"Bag Men"

[Cam]

It's me guys. I gave Tre and Bruce $250,000 worth of edits last year.

Well, there goes our Orange Bowl.

 

[Supersizethatorder-mutt]

Didn't uga wind up under investigation by the NCAA a few years after Herschel played? IIRC a transfer from uga to Tech (Tyrone Sorrells) helped with the investigation.

I don't remember any investigation other than the Jan Kemp affair, and I forget if that was before or after Herschel.

 

[Supersizethatorder-mutt]

I was in school when Lotheridge played, and he somehow managed to have a nice shiny silver Corvette, so it has probably gone on at Tech too, although the fact that we don't get any 5 stars tells me it's probably minimal, at least now.

 

[northgajacket]

I don't remember any investigation other than the Jan Kemp affair, and I forget if that was before or after Herschel.

Jan Kemp was after Herschel ( at least when she spoke up), but yeah there was an investigation into the program and Sorrells told investigators that had help from a booster to purchase a car.

http://www.upi.com/Archives/1985/01...ts-says-he-had-good-intentions/8115473922000/

Dawg fans then tried to say that he flunked out of uga and Tech accepted him instead of a legit transfer.

 

[King2b]

I was in school when Lotheridge played, and he somehow managed to have a nice shiny silver Corvette, so it has probably gone on at Tech too, although the fact that we don't get any 5 stars tells me it's probably minimal, at least now.

I once saw a land rover parked on the curb outside the west campus residences. Rumor was it belonged to Marbury.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

[northgajacket]

I once saw a land rover parked on the curb outside the west campus residences. Rumor was it belonged to Marbury.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Would not surprise me.

Although he could of been able to purchase the land rover from his HS days in NYC. It is not uncommon for the big stars to have street agents give them cash. According to the book "Raw Recruits", Kenny Anderson would receive cash after every AAU game back in the day.

 

[Supersizethatorder-mutt]

Jan Kemp was after Herschel ( at least when she spoke up), but yeah there was an investigation into the program and Sorrells told investigators that had help from a booster to purchase a car.

http://www.upi.com/Archives/1985/01...ts-says-he-had-good-intentions/8115473922000/

Dawg fans then tried to say that he flunked out of uga and Tech accepted him instead of a legit transfer.

Gotta love this quote from the article: 'What I did may be wrong according to the NCAA, but I was just trying to do what society teaches you to do -- help your fellow man,' he said. 'The NCAA has its rules and I broke those rules. But personally, I have a rule of my own, and that's to do unto others as you would like for them to do for you." Gee, I wonder if he would have give me, a FELLOW MAN, some help when I was in need. Yeah, right.....LOL

 

[northgajacket]

Gotta love this quote from the article: 'What I did may be wrong according to the NCAA, but I was just trying to do what society teaches you to do -- help your fellow man,' he said. 'The NCAA has its rules and I broke those rules. But personally, I have a rule of my own, and that's to do unto others as you would like for them to do for you." Gee, I wonder if he would have give me, a FELLOW MAN, some help when I was in need. Yeah, right.....LOL

Exactly, the guy will only help you out if you have 4.4 speed.

 

[Techster]

I was at GT during the late 90's early 2000's. My walk to classes (my freshmen dorm was Smith) passed BDS and up the Hill. One day while walking back from class, there's was a big shiny white Mercedes stopped at the intersection of Bobby Dodd and Techwood. I looked into the car and saw probably one of the biggest and most high profile BBall players to ever come to GT. He was still an SA at GT. That shiny white Benz was seen around campus a lot during my freshmen year. Could have been someone else's Benz he was driving around, but I doubt he had the means to get it himself...

A HS football teammate of mine played at an SEC West school, and later for the Titans. He started as a true freshmen. During Fall practice before his freshmen year, he got homesick and a friend picked him up and took him home to GA. Coaches pleaded with him to come back, and he said he loved the school, but he missed home a lot and he couldn't afford a car to go back and forth during the weekends. Coaches had one of the graduate assistants who he was close with call him to tell him to go back to school ASAP, he'd find something there to help him with homesickness. He returned that night to find keys to a shiny tricked out Nissan 240. He also said there was an understanding that as long as he stayed in school, he'd find an envelope of cash every week in his gym bag on Thursdays. His head coach got fired after his JR season, and those cash envelopes he was accustomed to getting on Thursdays stopped when the new coach came in. He declared for the NFL shortly thereafter.

