Breaking Cardinal Rules
Page 7
On September 4, 2014, Blakeney committed to Louisville, but changed his mind 11 days later and eventually went to Louisiana State University.
In late August 2015, at the publisher's request, Katina's daughter Shay sent an Instagram message to Antonio Blakeney in hopes that editors would be able to reach him for a response. She asked him if he recalled meeting her at the Embassy Suites in Louisville.
He replied "Yea I do wassup?" She asked for his cell phone number. He did not reply. She did not disclose why she was making the inquiry.
Blakeney's mother, speaking on her son's behalf, said that Antonio denied he was ever at the Embassy Suites.
Chapter Nine
MISTAKES ARE ALWAYS FORGIVABLE, IF ONE HAS THE COURAGE TO ADMIT THEM.
-Andre McGee tweet, @DreTheCoach
Dre the Coach—Andre McGee—isn’t talking, for now, anyway.
McGee did not respond to three requests for an interview. Two were made by telephone, one by email to his mailbox at the University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC). A second email was sent, with attachment, asking McGee to identify a man in a photograph. Again there was no response.
Paul Puryear, better known as Tink, the barber and Cardinal fan who arranged the first two dormitory parties, agreed to an interview by telephone but cut it off upon the first question.
Kareem Richardson, a former assistant at Louisville and now, as head basketball coach at UMKC, McGee’s boss, did not respond to two messages.
Louisville Coach Rick Pitino, through a spokesman, said that based on a limited summary provided to him, he was unaware of any instances of players or recruits being exposed to strippers or hookers.
The spokesman said a survey of athletic department employees, based on the limited information, turned up no indication of anyone possessing pertinent information.
The University of Louisville officials say they've launched an investigation and released this statement. "The University of Louisville has retained an outside expert to investigate allegations evidently contained in a book that IBJ Book Publishing, LLC has been asked to publish. The outside expert is aggressively reviewing this situation in full cooperation with relevant authorities, including the NCAA. The university notes that the publisher has provided sparse detail to date and repeats its request for additional detail in order to further the thoroughness of the investigation. If the investigation uncovers any misconduct by University employees, the university will deal with it swiftly and severely."
Chane Behanan, who recently played for the Reno Bighorns, declined an interview request and, upon a second request, hung up. He lives in Cincinnati.
Montrezl Harrell said that he didn't know anything about the dorm parties arranged by Andre McGee.
An attorney representing Antonio Blakeney returned a call on his behalf but did not have a comment.
For the most part, other former Cardinal players who were students at the time that events in this book occurred, either did not respond to messages, including Facebook or Twitter, or could not be reached for comment. Some are playing overseas. Attempts to reach several recruits also were unsuccessful.
Three former players who answered questions said they were unaware of the dorm visits.
Allegations about sex and recruiting are hardly new. “Cheap sex, cheaper beer and male sports participation have locked themselves in a bunker deeper and more secure than anything Saddam Hussein could imagine,” columnist Jason Whitlock wrote on ESPN.com. “The locker room is America’s last X-rated playground for men.”
In 2002, the NCAA put the University of Alabama on probation for a number of violations, including allegations that players used strippers to perform for recruits.
In 2003, the father of running back Lynell Hamilton said his son was offered alcohol and sex during a visit to the University of Oregon. Young Hamilton went on to play at San Diego State.
That same year, a key football recruit said he wouldn’t attend the University of Minnesota after players took him to a strip club.
In 2004, the owner of a Denver striptease company said players from a number of universities, including the University of Colorado and the University of Nevada Las Vegas, had hired girls for recruiting parties.
“Obviously, parties that involve sex and alcohol to lure recruits and end in sexual assault are intolerable, not to mention illegal, beginning perhaps with underage drinking,” then U.S. Rep Clifford Stearns of Florida complained during a 2004 congressional hearing on college recruiting.
“Allegations of the use of prostitutes, sex parties, booze, drugs and late nights at strip clubs have popped up all over the place,” said U.S. Rep Diana DeGette of Colorado, referring to a list of 22 alleged recruiting violations from around the country culled from media reports alone. She added: “Think of how many allegations there are that have not been put to light in the press.”
The case of the University of Louisville appears to be unprecedented in terms of frequency, duration and variety, dealing as it does with part of the men’s dormitory, a basketball assistant’s private condominium, and various hotels in the Louisville area.
If only a portion of the encounters happened as interviews and records suggest they did, it raises important questions about supervision, player policy, dorm oversight, security, rules enforcement, and, for that matter, the standards of culture and attitude that should hold sway in a major educational institution.
Over the years in question, Louisville had approximately eight assistant coaches. It is unclear what their relationship was with McGee.
Perhaps most intriguing is who at Louisville would have contacted McGee, when McGee was working in another state, and at the time was in California, to ask him to arrange cross-country for two women to visit a potential recruit and his guardian at a Louisville hotel?
