His brother, Phil, pushed past him and jumped into the driver’s seat.
“You’ll love this.”
He hit a button, and the car lowered itself. They’d added an air-lift suspension upgrade. Then he hit another switch, and the gold pinstripes lit up.
“How the …?” David asked in amazement.
“Electroluminescent paint,” his dad said. “Basically, it works like a light. It’s four layers of special paint. One of the middle layers will glow when you add an electrical charge. It’ll also change colors.”
Phil moved the switch down, and it changed from gold to white.
“Now it looks like Stanford’s colors,” Tami announced.
“That would be handy if I transferred,” David joked.
“Get in. I’ll give you a spin,” Phil offered.
“Hell, no. We’d both die,” David said as he kicked his brother out.
Tami and Cassidy jumped in the back as Brook got into the passenger seat.
“We’ll be back in a minute,” David promised.
“Dinner’s at six,” Mom said with a stern look.
He did a quick mental calculation. They had plenty of time for some fun. He started it, and the throaty rumble of the monster announced it had come to life.
David had to chuckle when Phil slid up beside their dad.
“My birthday …” was all David heard as he put the car in gear and pulled away.
Phil had been politicking for a car since he was fifteen. To date, to his dad’s credit, he hadn’t crumbled to his youngest’s whining. David guessed that Phil’s mom and stepdad had more to do with it than Phil knew. Besides, the little dumbass would probably kill himself if he did have a car.
David took a lap around the parking lot to get used to it. He could feel that its handling had improved. The car was much more responsive. All he had to do was touch the gas, and the Demon felt like it wanted to turn into a rocket ship.
“During testing, Hennessey clocked it at 9.35 seconds with a max speed of 155 mph for the quarter-mile. On the open road, they pushed it to 200 mph before backing off,” Brook shared.
David took it easy since he was in Long Beach, which was not exactly the ideal place to see how fast his car would go if one didn’t back off. Maybe he would have to make a run to Vegas and find out.
◊◊◊
Chapter 33
Jaxson
President Ellison led them back to his room so they could have some privacy.
“I never in a million years thought I would be attending a birthday party for a student-athlete I wasn’t related to,” NCAA President Ellison said as they got comfortable.
“I planned to meet with Jaxson this morning, but when I heard what he was doing tonight, I decided I wanted to come,” Brent, the Pac-12’s Commissioner, said and then laughed. “That’s not the whole story. My wife demanded that we go. She’s always wanted to see the fireworks from the Queen Mary and meet David A. Dawson.”
“We’ve had our fair share of celebrities come through USC, none of whom wanted to play sports,” Jaxson, USC’s athletic director, shared.
“I bet he makes your life interesting,” President Ellison said.
“What makes you say that?” Jaxson asked.
“Just that. When we met with him, David had more of a spine than his lawyer. It was clear he was in charge and knew what he was doing.”
“What, exactly, happened for him to have to meet with you?” Brent asked.
“When David submitted his application to be recruited by our member institutions, his file got flagged. Most high school student-athletes don’t own businesses, model, and act in movies. This was right around the time California first floated their NIL bill. As a part of our standard paperwork, we make everyone sign a waiver that allows us to use student-athletes’ images and the like. His camp was worried about his movie commitments and part of his income going to the university instead of to him.”
“I get that. We, too, gave David a waiver to allow him to market his movies and be paid for them. What I’m asking is why you would meet with him? Why not have him meet with your staff?” Brent asked, clearly curious.
“This was when the first NIL lawsuits came in, like the ones from the Northwestern football team, the Arizona State swimmer, and Oregon women’s basketball player. The NCAA takes any threat to our antitrust exemptions seriously. Our lawyers felt that David was a potential problem for us,” President Ellison replied glibly.
“How so?” Jaxson asked.
He could tell there was more to the story than that, but the way President Ellison seemed to be deflecting, Jaxson doubted he’d get the whole story.
“It’s not only that he’s a high-profile athlete with deep pockets. We felt we could win any potential litigation if we rejected his waiver. The NCAA has stood up against much more formidable threats and won. What concerned us was the David doesn’t have typical connections. Before I met with you today, his grandmother had orchestrated a meeting with the governors of both California and Illinois. There are also US senators from those two states and New York at the party.
“Just walking around the ship, I’ve seen Sports Illustrated swimsuit models as well as directors and producers of some of the biggest movies from the last decade. Even heads of Mafia families,” President Ellison said.
“What?” Jaxson asked with a worried look.
“David is friends with Anthony Giovanni and Kendra Bianco. We checked, and neither is involved in anything illegal, as far as we know. Now their fathers …” President Ellison began with raised eyebrows.
“You said his grandmother set up the meeting?” Brent asked.
“David’s grandfather was a man named Davey Dawson. While he was alive, he was the power broker behind Illinois politics. He was the man you went to if you wanted something done. If you could convince him that what you wanted was good for the people of his state, then odds were what you wanted to be done would actually get done. He was asked to run for higher office but turned it down, from what I was told. He liked being a behind-the-scenes guy, felt he was more effective that way,” President Ellison explained.
“But even universities that receive sanctions don’t get to plead their case directly to the president of the NCAA. I can see that David could create a media problem, but I’m missing something,” Brent said.
Jaxson agreed. There had to be more.
“Imagine David A. Dawson as the poster boy for the other side in our fight against NIL.”
“But isn’t he a double-edged sword? When you gave him his waiver, it signaled that you’re open to student-athletes from member institutions making money on their name, image, and likeness,” Brent said.
“David is hardly the first waiver we’ve granted and won’t be the last. What it shows is that on a case-by-case basis, the NCAA will grant a NIL waiver. And if you read his, he is only allowed to fulfill the contractual obligations that he’d made before he started school at USC,” President Ellison clarified.
“And …?” Jaxson prodded.
“And we wanted to get David to be involved with the NCAA, as I am sure the Pac-12 and USC also want. It’s the same reason companies like Range Sports paid him a lot of money to be the face of their company,” President Ellison said. “He’s a very personable, believable guy.”
“My media department is champing at the bit to utilize him,” Jaxson said. “Not only because of the obvious celebrity; it’s what he’s done since he got here. Since the spring, he’s used his contacts to get us an assistant baseball coach he met while filming The Royal Palm in Cuba. That led to us signing three Cuban ballplayers who all have professional potential.
“David is currently taking a film class that has him doing a sports talk show. I’m told that his vodcast gets more clicks than everything else that the School of Cinematic Arts has ever produced in its history put together. And our football recruiting coordinator loves him. David talked a five-star transfer into signing and got a five-star quarterback to consider coming to USC when we thought we had no chance.