Two articles today on two very different kinds of men who take an interest in youths:
In "Meet the Bag Man," SBNation, Steven Godfrey has a long interview with a minor "bag man" for a South Eastern Conference football program. He's part of the deep state aspect of successful college football teams -- boosters, typically small to medium-sized businessmen like car dealers, who don't care about the public attention the big time boosters care about like getting their name engraved on the new weight room. Instead, he and his friends are each happy to hand out $7,000 to $15,000 annually in cash or used cars to their school's recruit targets and current players.
If you're stinking, filthy rich, a good athletic director or university fundraiser has already contacted you for above-board donations, and you likely won't get into the business of paying players. It's the guys with just about 10 or 15 grand to burn annually and don't aspire for ego-stroking that usually become bag men.
"I think it took me seven years. I knew some guys. They knew some older guys. And before, I really didn't believe any of this happened. Then I start coming around different events, parties, tailgates. After a while one guy says, 'Oh hey, I know him. It's okay, he loves the [team],' and starts talking who needed to get what. And so I was a part of it. I wanted to be."
Once properly vetted, your money usually buys you first or secondhand access to information most fans (or journalists) would kill for: player run-ins with the law that go unreported, what certain coaches are really like, what kind of power an A.D. or president really has, and most importantly, who really is in charge of your football program.
These kind of shadowy networks of local guys help explain why college football doesn't seem just like hired gladiators -- State U.'s football team is supported by a vast network of boosters, some public, some covert, who find ways to make the mothers of high school stars loyal. It's a test of the community. Football is a war game and lot of guys who are too old to be on the front lines still like to be part of the resource-gathering for the wars and to earn some degree of right to be part of the strategy conversation.
In The New York Times, in contrast, a story on some middle-aged to elderly ascot-wearing European men who live in Tangier, Morocco in lavishly decorated villas: "The Aesthetes" by Andrew O'Hagan.
For the legendary expats of Tangier, a life devoted to beauty reaches full flower in this North African hothouse of history and hedonism.
The article never quite gets around to mentioning that one crucial attraction of North Africa for a certain type of expat are the cheap boy prostitutes.
Extremely rarely, you hear of an individual who shares some of the tastes of the SEC bag men and some of the tastes of the Tangier aesthetes, and it becomes the biggest story in the history of the world for awhile, but might I suggest that Jerry Sandusky is what you can roughly call the exception who proves the rule?
Extremely rarely, you hear of an individual who shares some of the tastes of the SEC bag men and some of the tastes of the Tangier aesthetes, and it becomes the biggest story in the history of the world for awhile, but might I suggest that Jerry Sandusky is what you can roughly call the exception who proves the rule?
Posts
34 comments:
at the high school level, the boosters are legit, above the table operations.
in fact, this is the reason that africans are able to play football. because the community pays for it. otherwise, football would somewhat turn into another one of those sports that they aren't interested in and can't afford to play as much.
it's expensive to run football teams. outfit and equip 60 players and pay for all those coaches and facilities.
now, it's not as expensive as some other sports, but without boosters and the local tax base supporting every team, football would shed africans pretty fast.
by the way steve did you notice the connecticut basketball team roster. were there even any players from connecticut? some of the players are not even americans.
so what are the fans cheering for out there, exactly? mercenaries? international mercenaries even? there's no connection to the state or university at all really. just a bunch of recruited guns. i'd say hired guns, but they aren't paid. that one guy on connecticut was from germany.
this is the case in all NCAA sports though. it's endemic. except football. because nobody else plays football. international mercenary players are few and far between.
Once properly vetted, your money usually buys you first or secondhand access to information most fans (or journalists) would kill for: player run-ins with the law that go unreported, what certain coaches are really like, what kind of power an A.D. or president really has, and most importantly, who really is in charge of your football program.
These are men, right? Not women? And they're paying $10K+ for what amounts to an inside track on gossip?
On Tangier:
They toss a couple of women in to throw you off track...but having read Burroughs, I bet you hit the nail on the head.
"I bet you hit the nail on the head." And I bet you're being rather naughty.
Instead, he and his friends are each happy to hand out $7,000 to $15,000 annually in cash or used cars to their school's recruit targets and current players.
And to think that I took all that old AAU stuff seriously.
