Bagmen of College Football

Just call Cam's Daddy. I'm sure he can fill you in.

40 pages

I posted months ago, that the SEC schools would be in trouble with the NIL money. Nobody with the possible exception of Alabama and Georgia can compete with Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma. Look at the school endowments, an indication of how much money the alumni are willing to cough up. LSU, the Mississippi schools, Arkansas, Auburn all are not going to be able to match the money.

Would be an interesting TV series... works either as fiction or doc.

The Roy Adams/Logan young saga is the best. Tennstud used to have hot tub parties with Cortez Kennedy and young high school boys. shite those two weren't even on the down low with it.

Poor soul fell up some stairs and was murdered by a salad.

An excerpt from The Junction Boys by Jim Dent, recalling when Bear Bryant coached in the (now defunct) Southwest Conference, at Texas A&M

quote:

---

Bryant had barely hung up the phone when there was a loud knock. He was still chuckling when he opened the door and greeted five of the biggest powerbrokers that A&M had to offer. These men would be called "suits" in most places. But not in Texas, where bigwigs liked to wear boots, jeans, and hats and many of them chewed Red Man. Rich guys also liked to drive pickups—nice ones with air-conditioning.

Since the first year of recruiting was going nowhere, Bryant had called a meeting of the big wallets. He shook hands with Johnny Mitchell, a local oilman who once had hit 151 consecutive wells, missed 1, and then hit 18 straight. Also invited was Jack Finney, who had attended Bryant's job interview in Dallas. From Houston came Bobby Don Crockett, and from his ranch near Austin came Herman Heep, a rich oilman who had jumped the Aggie ship during the losing years but was lured back by Bryant's charisma. Heep had enough money to completely rebuild Texas A&M if he felt like it. The last man through the door wore jeans and a work shirt and hadn't shaved in about a week. He extended his right hand to Bryant, who knew very little about him. "Name's Sid Banker," he said in a cigarette baritone. "Some folks just call me the banker. You just call me Sid."

Bryant had ordered a table for the meeting, hoping to create a kind of boardroom effect; that wasn't working. The head of the student center had sent up an old dining table that was covered with mustard and ketchup stains. It didn't seem to bother the Aggie sugar daddies, though. Some broke out cigars and flasks and didn't even ask for ice.

"Men. I don't need to tell you fellas that our recruiting's down. Just got a call from Elmer Smith. Sent him to Alabama on a recruiting mission and all he's coming back with is this one-armed boy. That's kind of been the sad story. Right now, we're in the fight of our lives to get John Crow out of Louisiana. Elmer's been baby-sitting him about every day. But the LSU people've offered John Crow everything but a saloon on Bourbon Street."

Two other targeted blue chippers were Ken Hall, a running back from Sugar Land, and Charlie Krueger—probably the best lineman to come out of Texas in ten years. Hall, who had gained 4,000 yards as a senior, was called the Sugar Land Express. Krueger had grown up dirt-poor on a sharecropper's farm where the windows were covered with croaker sacks. Bryant suspected that Texas and Rice had already offered Charlie some cash and, as he liked to say, "It's mighty hard to turn down something if you've never had nothin' at all."

Bryant drew on a cigarette and turned toward Jack Finney. "A few weeks ago, Jack, I asked you a key question. And you told me that of all the big studs in Texas, you thought we could get at least half."

"Yeah, and I still believe it."

"Well, we're runnin' out of time."

Placing both hands on the table, Bryant assessed each face.

"I think that each and every one of you is sick and tired of the losing. A&M hasn't won a damn thing since before the war, and there's a lot of negative recruiting goin' on. All they gotta do is tell the top recruits that A&M's got no girls and we've lost the boy."

Bryant dropped a silver spittoon on the table. "I made my commitment when I took this job. Now it's time for you to make yours."

Nobody moved.

"Boys. Just think of this as going to church and dropping the dough in the plate. Let's see how much commitment you got in your hearts."

The first two rolls of hundred-dollar bills were bundled by rubber bands. They amounted to $5,000. From the corner of the table came another $5,000. When the tithing stopped, the spittoon was almost full. It all amounted to $30,000. Not bad. He'd never collected that much money in one sitting in Kentucky, where the bluebloods kept that much cash around for cab fare or for betting the daily double. He knew it would buy two or three good players.

Bryant smiled.

"Boys, with this kind of money, we might just be able to fix the wagon and paint the barn. One more thing before you go. A couple of years ago, the NCAA got cute and started an enforcement division. Seems they've got their backs up. When I was at Kentucky, they put the basketball team on probation for shavin' points. Now, I sure as hell know the NC-double-A boys will come sniffin' when we start winning. They'll be checking our boys' rags and their rides. Every coach in the Southwest Conference will be pointing the finger at us. So I'm asking you boys to keep your mouths shut. There's nothin' wrong with a little discretion ever' now and then."

Bryant stood at the door and shook every hand. Sid Banker, the last man out, winked at him.

An important lesson Bryant had learned through the years was that you don't buy every boy. Studs with big up-front bonuses tended to develop an attitude you could spot a mile away. Clothes, cars, and pretty girls normally spoiled a boy. Bryant thought about a line from a Hank Williams song that had climbed the charts to number one in 1954: "Your cheatin' heart will tell on you."

At four that afternoon, the single-engine crop duster took off from a cow pasture about five miles from campus. It banked near the student center so Bryant, gazing from his window, could see it. The pilot dipped the wings twice. Then the plane disappeared into the high white clouds. The bagman had carved out a square block in a bale of hay. Ten thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills had been tightly wrapped inside a Texas A&M flag. The hope was that the bale would break apart when it hit the ground. They damn sure didn't want it cracking open in midflight. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars raining down from the heavens might be confused with divine generosity.

The engine whined loudly as the plane flew low over the house. Strapped tightly in his seat, the bagman grunted and then pushed open the passenger door. The bale tumbled from the plane and rolled end over end as it plummeted toward the field of brown weeds. To assure the mission was accomplished, the pilot banked the plane once more and soared over the house. Through the bare trees, the men could see two people running from the front porch. The maroon-and-while A&M flag was lying in clear view amid the broken pieces of straw. The pilot and the bagman smiled as the plane hummed toward home above the flat, barren countryside of central Texas.

Back at A&M, Bear Bryant gazed at the drab buildings and watched the cadets marching in the fading afternoon light. He wondered if the mission had been accomplished—and if they'd gotten their man.

---

so they give out of their own pockets with no financial return?

So the jobs weren't actually eliminated. We just gave them badges and a health insurance plan.