This series from SB Nation is fantastic. We all know in the back of our minds about all the shady crap that happens in the shadows of college sports programs but I've never really paid attention to how bad it all really is.

I really hated Mississippi State after the terrible bowl game we had against Dak Prescott in the rain and all the damn cowbells, but now I kind of sympathize with them having to compete for local recruits against a bunch of cheaters.

Ep1


Ep2


Ep3


Ep4

9/13/2018 5:34:26 PM

Yup this series was super good.

Steven Godfrey’s longform on “The Bag Men” from a few years back is also super good.

[Edited on September 13, 2018 at 5:47 PM. Reason : A]

9/13/2018 5:46:32 PM

Thank you for posting this. I had tried to find this a month or so ago online after reading the full story online done by the guy in the video, but couldn’t find it as it had been on Verizon’s now defunct go90 platform. I hope that if we have bag men that they are better than the ones in Mississippi. I would love for us to be a clean program, but I have sadly come to the realization over the past decade or so of intently watching college athletics that that would be naive.

9/13/2018 9:06:35 PM

Yup. We need good bag men.

9/13/2018 9:27:16 PM

When I was at NCSU I was almost certain that members of the basketball and football teams were driving Cadillacs which were gifted to them by boosters. But it doesn't bother me because the university was exploiting them, why shouldn't they get something for it.

The biggest thing I learned from this video was about Walter Byers, the first executive director of the NCAA who came up with the "student athlete" moniker to not have to pay players, on his way out spoke against that policy and called it "neo-plantation mentality."

9/13/2018 9:27:55 PM

When I was in school Julius Hodge was the big man on campus, and after making it to the Sweet 16 and the rally to welcome the team back home after beating #2 seeded UConn we mobbed him on his way to his car which was a beat up 1992 Nissan Maxima. I never saw the players have tricked out cars. Heck I knew people that knew Mario Williams, even briefly met him once a year after he was drafted #1, and they didn’t recall him driving anything nice before getting drafted. Now afterwards of course he was driving nice cars. I saw him with a really nice Tahoe or Yukon Denali, and I think he had a Lamborghini too. Maybe I just wasn’t around the players that much in college, but I never saw any fishy activity, and the two classes that I did have with players, they were always there. I had Andrew Brackman and AJ Davis in one and Manny Lawson in another. Again though I would not be surprised if we were complicit in the rampant cheating going on throughout big time college athletics, we just would apparently be not very good at it based on the results over the years.

9/13/2018 10:02:38 PM

Evtimov drove a bunch of players around in his Escalade while he played here

9/13/2018 11:43:43 PM

Trevor Ferguson used to speed down Dan Allen in his Maybach

9/14/2018 12:11:10 AM

he was not a very good dude

he was more of a Ford Taurus kind of guy

9/14/2018 12:26:32 AM

Hodge never would have done anything dirty. I had a course with him his last year and he never missed a single day he wasn't traveling for a game. He's a great guy.

Brackman was an immature pain in the ass. He dated a friend of mine and always had plenty of cash on hand, but I don't know his background and he may have come from money. I know he attended a wealthy prep school but some of those have sketchier athletic departments than colleges do.

I can't imagine we offer what other schools do...especially when some of our best bball recruits ever were sniped by Kentucky.

9/14/2018 4:39:38 AM

CArlos Gray (RIP) used to offer me tickets to concerts that he got from boosters. Would tell me about parties he went to where players could get money, weed, girls, whatever. He was a nice dude, really sad that he got murdered, but him and his brother were connected to the wrong crowd man.

9/14/2018 10:52:22 AM

^I hadn't heard about that. Man that's terribly sad news

9/14/2018 5:41:42 PM

Yea it really is. I heard about it a few weeks after it happened and was kinda shocked. I hadn’t talked to the guy since I had moved from Raleigh (we were neighbors on campus). We had bonded over my family being in Birmingham, and him being from the area. He was such a nice guy, but textbook case of a dude who needed to get out of the environment he was in. During his junior, and I believe only year at state, he told me he was gonna go pro after. I didn’t think it was a great decision, but as I got to know more about him and his background, family circumstances, I realized this dude just needed a paycheck in a bad way.

Ultimately his downfall was in moving back to Birmingham. His brother was a drug dealer, he was on probation and moved to raleigh to live with him when I was there. Carlos just wanted his brother to get on the right track. But smoove was the most ADD dude you’d ever meet. Clearly had mental issues (probably from his mother being on drugs while pregnant). Gave me tips on hiding drugs in aluminum foil to make it look like trash, and then just leaving it out in the open (no one fucks with it then). I know this all sounds ridiculous but this was my experience.

Bringing it up has me a bit emotional now. Carlos was such a great guy. We had talks at length about how to help his brother. Getting him his GED. getting him into trade school. It’s one of those things where you just want to go back in time, and knowing what you know now, about how things played out, wish you could’ve done something to make a difference. There’s no doubt in my mind that his family played a role in his death.

It’s sad man, it’s real sad. But yea, on topic, every school has players that get benefits. And there are guys, like Carlos, who will come in for a year, get benefits, go pro, and not give a fuck. And tell whoever all about it. Kinda wild that everyone doesn’t get pegged for it all the time.

[Edited on September 15, 2018 at 3:34 AM. Reason : T]

9/15/2018 3:32:35 AM

I watched these 4 episodes because of this thread. I really enjoyed the first 2 episodes. I didn't like the second 2 as much, especially when the message turned to be "why didn't they investigate mississippi st?"

9/27/2018 7:17:20 PM

Quote :

"Heck I knew people that knew Mario Williams, even briefly met him once a year after he was drafted #1, and they didn’t recall him driving anything nice before getting drafted. "

He bought a $60,000 truck immediately after the bowl game junior year. It was too big to fit in the parking deck at college inn. That's when everyone knew he was 100% gone. But before that, he drove the same Pontiac he had the whole time he was at State. I think he gave/sold it to Willie Young once he got paid. Before that, a bunch of the football players had fucking mopeds and gas scooters. They definitely weren't getting fancy cars from boosters. Although Tank Tyler did drive a sweet ass droptop old school Cadillac.

You can easily tell what the football players drive by going by the parking lot at the Murphy center. It's not full of luxury car/SUVs.

9/27/2018 7:35:16 PM

Mario's mom lived below me on trinity woods or whatever. About two weeks before the draft there were 4 new cars in the parking lot. Never noticed a nice car before that...

9/27/2018 8:09:46 PM

I’m no expert but I know the “boosters buying players cars” is a common thing talked about, as if it gets done all the time. Seems far more likely and far easier to just give a kid cash. Then they can buy whatever they want. The fancy car is gonna stick out like a sore thumb. With cash there’s obviously no paper trail. It’s an easy hand off/exchange. The cliche of boosters giving players cars isn’t no doubt a thing that has happened. Just seems like a lazy cliche and not really the normal method of cheating.

9/27/2018 8:39:38 PM

PJ Hairston tho

9/27/2018 8:48:29 PM

Honestly so much shit happened with unc I don’t even remember the details of his car rental thing.

9/27/2018 8:53:20 PM