Bag men exists.

 

[strong90]

The NCAA began enforcing rules violations in 1953. In 1955, Bear Bryant's Texas A&M team was put on probation for paying recruits. It's been said that his coaches were to pay the "market rate." Before Hudl videos, only coaches (and purposely informed boo$ters) knew where to throw the money so the "bag men" were often in-house. Today, every fan on a message board knows where to send the check and the transaction doesn't have to occur in a back alley. Bear hired players to watch the grass grow on the football field. Today, players get legitimate, likely lucrative, summer internships and follow-on jobs at a friend of a friend's latest start-up. Who's the bagman now?

 

[GTNavyNuke]

This is the best read on bagmen there is.

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

Thanks. I remember reading this a few years ago as a good read and just reread the entire thing. There are many points that hit home as true in here - from the crib classes to getting the players through but also allowing them to go back to their hometowns as coaches and proselytize there for the school.

Overall, it is a commentary on what we value in life and how we go about obtaining it. I won't go all political; but we are in deep sh!t and I just hope my son doesn't get killed to satisfy someone's ego.

Are there "bagmen" for GT? Probably but far far fewer than the SEC "schools" he talks about. First off, we don't have as many alumni. Second, most of our alumni don't care about athletics. Third, GT alumni I know are fairly "thrifty".

 

[Whiskey_Clear]

Lol...true. Tech fans are too cheap to be bag men

 

[JacketFromUGA]

Some of you guys are missing the part of the article that basically says a lot of the bag men are not associated with the school as boosters or even know/communicate with the coaching staff. Most of the "allegations" and evidence come from when the coaching staff is trying to work with the bagmen instead of the bagmen working completely autonomously.

 

[Jay Alexander]

I won't take the time to search for it, but somewhere in this message board, there's a post by @Eric (Retire in Peace) where he said every athletic program is dirty. Every. Single. One.

Like it or not, this is part of "amateur" sports in today's world, especially when those amateur sports are multi billon dollar industries.

 

[Old School]

My brother is a physician. One of his former pharmaceutical reps was a former Alabama running back. He was second string to a player that went on to play in the NFL. He was also his roommate.

He told my brother that one day after a game a well dressed man came to their dorm room and asked the starter if he needed anything. He replied "yeah about 25." The man replied he would be back the next day. After he left, the second stringer said he couldn't believe the guy didn't have 25 bucks on him. The starter replied "no baby, 25 thousand!"

The next day the guy comes back with 25k, and 2500 for the backup. This was back in the 90's.

 

[jacobchbe]

Our bagmen need to step it up.

 

[Milwaukee]

If you don't think it happens at Tech then you are just cute. This is happening currently and will always happen.
If anything, we need to do it bigger and better than we're currently doing it.

 

[northgajacket]

As long as there are hanger ons with cash ( I will not use the usual name I would call such a person) and fans and boosters whose self-esteem rides on a winning season there will be bag men (there I said it).

 

[MikeGT]

I wouldn't be shocked that some goes on, but I do remember this - I remember Dennis Scott getting our of this little cheap car (like a Toyota). I couldn't believe he fit in it to drive. If we were giving cars... we really suck at it.

 

[Ramblin Wrecker]

Some version of it happens at Tech (or at least did when I was there), but my experience is that it isn't nearly as prevalent or outlandish as what goes down with some of our peers. I would attribute at least some of that to the types of guys we bring tend to attract.

I won't go into details about my experiences with our student-athletes, but my best friend was a d-lineman for VT. He was selected to one of the "all-star" bowl games and said that they would sit around after practice and talk (brag) about the benefits they received at their schools. Some schools did the old school cash in envelopes from "old white men" at banquets and such. It seemed like at a lot of the schools all of the players knew who to call if you needed a little walking around money. At one school, they had a book where the players could write their name and a dollar amount and usually receive the funds the next morning.

Granted, this is all second and third degree hearsay, so make of it what you will.