Who would have repaid to McGee the $300 he wired to Katina?
Who was the mystery man who, Katina says, came out of the dormitory to hand her $200 cash, just as McGee had promised?
As much as Katina and some of the other women knew or witnessed, none of them knew where the cash really came from. Were there—or are there—boosters with deep pockets who want to see the Cardinals win at any cost, especially in competition with the super-rival University of Kentucky?
Perhaps as many people might wonder why Katina decided to try to write a book. Money, of course, was one reason. And what else?
“I wanted to say something a year ago, but the pressure that was on me was very scary and I didn’t want to get Andre in any trouble. I had people telling me that if I told my story my life would be put in danger, so I just kept quiet and didn’t say anything.”
Nevertheless, it is clear that a turning-point came when, she says, McGee and an unidentified man told her they wanted her to bring white women to the dorm. The request obviously angered Katina, but not because of racism. She had taken pride in the variety of black women she could deliver, and she saw the request as an insult to everything she’d done up to that point.
Katina came to an Indianapolis publisher because she feared no publisher in Louisville would take on the project. Before contacting IBJ Book Publishing, which she found through a Google search, she says she called the NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis. She says she was told no one there could take a complaint against a large university over the phone because it's hearsay.
In recent months, her attitude about what happened, and her own role, has changed markedly.
“People should be aware of not only what goes on at a university, but what these kids are persuaded and influenced with. What kid would not choose a university that provides drugs, sex and alcohol? I often wondered what if one of these girls got pregnant, or if one of these players had gotten a girl pregnant. How would that be explained to a parent?"
“This was a full-time, under the table, hush-hush job for me. I started feeling some sort of commitment to Andre and the team, until they started putting a lot of pressure on me. Andre was feeling it the most. Andre was very lo
yal to Pitino, and I was loyal to Andre.”
Her life has changed as well. She says she’s finished with the sex trade in all aspects. She’s using her entrepreneurial gifts to start a business to shuttle people without transportation to job interviews. She and her boyfriend love each other and are working on their complicated fifteen year relationship. Two of her daughters, Lindsay and Rod-Ni, also have changed, getting normal jobs or going to school.
The University of Louisville recently reported two minor violations to the NCAA, one for giving six basketball players $7 each to play laser-tag.
Epilogue
I DANCED ONE TIME AT THE DORM. I SLEPT WITH ONE (PLAYER); IT WAS A THREESOME. I WAS ALL ABOUT THE MONEY, AND I MADE THE BEST OF IT. BEING A MOTHER, I'M LOOKING FOR JOBS. IF I GOT ANOTHER SIDE-DEAL CALL, I WOULD DO IT.
-Honey
Sometimes a perfectly ordinary day will unexpectedly lead to perfectly extraordinary things.
On a perfectly ordinary spring day in 2015…
...five women, including Katina Powell, gathered at a private meeting room in the old Louisville Public Library, not far from downtown, to recount their experiences with basketball players and recruits from the University of Louisville.
All of the women were single. Two of them brought their young children. They were as nervous as they were curious. It had to seem unusual, even surreal, that now, out of the blue, a year or two after the fact, anyone would be interested in what they did on several or many evenings at a hallowed educational institution not far away.
Or perhaps they were nervous and curious because a writer and publisher had arrived from Indianapolis and were interested in their stories.
After all, some of the women hadn’t graduated from high school. They had children out of wedlock. They’d received welfare or other public benefits. It was obvious, even if they didn’t admit it (as some did) that getting money to live and raise their kids was a challenge virtually every day.
As they talked, it became clear they weren’t confessing or apologizing. Probably neither of these things occurred to anyone. The tone and words were matter-of-fact: The stripteases and other activities had been fun, at times exciting. They’d met interesting, influential people, NBA players. They’d made a lot of money, although, of course, never enough.
“I was all about the money, and I made the best of it,” said Honey, 28 and three months pregnant. “Being a mother, I’m looking for jobs. If I got another side-deal call, I would do it.” Her son, Princeton, climbed off her lap and waved for attention.
Of course Honey was there because of Katina. Shrewd, ambitious, opportunistic Katina originally had brought the group together half a decade ago, coached and mothered them through dozens of parties and other events, put in their hands a lot of money they otherwise wouldn’t have.
And now, amazingly, Katina was trying to assemble a book about her life. What had been private or secret for so long now would be very, very public.
In future days, the writer and publisher would talk to other women who had danced in the nude and done other things, and, like her, their attitude and tone was matter-of-fact, without even the smallest hint that whatever they did was anything other than naughty, just girls taking care of boys for money they could use for rent, groceries, formula, weed and cigarettes.
But three of the women were Katina’s daughters, and they knew that the sex business has a dark, perverse side hardly as pretty as entertaining college and high school kids in the buffed sanctuary of a college dorm. Of course the four of them had shared confidences, laughed at incidents that would make other mothers cringe, argued, hugged, and dreamed together.