BTW, Wikipedia says that Jimmy Carter signed legislation in 1978 which effectively destroyed the AAU.
It would be interesting to see a list of top sex tourist destinations.
Whenever I hear of someone going to Bangkok I perhaps unfairly jump to conclusions. I know a guy in rather straitened circumstances who manages to fly regularly to Costa Rica for the boys.
Where else to the pervs go?
The first comment to the Times article is a gem:
"As someone currently living in Tangier, steps from the Spanish consulate and towering mosque referenced, I would like to point out that the faces of the Syrian refugees and Sub-Saharan migrants lining the streets begging for money stick in your memory much longer than these fools and their artsy caves."
Peter
"The Bag Man" is one of most enlightening pieces i've ever read. I think I prefer my graft behind the scenes, going directly to players and loved ones rather than to the unions that Kain Colter & Jay Bilases/libtard sportswriters of the world want. In this way, at least there's a market price for top tier talent. A union system is going to really f**k s**t up while payments will still go top players anyways.
I thought it was also interesting that the SEC guys were so upset at a guy like Nevin Shapiro, who at Miami was 1.) way too obvious 2.) way too amoral (paying for hookers and abortions) and 3.) way too stupid to be able to operate in the gray world of high echelon college football.
I wonder if these aesthetes pepper their conversation with “dear boy”.
How long before all white western men are condemned for the actions of the wealthy johns on north africa?
The article never quite gets around to mentioning that one crucial attraction of North Africa for a certain type of expat are the cheap boy prostitutes.
Mr. Sailer, your wild accusations are beyond contempt.
reminds me of the hilarity of Arthur C. Clarke claiming he moved to Sri Lanka for the "diving".
This network of "bag men" sounds badass to me. These guys are probably fun as hell to hang out with. The tangeiers fags... not so much
Meanwhile in America, Anti-Semitism shows it's ugly head.
An innocent co-religionist is viciously scapegoated.
"""Where else to the pervs go?""""
That island, Phu ket or however it's spelled. The 04 Tsunami really devasted the area but before that it was a fairly well known place for underage sex trafficing.
HINT: James Bond film "Man with the Golden Gun" was filmed in Phu Ket. At the time it was relatively undiscovered. But since then its well known for the underage trafficking.
Question: Lets square the circle a bit. In an early post, Steve, you mentioned how it's more or less rare for the Ivies to bid for the services for top academic recruits (although once securing their services the colleges find no shame in boasting that they're on their campuses).
So anyway, it would be interesting to know what the ACADEMIC 'bag men' would resemble at these and other blue chip colleges. Along the lines of...say, a Mitt Romney or a Goldman Sachs executive were they'd be in charge of fundraising for the university's business depts and would have access to the top business students ('players' of another type of sport, future real world money making after they graduate). Those would be the top 'bag men' for the business depts.
It'd be interesting to know who the smaller level 'bag men' at these ivies were. The ones who donate 10k to the business schools and medical schools as well.
Probably their conversations at the martini parties go along the lines of "Man! That Billy Gates is real something. Before he dropped out of Harvard I used to visit his dept and encourage him with well chosen words, like 'Atta boy, Billy! That newfangled mainframe youre working on in spare time's gonna really sell one of these days! I was the first to catch on to Billy's potential, yessirree."
Be cool for a story like that, one that ties in with the Ivie's top academic prospects that no ones supposed to bid for much less know about.
Harold:"I wonder if these aesthetes pepper their conversation with “dear boy”."
Quite possibly, dear boy.Affectations become ingrained. And, of course, they do help one become noticed by the hoi polloi....
You know, I had to actually re-read the story all the way through before I realized, oh yeah, my bad.
It's MOROCCO, and not MONACO that was the place that the NYT article you referenced was referring to.
Somehow, I just couldn't see the likes of such esteemed octogenarians as Sir Michael Caine and Sir Roger Moore "dear boying" the various tweeners in Monte Carlo during their visits to the Carlton or the local casinos before heading over to Cannes.
Its MOROCCO, got it.
Whenever I hear of someone going to Bangkok I perhaps unfairly jump to conclusions.
Incidentally, Gore Vidal spent a lot of time in Bangkok. So much so that the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Bangkok named a suite after him:
http://www.pitt.edu/~kloman/vidalsuite.html
"Because of Vidal's frequent stays at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, the hotel named a suite after him a number of years ago...."
