Meet the Bag Man: How to Buy College Football Players

[LouPhinFan]

Fascinating read.

http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2014/4/10/5594348/college-football-bag-man-interview

...There's a weird code of personal conduct for a bag man. It's okay to be flashy, but within the limits. Set up your lavish tailgate, put a deposit down on a luxury box, or name your child after a famous player or coach. After all, you're passionate enough to be paying, so you might as well enjoy yourself.

But while drawing attention to yourself is fine, drawing importance to yourself is forbidden. You are now somebody in one very small social circle but forever destined to be nobody in the public eye.

"Coach has met me a few times. I've talked to Coach. But Coach doesn't really know me from Adam. How many other folks do you think he meets a week? After he got hired, I walked up and shook his hand, and the guy introducing us says, "Hey Coach, this here's [first name], he takes care of stuff for us.' Now, what does that really mean? Do I charter planes for the university? Do I run a company that sells concessions to the stadium? Or do I make sure kids get taken care of? Coach doesn't know what I 'take care of.' He knows someone out there is doing this, and that's all."

A good bag man will never be famous. He will never be that guy hovering right next to the head coach after a big win. His name will never be known by the majority of students, fans, and alumni of the university he loves. There is no dead bag man memorial on the campus of any football powerhouse. There are no memorial scholarships named after the guy who gave a running back's mother $3,000 a month for four years.

 

[Buddy]

Really good stuff, Lou. That explains a lot, glad it never happens in the ACC! Hahaha

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

 

[Pachyderm_Wave]

I honestly have never seen this as something "wrong" with the sport. The NCAA has come up with a rule book that is absurd, and programs have been working around it behind the scenes from day 1. If you get caught, you pay the piper. But if you choose not to play the game, you had might as well join the Ivy League.

There's no doubt that there are shady individuals that try to influence recruits and want to give players money under the table. But I have a hard time believing that it happens on the scale at which this article implies.

I would think that by now, some player who was not happy with playing time or some recruit (or handler) who didn't get what was promised (Albert Means anyone) would have become bitter and gladly exposed the program that wronged him out of spite. There are just too many players coming in and out of college football each year for to believe that something on the scale implied in the article hasn't been exposed on a much more frequent basis.

I do tend to take issue to the notion of giving someone $100,000 to steer a recruit or that sort of thing. It's really depraved when a kid is manipulated so someone else can buy a new house, or church, etc.

However, a lot of what's described here is hard to get upset about. Fixing a tractor? Fixing a sunroof? I'm not terribly upset by most of what was said in the article.
This is what's absolutely absurd about the NCAA rules. Hell, I can fix anybody else's tractor for free and it's a kind gesture; if I do it for a farm kid who just happens to be eligible to play college ball, it's an NCAA violation. There ought to be some common sense in the whole thing, but the NCAA has none. Not to get grotesque, but a girl can have sex with a guy for the favor of homework - but the moment that guy is a recruit, it becomes a violation.

If the NCAA simply made OBVIOUS distinctions then none of this would be necessary. It wouldn't be so secretive. Let's be blunt - there's a HUGE difference in giving a guy $200,000 to come play at your school and changing a guy's oil.

This kind of thing goes on everywhere that is relevant or has aspirations to be. I'm dumbfounded that there are so many who think otherwise. Frankly, if a sport doesn't have high enough stakes to warrant rampant cheating and dishonesty, then it probably doesn't have enough entertainment value to warrant much interest. Look no further than the NFL.

What's so disheartening about all of this is that there are erstwhile adults who are willing to participate in the corruption of the sport and these young people. If the players are to be paid, then make it legal. Other than that, it just puts many people and institutions at risk. As is so often said, it's the amount of money in play and the fact that the NFL has no farm system that encourages this system. You'll never see sly speak like this about college baseball, women's gymnastics, etc.....only the big money sports with no farm systems.

 

[LouPhinFan]

I honestly have never seen this as something "wrong" with the sport. The NCAA has come up with a rule book that is absurd, and programs have been working around it behind the scenes from day 1. If you get caught, you pay the piper. But if you choose not to play the game, you had might as well join the Ivy League.

There's no doubt that there are shady individuals that try to influence recruits and want to give players money under the table. But I have a hard time believing that it happens on the scale at which this article implies.

I would think that by now, some player who was not happy with playing time or some recruit (or handler) who didn't get what was promised (Albert Means anyone) would have become bitter and gladly exposed the program that wronged him out of spite. There are just too many players coming in and out of college football each year for to believe that something on the scale implied in the article hasn't been exposed on a much more frequent basis.

I do tend to take issue to the notion of giving someone $100,000 to steer a recruit or that sort of thing. It's really depraved when a kid is manipulated so someone else can buy a new house, or church, etc.

However, a lot of what's described here is hard to get upset about. Fixing a tractor? Fixing a sunroof? I'm not terribly upset by most of what was said in the article.
This is what's absolutely absurd about the NCAA rules. Hell, I can fix anybody else's tractor for free and it's a kind gesture; if I do it for a farm kid who just happens to be eligible to play college ball, it's an NCAA violation. There ought to be some common sense in the whole thing, but the NCAA has none. Not to get grotesque, but a girl can have sex with a guy for the favor of homework - but the moment that guy is a recruit, it becomes a violation.

If the NCAA simply made OBVIOUS distinctions then none of this would be necessary. It wouldn't be so secretive. Let's be blunt - there's a HUGE difference in giving a guy $200,000 to come play at your school and changing a guy's oil.

This kind of thing goes on everywhere that is relevant or has aspirations to be. I'm dumbfounded that there are so many who think otherwise. Frankly, if a sport doesn't have high enough stakes to warrant rampant cheating and dishonesty, then it probably doesn't have enough entertainment value to warrant much interest. Look no further than the NFL.

What's so disheartening about all of this is that there are erstwhile adults who are willing to participate in the corruption of the sport and these young people. If the players are to be paid, then make it legal. Other than that, it just puts many people and institutions at risk. As is so often said, it's the amount of money in play and the fact that the NFL has no farm system that encourages this system. You'll never see sly speak like this about college baseball, women's gymnastics, etc.....only the big money sports with no farm systems.

Well said.

That's what irks me about the NBA and college basketball. The NBA has slowly been destroying the college game taking all of the good players sooner than they are really ready. Now the NBA instituted the "1 and done" rule making kids go to college for a year, but they also formed a now thriving NBA Developmental League. The NBA is having their cake and eating it too. They should enact a rule just like baseball. You can go straight to the NBA (or NBA DL) straight out of high school, but if you choose to go to college then you have to stay in college for at least 2 seasons (baseball is 3 seasons).

As for the NFL, I'm not sure what they can do. I guess they could create a developmental league but that would siphon off revenue that the owners love so much. Not many college football programs would be willing to share their stadium with an NFL minor league team either so NFL teams would have to house their own D teams. However travel wouldn't be cheap for your developmental players from the Miami farm team to travel out to San Diego to play the San Diego D team.

 

[LouPhinFan]

Apparently Taiwan is really interested in our college football:


[video=youtube;689O-Txd-jU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=689O-Txd-jU[/video]

 

[J. David Wannyheimer]

All you can eat crab legs.