“Yeah, I remember it. I talked to Coach Gentry in the hall outside the coach’s office in the gym.”
“What did you talk about?”
Sonny stared out through the conference room window at McAndrew Stadium across the way. He wondered why Coach Gentry wasn’t here, but not really; they wanted to find out if his story would be different from that of the coach.
“Did you hear the question?” Brosky asked. “Mr. Yates asked what the two of you discussed.”
Sonny looked back. He didn’t like the way Brosky’s eyes were hidden by the reflection from his glasses. “I heard the question. I can’t remember, but we probably talked about basketball.”
“You think this is funny, Mr. Youngblood?”
“Okay, we probably talked about SIU basketball.”
Yates asked him, “Do you remember how long the conversation lasted?”
“Are you serious?”
“Very serious. What we’re trying to determine, if we can, is whether the contact was simply a case of the two of you exchanging pleasantries in passing, or if it was an actual recruiting visit.”
Sonny couldn’t remember. “I can’t remember,” he said. He looked at the slow-moving wheels of the tape cassette. Whenever there were long silences, Brosky tended to shut the recorder off.
“Then let me ask you this. You had recruiting visits from Gentry that spring in your home. Is that correct?”
Sonny shook his head. “I have no idea. Probably. What is it you want from me?”
“Some straight answers, for one thing,” Brosky declared.
Gardner interrupted: “Do you really expect a high school all-American to be able to recall this much detail about his recruitment during high school? Don’t you realize we’re talking about hundreds, maybe even thousands, of phone calls and visits?”
Brosky sniffed again. “What we expect, Mr. Gardner, is to be stonewalled. It seems to be the nature of our business.”
“Nobody’s stonewalling you. Please turn the recorder back on.”
Yates said, “We always ask. Sometimes it’s amazing the way people can recall details when they really try. Sonny, we understand your uncle was very active in your recruiting experience.”
“That’s true.” The difference between this investigation and the Checkpoint procedure was the focus. This time, all the questions were aimed at learning information exclusively about the SIU basketball program. Mr. Ernst, the university attorney, was present but he didn’t speak; occasionally, he made notes.
“Your uncle Seth spent a lot of time associating with businessmen from other cities while you were in high school. Is that correct?”
“Yeah, I s’pose he did. Still does.”
“Did you ever wonder about that?”
“No, why? They’re all men in the booster club.”
Reading from his index cards, Brosky said, “An insurance man from Mount Vernon, another one from Belleville, a Buick dealer from Carbondale, the list goes on and on. You never wondered about your uncle’s far-flung network of friendships?”
“Why should I?” Sonny found himself getting annoyed. “Booster club members are from all over; they don’t all live in the same town.”
Gardner had a smile on his face. Sonny assumed he appreciated the answer.
“Did your uncle screen your phone calls?”
“In my junior and senior years he did.”
“How?”
“He set up an answering machine to take calls from recruiters. For his own calls, for him and Aunt Jane, he got an unlisted number.”
“Didn’t you think that was a little odd?” Brosky wanted to know.
“Not really,” answered Sonny. “The calls were coming night and day. I think it was really my aunt Jane’s idea to have the unlisted number, just so she could get a little relief. Besides, I’ve heard of other players doing the same thing in their families, just to deal with recruiters.”
“So have these gentlemen,” said Gardner wearily. “Don’t you think we’ve plowed this furrow long enough?”
Brosky turned on him: “I’ll tell you what, since Mr. Yates and I are in charge of this investigation, we’ll be in charge of deciding what information we need. I’m not particularly fond of your tone of voice, either.”
“I’m not particularly fond of your investigation,” was Gardner’s crisp response. “Is it just a coincidence that this inquiry comes within two weeks of our number one ranking? All those weeks that Georgetown was number one, did you have them under investigation?”
The attorney, Ernst, removed his glasses and began squeezing the bridge of his nose. Sonny wanted to think Gardner was on his side, but what kind of an ally would he be if all he did was get the investigators pissed off? Yates asked Sonny, “Do you understand NCAA policy governing complimentary tickets?”