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/fashion/In-a-final-plot-twist-Gore-Vidal-leaves-his-estate-to-Harvard-Universtity.html
"Mr. Steers said: “I know Buckley had a file on him that Gore feared. It would make sense if that material was about him having underage sex. Gore spent a lot of time in Bangkok, after all."
Cail college football betting is huge. Inside info is worth literally millions on sports book betting.
So what does this say about supporters of the military industrial complex?
New car dealers have a state protected monopoly. So their support of local sports is part of a quid pro quo.
Steve,
You don't remember the new car with the TK QB 9 plates every year?
I remember a yellow corvette that showed up in the Sid Rich dorm parking lot, but not until the spring semester after TK's All-American senior season. I wasn't there before that year, so I can't say other than that.
Man, a yellow car, any car color other than black, grey, and white sure is getting harder to find on the road nowadays.
This past summer I thought Tangier would be a fun place to hang around for a few days, but that was one of the most incorrect assumptions of my life. Maybe it was cool during the 50s when people like Burroughs were there and it was an international city, but modern day Tangiers is a shit hole. The entire place is full of garbage, smells like cat piss (probably because stray cats are everywhere), and there are a bunch of sketchy black dudes without teeth from places like Sudan type trying to sell you hash everywhere. The only good thing was that I managed to buy an awesome pair of camel leather slipper for about $12. The hash isn't even that impressive once you realize that literally every black dude in Spain sells pot and you don't have to go through border patrol to smoke it. That isn't even a racist generalization because actually every black immigrant in Spain I met sold weed. I even joked about it with very PC Aussies and Brits in hostels and we came to an agreement that anytime you see a black guy at a Spanish bar he sells weed. All things considered, that assumption never disappointed.
@ Aristippus
But how would you rate the dancing boys?
"For the legendary expats of Tangier, a life devoted to beauty reaches full flower in this North African hothouse of history and hedonism."
A ridiculous looking group of louche old poofters. I had always thought that aesthetes were supposed to have some taste. Aren't homosexuals supposed to be good at interior design? Some of those digs looked like they were decorated by someone with the innate sense of style of an armenian pimp.
Quite possibly, dear boy.Affectations become ingrained. And, of course, they do help one become noticed by the hoi polloi....
Careful, dear girl, your lack of good breeding is showing...
Joe Orton liked to bugger young North African boys.
Jack Taylor and Enterprise Rent-a-Car are both big names and a big business that act like small enterprises in the deep state of University of Missouri revenue sports (football, men's basketball). Taylor likes to hire lots of ex-jocks out of those two programs at Enterprise, the types that either couldn't make the pros or didn't have much of a pro career.
Man, a yellow car, any car color other than black, grey, and white sure is getting harder to find on the road nowadays.
A family friend has a decades-old yellow Camaro. She has received a number of unsolicited offers to buy it.
Anonymous:"Careful, dear girl, your lack of good breeding is showing..."
Breeding had nothing to do with it, dear boy. It's been entirely a matter of arduous effort on my part.The end product of a Lincoln-esque childhood. Long hours pouring over Evelyn Waugh novels. Jane Austen by the light of a trailer park full moon.
The article never quite gets around to mentioning that one crucial attraction of North Africa for a certain type of expat are the cheap boy prostitutes.
From The Party Culture War by Steve Johnson on John Maynard Keynes:
"Keynes's particular depravity appears to have been pedophilia. He and his homosexual friends often went to resorts along the Mediterranean Sea, where little boys were sold to bordellos by their parents. He took advantage of the bitter poverty he witnessed in North Africa, Italy, and the Middle East and purchased male child prostitutes for English shillings. In his communications, he advised his friends to go to Tunis, "Where 'bed and boy' were also not expensive."
From Keynes: A Critical Life by David Felix:
"[Keynes] advised Lytton, who was going on a holiday to Tunis and Sicily, on modalities "if you want to go where the naked boys dance." Responding to his friend's scatological taste, he closed with the lines from a poem: "We paid our suit to Janus/ Mistook the one mouth for the other anus." He himself was going to join an old classmate, now a colonial officer there: "I'm leaving for Egypt. . . . I just learned that 'bed and boy' is prepared."
Post a Comment