“I suspect you’re right. I often worry that someone at the university will do something to hurt the football program. It only takes one mistake to create a mess. Do me a favor and keep me in the loop. We do have someone who can help get things done if need be,” he offered.
I remembered that one of the people I met at the NCAA headed a committee and was either the president or athletic director for Michigan. I hoped this wouldn’t get to a point where we needed him, but it was encouraging to know that Coach Haber would speak on my behalf.
“As soon as I know something, I’ll get back to you.”
“Obviously, I want to wish you good luck, but somehow I doubt you’ll need it. If you get a chance, you have an open invitation to come visit. I’d love to get you here to see spring practice,” Coach Haber suggested.
“I’ll put it on my to-do list. But I have to warn you, that list is starting to get long,” I said.
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Dad had invited Tim and Wolf’s families over for dinner. Mr. Morris had scheduled a meeting with the NCAA for Friday. We had a quick conference call with Mr. Morris, Ms. Dixon, and Maddie Addison, my criminal lawyer who’d been handling the FBI contacts.
“Who all do you think should be in the meeting?” Mr. Tams asked.
“We should keep it small. Our goal is to get the investigator off our backs. We don’t want to go in with guns blazing right off the bat,” Mr. Morris said. “I would suggest that David, Rob, and myself go with either Ms. Dixon or Ms. Addison there as well.”
“During the last meeting, we hammered out my amateurism issues. It took care of all the concerns they had about what I’d done and what I would be doing in high school. Do we want to handle the issues that’ll be coming up when I go to college?” I asked.
“What are you talking about?” Mom asked.
Mr. Morris jumped in.
“The way I see it, David will have two problems when he goes to college. The first concerns the movies he will film before he goes to school. NCAA regulations, section 12.5.1.3 is titled ‘Continuation of Modeling and Other Nonathletically Related Promotional Activities After Enrollment.’ According to that section, bullet point ‘d’ states that David can’t endorse the product. In this case, it would be the films.
“We need to get a waiver due to David’s unique situation. They’ve given them out in the past, so I don’t expect it to be something that’ll be hard to get,” he shared.
“What’s the other problem?” Mom asked.
“This is trickier. David has created an image unrelated to football and baseball that potentially has a substantial monetary value. He needs to protect that image from the collegiate vultures. Part of the paperwork you sign to play ball at a university gives them the rights to your likeness, et cetera. They do that so they can get away with showing a student-athlete’s image on TV without paying them for it.
“We need to draft a document that strikes a balance between the university being able to show him in games and his need to safeguard his image. It must protect him in case they decide to misuse his image or to harm it in some way.
“I would suggest wording that allows him to veto his image being used in ways that might harm him. We’ll include a specific carve-out with respect to his non-football and baseball image,” Mr. Morris explained.
“Does he need a waiver from the NCAA for that too?” Dad asked.
“If he did have one, it would help to get the same from, say, Michigan. We might also need to get a waiver from the conference since they have their own TV network. I could see them wanting to film a documentary similar to what David endured during the fall,” Mr. Morris said.
That had my full attention. I hadn’t really ever considered that until now. All it would take was an unguarded moment being filmed where I thought I was ‘safe,’ and I might have a problem.
“Let’s talk to them about both of those when we meet,” I said.
“As long as we don’t specifically link the Stewart issue with a demand for them to do this, we should be fine,” Mr. Morris said.
I nodded as if I were satisfied. I could tell this was going to be a mess.
◊◊◊
Chapter 5 – Food for Thot Thursday January 26
The gang was all together at lunch, every one of them wearing sunglasses. I looked around, perplexed. Then Phil’s girlfriend, Jill, fanned her face dramatically and exclaimed with a fake Southern drawl, “Ah do declare, we are in the presence of a movie star!”
Everybody started laughing and talking at once, but I had my own agenda.
“Can it, everyone. The odds are high that I