Gardner interrupted again. “All our people are thoroughly briefed about matters of NCAA compliance. It’s my job to keep players and coaches updated.”
Ignoring the interruption, Yates repeated the question. Sonny squirmed a bit before he answered. “Some of the rules get pretty technical. The way they nitpick, I get confused at times, to tell you the truth.”
“I’m asking you about complimentary tickets. Are you clear about the rules?”
Sonny shook his head. “Not exactly. Sort of. I think a certain number are for relatives, and a certain number can be used by other people.”
“You know this stuff, Youngblood,” Gardner declared.
Great. Now Gardner’s against me too. “I’ve been told all of it,” Sonny admitted. “It gets confusing after a while. Who can give you a ride, or buy you a Coke, who you can talk to, who gets the tickets, et cetera.”
“Don’t play dumb, Sonny. You’re not stupid.”
“Mr. Gardner, please do us all a favor. Let Sonny provide his own answers to the questions.”
Gardner sighed, took off his glasses, and slumped in his chair. Yates asked Sonny, “For example, can you remember who used your comp tickets for the Virginia game on January tenth?”
“Are you kidding?” asked Brosky sarcastically. “Do you expect him to remember something from three weeks ago?”
“I do remember,” said Sonny.
“Hallelujah!” exclaimed Brosky.
Sonny was beyond irritation; he felt humiliated. “Why don’t you kiss my ass?” he snapped at Brosky.
“What did you say to me?”
Sonny could feel his own flush. “You heard me, kiss my ass.”
Yates was holding his two hands up like a third-base coach stopping a runner. “Equilibrium please,” he begged.
“Right.”
“May I ask why you remember?”
It seemed like an odd question. “Because my uncle Seth didn’t use them. He and my aunt Jane were in Florida.”
“Does your uncle ordinarily use your tickets?”
“Yeah, I usually give him all six. He distributes them how he wants.”
“Okay,” said Brosky. “Let’s go back to the tenth. And I apologize for being so sarcastic.” He sniffed.
“It’s okay,” said Sonny. “Sorry I lost my temper.” He told the two of them that for the Virginia game, his tickets were used by Sissy, Willie Joe, Julio, and Andrea. The remaining two by his uncle’s booster friends.
Yates asked, “How many of those people are members of your immediate family, Sonny?”
With a knot forming in the pit of his stomach: “Well, Sissy’s my cousin.”
“We don’t consider cousins immediate family.”
“But she’s my first cousin. Uncle Seth is her father. The others were friends from high school or just … just friends.”
“Do you understand you’re not in compliance with NCAA rules when you distribute tickets in that manner?”
Sonny was looking down. He made a sidelong glance at Ernst and Gardner, but they were looking at their hands. Before he answered, Sonny drank some of his water. “Yeah, I knew. I just gave the tickets to Uncle Seth all
the time so I wouldn’t have to think about who would use them.”
“I appreciate the honesty of that answer,” said Yates, who seemed, in spite of the circumstances, to be a fair-minded guy. At least to Sonny.
Yates continued, “Is it fair to say that your uncle has always been glad to have your tickets?”
Sonny shrugged. “Yeah, I’d say so. He almost never misses a game and there are plenty of people who always want to come.” Then Sonny had a start. “Are you going to be talking to my uncle Seth?”
Yates smiled. “Who knows? We never know for sure where an investigation will lead.”
It was a remark which gave Sonny a burning sensation in his chest like angry bile. Do they know things that I don’t know? “I’m telling you the truth here.”
“I believe you are, Sonny,” Yates admitted. “We’d like to ask you just a couple of questions about Erika Neil, and then we should be finished.”
“Sissy? You’re not going to talk to her, are you?”
“Like I said, we can never predict exactly where the trail will lead, but it isn’t likely. Okay if I ask you one or two things?”
“Yeah, sure, go ahead.”
