Nothing gets the truth out faster than the prospect of Big Boy time in federal prison.
For the past week, rumors about Cam Newton have been like trailer parts in a tornado: each piece telling part of a story, but nothing coming together to form a complete narrative.
Then the FBI got involved. When John Bond, the former Mississippi State quarterback and the source of the original ESPN report about an agent shopping Cam Newton to Mississippi State for a hefty price, announced on Wednesday that he would meet with the FBI next Tuesday, the agent, Kenny Rogers, came clean.
Rogers told a Dallas radio station on Veteran’s Day that he did, indeed, solicit six figures from at least one booster connected with Mississippi State with the promise that Rogers could deliver Newton.
Rogers also admitted that he had worked with Newton’s father, Cecil, the pastor at the Holy Zion Center of Deliverance in Newnan, Ga. According to Rogers, the two men conspired to obtain between $100,000 and $180,000 in exchange for a letter of intent.
The admission came only days after Rogers had claimed on the same radio station that he hadn’t solicited a “signing bonus” for Newton. It also came 24 hours after the FBI’s announced involvement. Rogers’ attorney was present during the most recent interview.
Solicitation of funds for a college athlete breaks all sorts of NCAA rules, and leaves the perpetrator open to any number of civil actions, but you won’t go to jail for it. Lying to the FBI, fraud and extortion are entirely different matters.
Now, the pieces make sense. If the allegations are accurate, Cecil Newton began pimping his son to the highest bidder not long after Cam left Florida. Not only are such actions in clear violation of NCAA rules, any school that was complicit or had knowledge of such actions will face dire consequences from the ruling body.
The only remaining piece of the puzzle and the biggest unanswered question is (with apologies for the Nixon-era cliché): What did Cam Newton know and when did he know it?
If Cam did not know he was being shopped, or discovered after the fact and divorced himself from his father’s actions, he has a chance of walking away. Unless the NCAA wants to punish the son for the sins of the father, this might get resolved quickly. But, if Cam was involved in any way, he’s toast. And he might take at least one SEC program down with him.
According to a separate ESPN report, Cam Newton phoned another recruiter and apologized for not going to Mississippi State, saying that his father had committed him to Auburn because, “the money was too much.” If any part of that beyond the “call to apologize” is true, Newton and Auburn could see this season, and many seasons to come, go up in flames.
No longer is whether or not Newton will play on Saturday against Georgia a big thing. The question now becomes: What SEC schools will be tainted by this scandal, and how great will the consequences be?
Your Privacy Choices | Closed Captioning 
