“You know how much time a student-athlete has to commit to their sport. David does all that, spends time with his family, and maintains a perfect grade point average,” Jaxson shared.
“After this weekend, I plan to go back and talk to my staff,” Brent admitted. “Our media partners—Fox, ESPN, and the Pac-12 Network—would love to have David as one of the conference’s leading players. Fox wants to feature USC’s opener as their game of the week because that’ll be the first college game he starts. Usually, a game against UNLV would only rate Pac-12 Network coverage.
“Fox and ESPN want star power. David is the number-one-rated recruit in his class. And he just happens to be an Academy Award-winning actor who has two of the biggest box office hits in theaters. That fits the narrative they’re looking for. The only fly in the ointment is that your coach hasn’t named him the starter,” Brent said.
“Why is that?” President Ellison asked.
Jaxson had wondered about that himself. David had readily agreed not to trash Coach Clayton for now, but Jaxson wondered how much longer that truce would last. In Jaxson’s opinion, David taking potshots at Coach Clayton would easily have been justified. To protect his chosen quarterback, Coach Clayton had moved David to defense, which David had agreed to, surprising just about everybody in the athletic department.
Their starting quarterback had been injured during spring practice, and it became apparent they had no one to step in and take his place. David was moved back to quarterback and, after he knocked the rust off his skills, had frankly shown he deserved the starting job.
On top of all that, Coach Clayton had played games with David’s promised scholarship. Jaxson had been forced to step in to rectify that injustice.
Jaxson was sure that most players would have crucified Coach Clayton in the press. David had shown maturity, even when, as Jaxson had learned from his sources, the starting quarterback had tried to have him injured. His only retaliation was to point out Coach Clayton’s blatant favoritism.
Jaxson knew that quarterback wasn’t the only position that Coach Clayton had messed with to allow an inferior player to start. Coach Clayton preferred older starters. The best example was at defensive end. Percy Wilkes was a five-star recruit out of Texas who should never have been red-shirted.
What kept Jaxson from making a change of head coach was that they’d gone 11–2 last year. And Jaxson was new to the job. That all added up to his hands being tied. You didn’t fire a head coach with that kind of record unless he was molesting boys or committing some other egregious infraction.
While David made a lot of sense on more than just the football front, Jaxson couldn’t be seen dictating to his head football coach who should start.
“Coach Clayton feels that Matt Long has been in the program longer and benefited from being Ridge Townsend’s understudy. Besides, Matt, like David, was a highly rated Elite 11 level quarterback in high school,” Jaxson said.
“I understand your having to back Coach Clayton, but at some point, you’re going to have to remind some people that you are the athletic director,” Brent said.
Jaxson had to admit to himself that Brent was right. He was also very aware that David was good friends with the two significant boosters for USC. Hell, David’s grandmother was dating one of them. These were the men who had arranged for him to become the athletic director in the first place. Jaxson had no doubt that if they became unhappy, he could easily be replaced. Donating a combined $200 million a year to the university gave the two boosters that kind of leverage.
“We had David come in a second time,” President Ellison said to change the topic. “He was offered money by a shoe company to go to a certain school. Even though he self-reported, we pulled his eligibility to play college ball for a time.”
“Why the hell would you do that?” Jaxson asked, only to be overridden by Brent simultaneously asking, “What happened?”
“The FBI got involved and made everyone sign nondisclosure agreements. They had an ongoing investigation. Besides, it was clear that David had done absolutely nothing wrong.”
“Are you talking about the basketball case? The one that happened last fall?” Brent asked.
“One of our assistant coaches got tangled up in that mess. We let him go,” Jaxson said. “Is the NCAA going to look into what they were doing?”
Jaxson knew that if the NCAA came after them, they would be facing stiff sanctions for facilitating money to be paid to student-athletes. He saw President Ellison get a pinched look, but then he chuckled.
“I feel confident the NCAA will come down hard on USC. Just as soon as we finish sanctioning Arizona, Auburn, Kansas, NC State, Louisville, Alabama, Miami, and the rest. Then we’ll be all over USC. I’d expect to see some harsh punishment handed out in five-to-never years from now,” President Ellison joked.
Jaxson knew that the rumors of the haves and have-nots, like in the real world, were in play with the NCAA. If that list had included a bunch of directional schools like Northeast Southwest Central State, they might have ended up getting the death penalty. He thought back to when Notre Dame received sanctions and thought they should have stood their ground instead of falling on their sword and volunteering to take their punishment.
It looked like the FBI was also well aware that football was a much larger moneymaker than basketball. On average, college football generated more money than the next 35 sports combined. It might explain why the FBI focused their investigation on basketball.
“David wasn’t found to have taken money, was he?” Brent asked.
“He didn’t receive any money himself, but two charities he’d helped establish received some suspicious anonymous donations. Since the donations were anonymous and he couldn’t have returned the money if he’d wanted to, the FBI let him off the hook. David had hired an outside person to run the charities to replace family members. The result was he’d cut all ties with the management of those charities. After that, we were satisfied that he didn’t receive an inducement,” President Ellison explained.
The room went quiet for a moment.
“I have two things I wanted to give you a heads-up about,” President Ellison said to break the silence.
Jaxson could see this was serious by the president’s body language.
“The first is that our sources have discovered the FBI is nosing around again. The one instance I can confirm is at Stanford. A state congressman has donated over $50,000 from his campaign fund to the university, which is apparently legal. But what may not be is that his son was just accepted to Stanford. I have no information as to whether the money had any influence on his admission or not,” President Ellison said to clarify.
The implication was that if the FBI was looking, there was probably a good reason.
“Does the congressman’s son play sports?” Brent asked.
“No.”
“Then why are you telling us?” Brent asked.
“Because that isn’t the only example. The FBI has launched another big, but not yet publicized, investigation they are calling Varsity Blues. The implication is that it involves student-athletes. I suggest that you get the word out and make sure none of your schools are taking cash for admissions. Especially through any sports program,” President Ellison warned.
“To pull that off, they would need to have both a coach and admissions person involved, at a minimum,” Jaxson surmised.
“If it has been going on for any length of time, it could go much higher. This could be a career-ender for those involved and their bosses,” Brent guessed.
That had Jaxson’s full attention. Come Monday morning, he planned to quietly launch an internal investigation.