“First of all, you earned one hour of independent study credit from Ms. Neil in art history. Is that correct?”
Gardner broke his long silence to interrupt again. Sarcastically. “You’ve seen his transcript, why the charade?”
“Excuse me,” said Yates. “Am I correct, Sonny?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
Brosky added, “An hour of A, and she made it retroactive.”
“Teachers do it all the time. It’s not unusual.”
“Tell me if this is accurate,” said Brosky. “You got an hour of art history credit retroactively, from your own cousin. And she gave you an A. Is that an accurate statement?”
Sonny squirmed and fumed. “If you put it that way, it sounds totally lame.”
“You said it, not me. Is it also true that this particular hour of credit kept you eligible for basketball?”
“I worked my ass off for that credit. Sissy told me I did enough work to earn two or three credits. Look it up somewhere, teachers make that arrangement all the time. You’re pissing me off, so get off my case.”
Yates took a pause long enough to drink some coffee. For his part, Brosky worked his right nostril with the nasal mist. Then he asked Sonny, “You don’t live with your cousin, do you?”
“No, I don’t live with her. I live in the dorm.”
“It’s true though, isn’t it,” asked Yates, “that you spend a great deal of time at her house?”
“That would depend on what you mean by a great deal of time.”
“You don’t live with her, then. Do you ever spend the night at her house?”
Before he answered, Sonny wondered where this was headed. “Sometimes, if it’s any of your business. Is that a violation too?”
“I wouldn’t know,” answered Brosky. “What does your uncle think about it?”
“I’m not sure what he thinks, if he even knows about it.” But even as he was giving this answer, it made him uneasy the way their questions seemed so rooted in information. “Let me ask you a question: Why are you wasting your time asking me about Sissy? I thought you wanted to know about basketball and recruiting.”
“Is that what we’re doing? Wasting our time?”
“If you think my cousin Sissy gives a shit about basketball, or who plays for who, you’re wasting your time for sure.”
“Why don’t you tell us about that aspect of it, then?” asked Brosky.
“That’s what I’m trying to do. My cousin hates basketball almost as much as she hates football. If she had her way, the only college teams would be debate teams or scholastic bowl.”
“This is too funny,” said Gardner, who was trying not to laugh. “Too, too funny.” He asked Yates and Brosky, “Do you honestly think Erika Neil had something to do with recruiting a basketball player for the SIU program?” But Gardner couldn’t go on; he was laughing too hard.
The Bradley game was when it first happened. Round one of the Missouri Valley Conference tournament in the St. Louis Arena, a game in which the Salukis coasted by the Braves by 30 points. At the ten-minute mark of the first half, Sonny was floating again. A cold, clammy sweat in his palms was followed by shortness of breath. His legs went wobbly like he just missed a head-on collision on the highway. He went to the locker room, light in the head and with a towel draped over his shoulders. Daley, the team trainer, walked beside him.
Before the rest of the team came in at the half, there was time for Dr. Kelso to take his temperature and use the small flashlight to look in his eyes, ears, nose, and throat. No apparent abnormalities, so the doctor told him to rest up and get ready for the second half. Sonny lay flat on his back, listening to the distant, muffled roars of the crowd above. He thought to himself, This is all in my head. The most mysterious part seemed to be found in having knowledge of something so unfamiliar.
He felt strong enough at the start of the second half to swish a pair of quick three-pointers, but with 16 minutes showing, his legs were suddenly full of sand again. He was drained of color and drenched in sweat. For precautionary reasons, Gentry took him out of the game; it was a blowout in any case.
Sonny slumped on the bench with towels draped and his head in his hands. Workman took the seat next to him and said, “What’s the matter, Sonny?”
This is all in my head, Sonny thought again. But instead of answering, he simply shook his head.
“You’re not out of shape, are you?”
“Are you serious? You see me in practice every day, how could I be out of shape?”
“Okay, okay, I take it back.”
