You see that umpire? That's Nick Eddy."

He did his best to hold off those looking for a brush with fame.

"I was so low-key about it, that people were amazed at what they thought was my 'modesty,'" he said.

Coaching football was something McMullen says was always in his blood.

"I'm really a student of the game," he said. "I've always enjoyed it."

He says he played high school ball in California before running into a recurring problem -knee injuries.

McMullen walks with a severe limp after undergoing several surgeries throughout his life, and also suffers from curvature of the spine.

In fact, one of the most obvious discrepancies in McMullen's life as Eddy is their appearance.

While they do share a facial resemblance, McMullen stands about 5-7, while Eddy was (and is) a strapping 6 footer. But McMullen claims he did stand near six feet before the effects of his medical problems took their toll.

And even though many people will say they always had their doubts that this small 50-ish man could once have been a six-footer capable of finishing third in the Heisman Trophy balloting, his personality kept those doubts quiet.

When McMullen met Old Colony coach Kevin Gonsalves, he was recovering from another surgery. Gonsalves was part of a West Island (Fairhaven) community welcome team, and went to McMullen's house to deliver a fruit basket. They got to talking about football and developed a rapport. Gonsalves eventually would offer McMullen a shot at the assistant coaching job at Old Colony.

McMullen was torn.

"I declined, because I did not want to get put in the spotlight, for obvious reasons. But eventually, I decided, yeah, OK, I'm going to do this."

With his fictional past helping clear the way for a dream job, McMullen set to the task of helping Old Colony's football team turn things around.

But just as he feared, the spotlight would shine awfully bright.

Standard-Times Senior Sports Editor Buddy Thomas had met McMullen (as Eddy) in 1994, and heard in the fall of 1995 that he would be coaching at Old Colony.

Sounded like a great story, especially to a veteran reporter whose favorite player used to be ... yes, Nick Eddy.

"I had previously been introduced to him as Nick Eddy, by a mutual friend," Thomas said. "I approached him about doing a story about the football team, and he was reluctant."

After a couple of postponements, McMullen finally agreed.

"In retrospect, I should have stopped it right there," McMullen said. "It would have been so much simpler. There would have been disappointment, but it wouldn't have taken on what it has.

"But I didn't. And the stone wall got bigger."

Thomas recalls being a little surprised by his subject's physical appearance, but McMullen talked the talk.

"He had an answer for every question, with specific details," Thomas said. "I had no doubts."

The story ran on September 13, 1995, and detailed "Nick Eddy's" life -a strange goulash of the real Eddy's career and McMullen's life history.

When the real Nick Eddy saw a copy of it last Friday -more than four years after it was first published -he was floored.

"It was just unbelievable," he said. "My wife read it, and she was just sick to her stomach. I looked at it, and said 'Who knows how long he's been doing this?'"

Why the four-year delay? Even though the two men were on opposite sides of the country, news travels fast. Eddy has several friends in the area, yet no one made the link.

McMullen couldn't believe it.

"I expected after that point that any day, the encounter would come," he said. "I guess part of me said, 'This is where the hammer falls, and I have to deal with it.' And there was some relief in that.

"But much to my surprise, nothing happened."

So, the deception continued.

And over the next five years, "Coach Eddy" became a real fixture on the Old Colony bench.

He was popular with the kids for his down-to-earth style and caring, popular with the parents for his calm in the face of a stormy sport, popular with his coaches for his knowledge and experience.

He was the kind of coach that any team would love to have.

And he was still living a lie.

The lie came to an end shortly after Old Colony's 14-7 win over Avon/Holbrook last Saturday afternoon. Confronted by the evidence against him, he still refused to come out from behind the facade.

But after what had to be some of the darkest hours of his life, he made the only choice he could -to tell the truth.

A turning point was a conversation he had Sunday with the real Nick Eddy, where McMullen spoke about his fears and offered his apologies.

"I think this will help him in the long run," said the real Nick Eddy, who has showed uncommon compassion for McMullen. "He'll get a chance to develop his own identity. I know he's really scared. He doesn't want to hurt his family, and I certainly don't want that either. But he has to be honest."

McMullen knows that many of the kids, parents and coaches who have put their trust in him will never grant him forgiveness.

He talked often of the pain of hindsight, and the heartbreak of tarnishing his many good deeds.

"I made this mistake, and I should have gotten it over with early on. But I didn't, and that hurts. I'm a good person, and I think I've done my job as a coach, as a father, as an umpire, as a neighbor -whatever role you want to cast me in.

"I think I have played a part in turning things around at Old Colony, and I think I brought something to that team that it was lacking. There's a lot of love there, and there are hundreds of kids who put their faith in me, and I hope they always feel they can. Yes, they think of me as football player Nick Eddy, but that only opened the door. I was always there for the kids, and I'll always be there for the kids."

"Unfortunately, it had to all come under the facade. The truth of it is, it (the good things) probably all would have transpired anyhow.

"Because I am who I am."

He will almost certainly lose his job as substitute teacher and coach at Old Colony, but his biggest fear is that he will lose the respect and love of those closest to him.

"I've got a wife, and a 10-year-old son that I love more than anything in the world," he said, fighting to keep his composure. "I'm scared to death about what's going to happen with them.

"And I'm really worried about the impact that this is going to have on the team -all of the kids, and the coaches. I understand the bind this is going to put them in."

McMullen is a survivor. He's been through a lot in his 58 years, and he thinks he will get through this, too. He's been seeing a psychiatrist for several years, working toward the goal of coming clean with his secret.

Now that it has been exposed, his concern is for those he loves.

"I've been working toward resolving it, for my sake, my family's sake -everybody's sake, everybody that's been touched by this. And I was determined that with the help of my psychiatrist, this was going to be made public.

"I've been dealing with this for this whole time, so as far as (exposure) goes, it's going to be easier for me than the people I love -and that's not fair.

"If people have ill feelings toward me, hey, I've got broad shoulders.