Now her daughters—Shay would arrive late—were telling all to strangers with pens, note pads and a tape recorder.
Lindsay, 23 and pregnant with her second child, had danced under the name Brittany.
“Guys (the players) were cocky,” she said. “I didn’t like them. Some were nice. Some had girlfriends. Guys would pick which girls they wanted. I like to dance. It was fun. McGee gave me an outfit because I didn’t have enough clothes on (to start with). I still have the sweat pants. I felt sorry for him because he ‘needed’ recruits.”
Rod-Ni, 22, had her daughter, Cali Marie, with her. She said:
“I liked Andre a lot. He always tried to hit on me. He had just graduated when we met him. I thought if this is Andre McGee’s dorm and that is what he wanted to do, then that’s OK. I saw him last a year ago, or right before he left. He was pressured by someone he reported to.”
There was small talk until friends waiting in the hallway signaled Shay’s arrival. It was like a warning alarm.
Earlier, Katina had remembered an episode which epitomized risks Shay took.
“Shay hadn’t answered her phone. So when Lindsay called her back later, a guy answered from Durham, North Carolina. He said he had seen a guy in a white car get out, slam the phone, get back in the car and speed off. He said it seems as though she’s in trouble.
“We instantly panicked and asked what happened. He called the police and they called me. I didn’t know what was going on. (Later) Shay said a man tried to attack her, so she locked herself in the bathroom and screamed to the top of her lungs. I am so grateful for the guy who found the phone and the officers on the job.
“She doesn’t understand how dangerous and close she was to losing her life once again. She thinks this is a joke. She meets this guy at random and thinks he can make her a super-star. I don’t know what else to do about it.”
Now, before a sullen and defiant Shay came through the door, one of the dancers warned: “Watch out for her. She’s evil.”
It didn’t sound as if she meant evil in any moral sense. It was more a synonym for trouble.
Everyone looked at Katina.
“Yes,” she said, “she’s evil.”
Her eyes were filled with frustration, tenderness, love, and, perhaps, regret.
Shay, 20, smart, hard-edged but seemingly self-confident, described in detail an encounter she and her mother had had with a potential recruit and his guardian. She thought the player was too young. The player mistakenly believed he was getting a freebie. She and the player had met again the next day and smoked a few blunts. She had sex with the player’s coach, and he also failed to pay.
She didn’t like to dance but went to some of the dorm parties. She’d had sex with one player four times.
“I want a rich man and a wedding ring,” she said, half-jokingly.
She talked briefly with her mother, and walked away to a perilous future, the only penalty Katina had paid for her years in the sex trade.
Appendix
NCAA RULES
Title: 91.1.1. - Severe Breach of Conduct (Level 1 Violation)
A severe breach of conduct is one or more violations thatseriously undermine or threaten the integrity of the NCAA Collegiate Model, as set forth in the constitution and bylaws, including any violation that provides or is intended to provide a substantial or extensive recruiting, competitive or other advantage, or a substantial or impermissive benefit. Among other examples, the following, in appropriate circumstances, may constitute a severe breach of conduct: (Adopted 10/30/12 effective 8/1/13, Revised: 7/13/14)
(a) Lack of institutional control;
(b) Academic misconduct;
(c) Failure to cooperate in an NCAA enforcement investigation;
(d) Individual unethical or dishonest conduct, regardless of whether the underlying institutional violations are considered Level 1;
(e) A bylaw 11.1.1.1 violation by a head coach resulting from an underlying violation by an individual within the sports program;
(f) Cash payment or other benefits provided by a coach, administrator or representative of the institution’s athletics interests intended to secure, or which resulted in, enrollment of a prospective student-athlete;
(g) Third-party involvement in recruiting violations in which institutional officials knew or should have known about the involvement;<
br />
(h) Intentional violations or reckless indifference to the NCAA constitution and bylaws; or
(i) Collective Level II and/or Level III violations.
Source: www.ncaa.org
About DICK CADY
Dick Cady worked for the Dearborn (Michigan) Guide, Ypsilanti Daily Press, Detroit News, Indianapolis Star and Newsday and also wrote for The Nation, NUVO Newsweekly, Indianapolis Monthly Magazine, the Johnson County Journal and Bloomington Herald-Times. He won 51 local, state and national journalism awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for special local reporting, the Associated Press Freedom of Information Award, the Drew Pearson Award, George Polk Memorial Award, Sigma Delta Chi national journalism society Gold Medal, an American Bar Association special certificate of merit, and two National Headliners awards. In 1976-77 he was assistant director of “The Arizona Project” sponsored by Investigative Reporters and Editors, which examined organized crime, political corruption and land fraud after the assassination of Phoenix reporter Don Bolles. The project won a special gold medal from Sigma Delta Chi as “the outstanding investigative reporting effort of the year.” Cady is the author of six books.