The next night Sonny sucked it up as best he could. Tulsa played a 1-2-2 zone, so there were open shots on the wing, especially off Otis’s quick penetrations. Sonny’s jump shots were true as crosshairs, but they were only the stationary type; against a man-to-man, he wouldn’t have had the strength to get a shot.
His defense was enervated. During time-outs and free throws, he clutched at his shorts and fought for breath. Mopped his sweat while trying to conceal his low-level case of the shakes. Sonny had 20 points, but only because the Tulsa defense was tailor-made for a series of undemanding jump shots. He breathed relief when the lead reached 30 points and Gentry began clearing the bench. After the game, Sonny threw up in one of the stalls, but nobody saw him.
Getting two days of rest seemed to help. By Monday night, when the Salukis played Creighton in the conference championship game, Sonny felt stronger. It seemed providential to be renewed in front of the 12,000 noisy fans and a national television audience.
He was quick to the basket against Creighton’s overplay man defense, although he did pick up two charging fouls. They ran the double stack for a while, which freed him up for 15-footers near the free throw line. By halftime, when the lead was ten, Sonny had 21 points. He felt like he was all the way back.
But then came the second half, when the inexplicable weariness invaded his limbs. It was as if all his bodily fluids were much too heavy. He was about to get the shakes again, and he had some minor vertigo. His slow-motion defense led to two more fouls, which forced Gentry to sit him on the bench.
The lead was safe, although Creighton made a couple of runs late in the game. Sonny sat in his impotent cell of frustration and bewilderment, broken in a cold sweat. His legs shaky as pudding, a towel across his lap, and another around his shoulders. Grateful, as his teammates put the game away at the free throw line, that Gentry wouldn’t send him back into the game.
During the post-game celebration, while his teammates cut down the nets, Sonny held the ladder. Or it held him. There would be no postgame interviews, in compliance with Gentry’s current policy that made the players off-limits to reporters.
In their locker room, the players watched Gentry’s press conference on closed-circuit TV. It didn’t take long for the reporters
to raise the issue of the NCAA investigation, but Gentry turned it aside with a crisp, firm disclaimer. “I don’t intend to answer questions about that subject. Even if I wanted to talk about it, I’m not allowed to. I’ll be happy to answer questions about the game, or about our team.”
After that, it didn’t take the press very long to resurrect the strength-of-schedule agenda. A reporter wanted to know if SIU’s “soft” schedule would hurt the team’s chances in the NCAA tournament.
His struggle for patience clearly visible, Gentry answered in monotones. “Okay, let’s do this one more time. ‘Soft’ is your word. We won the Big Apple NIT, the Memphis Invitational, and the regular-season Missouri Valley championship. Now we’ve won the MVC tournament. We’re the only undefeated major in the country and we’ve been number one in all the polls for nearly three weeks. Now you people tell me: Who votes in the polls? You do. If you don’t think we’re that good, then I suggest you exercise your ballot-box rights and vote us lower.”
“Tell ’em, Coach,” said Robert Lee, who was seated next to Sonny. “These fucking writers. What the hell did they ever play except maybe a few games of pocket pool?”
Sonny didn’t say a word. He watched the monitor as one of the reporters asked the coach, “Can you tell us anything about Youngblood’s condition?”
“He may have a touch of the flu. Our team physician is working with him. He’ll have a few days of rest now, to get ready for the first round of the tournament.”
“If he were unable to play, how would that affect your team’s chances in the tournament?”
Gentry smiled for the first time. “How much would it help any team to lose a key player? But we don’t expect anything like that. A little rest and Sonny should be just fine.”
A writer wanted to know if Gentry thought it was important to be seeded number one by the NCAA selection committee.
“Only because our fans would benefit. It would mean they’d put us in the Indianapolis regional,” the coach replied. “It’s close to home, so our fans would be able to watch us play.”
Robert Lee was wearing an uneven necklace of nylon net. When the press conference was over he asked Sonny, “Are you okay, man?”
The Squared Circle Page 14