Page 33 of A Rose of Steel
I read the headline of the article she pointed to out loud. “Bribery and Kickbacks: The FBI’s Basketball Sting.” I looked at her. “I don’t get it,” I said.
“If you read the article, you’ll see that financial advisors and tennis shoe companies are paying kickbacks to assistant coaches who get players to go to certain schools or do business with them after they make the NBA.”
I let my eyes scan the article. Several assistant basketball coaches from Division I schools across the country had been arrested for taking money for recruiting high school players and steering them to certain colleges. Along with the coaches, a shoe manufacturing marketing exec and several financial advisors had been indicted. In addition, the article relayed, the targeted players and their parents were getting money as incentives to sign.
“This is about basketball,” I said and handed her back the newspaper.
“I know,” she said and frowned. “I read it.”
“What does it have to do with Bumper?” Trying to get information from her in one cohesive stream, whether she wanted to share it or not, was like pulling teeth. “Am I supposed to guess?”
“No. I’ll tell you.” She put the newspaper back in its hiding place and picked up one of the bottles of green liquid. “This is a sports drink that uses NFL players for endorsements.” She handed me the bottle. “And Texas A&M is a Mighty Max endorsed school.”
“Okay.” I rolled the bottle around in my hand. I wouldn’t ever drink anything green, but according to the label it was an organic sports drink packed with electrolytes.
“There’s probably other schools, but that’s the only one I know about right now.” She gave me a nod that said she was going to find out more. “Then there’s this Coach Harold ‘Buddy’ Budson.” She did the air quotes thing. “He’s one of the assistant coaches over there.”
“At A&M?”
“Yes,” she said. “And he and this Mighty Max marketing guy -”
“What’s his name?”
“Shane Blanchard.”
“Okay.”
“The two of them were trying to recruit Bumper. I mean really hard. They came down to go to almost every home game, went and had meetings and dinners over at his house, met his parents, the whole nine yards.”
“But isn’t that what they’re supposed to do? Coaches, recruiters or whomever when they’re recruiting—meet the parents, share what they have to offer?”
“Yes, but just like Piper said, they’re not supposed to offer money.”
“Did they offer Bumper money?”
“That’s what I think happened. They offered him money to get him to go to Texas A&M.”
“And he turned them down,” I said finishing her little scenario. “So they killed him.”
“Yes.”
“That was a couple years ago. Mrs. Hackett said Bumper was a junior. They’re not even here.”
“They are so here. Came down here on the pretense of watching this year’s football players.”
“On the pretense?”
“Yes. A recruiting mission.”
I chuckled. “Yeah. Again that’s what they do. Don’t they come every year?”
“Of course they do. They don’t try to keep me off their trail by trying to bribe me with cases of their hormone-filled blue water.”
“I don’t know, Auntie. That’s pretty far-fetched,” I said. “Only thing we know for sure is that he didn’t pick Texas A&M two or three years ago. You don’t even know if they offered him money, or that perhaps USC offered him more money.”
“Michael Hackett, Sr. drives a Saturn. They don’t even make those cars anymore. Bumper didn’t take any money to play ball.”
“Auntie, this is just so out there.” I shook my head. “It would take me some time to wrap my head around this. And,” I looked around the closet and placed my hand on the doorknob, “be outside the confines of this small space. Can we talk about this outside of this claustrophobia-inducing cubby?”
