Chapter 23

David was pissed. He’d heard through the grapevine that Wooga was moving to defense. He’d dreamed of the big man crushing defensive players, but the film didn’t lie: Wooga couldn’t pass-block. Yes, that was a deal-breaker, but David felt Wooga had the talent to do the job and just needed to learn how. Maybe Mykal Hansen would step up and fill that role.

This would be Wooga’s first day on the wrong side of the ball. Coach Hurst was thinking about changing his defense to use a nose tackle.

David grudgingly admitted that it made sense with someone of Wooga’s size. He could clog the middle on running plays and, on passing plays, help collapse the pocket, preventing the quarterback from stepping up to avoid the pass rush. With his albatross-like wingspan, the likelihood of a deflection would increase.

In the latter half of practice, Wooga lined up across from Jim. David was focused on timing issues he was having with a progression that Coach Trent had developed. He’d done something similar when David went to the Elite 11 camp. Usually, a quarterback would look at their primary receiver, and if they were covered, he would go to his secondary and so forth. If it usually flowed across the field, it could be done quickly.

Coach Trent wanted this play run so it was more herky-jerky. David’s eyes were bouncing back and forth to find the open receiver. What it did was confuse the heck out of the defense, because they were used to the smooth flow, not this. The hope was that once David’s eyes left an area of the field, they would let up because they knew the ball wasn’t going in that direction.

So when Wooga was inserted, David didn’t think anything of it. That was until the giant of a man scooped Jim up and tossed him at David. David looked down at Jim, who was staring back up at him with the same ‘What the fuck?!’ expression David had.

Jim was a six-six, three-hundred-plus-pound college athlete. Players didn’t pick him up and toss him almost nine feet. Thankfully, Wooga hadn’t learned what to do after he threw the center, namely, run full tilt at the quarterback and kill him. It reminded David of the film he’d seen of Percy Wilkes before Lincoln High played Broadview Academy, where he would simply engulf a quarterback and slam him to the turf.

David lobbed the ball to Wooga and said, “Take that and run for a touchdown. You deserve it.”

Then he bent down and helped his friend to his feet.

“Did that just happen?” Jim asked.

“Yep. You might want to check your pants because I would’ve shit mine if that was done to me,” David quipped.

“Thank God he didn’t decide to stomp me, too,” Jim said.

To think, Wooga hadn’t been playing football for long and had only limited instruction to that point. David decided to get over his mad about Wooga’s position change.

Caryn met with Greg, Rain, and Professor Dugan to get as much information as she could about David’s NIL venture. The business plan was almost complete, and the steps needed to make NIL work at a university had been identified. She wanted to talk to them before she talked to David to see if she could spot any holes in his ideas.

“The key is to get the university’s buy-in. While they won’t be involved in running the company, they are a crucial partner. You need their endorsement, a list of current donors to the athletic department, and an idea of who they want as stakeholders,” Greg said.

“The best case would be to hire someone either within the athletic department or connected to it to be the face of the franchise,” Rain said.

“It would also help to have key boosters accept the company,” Professor Dugan said.

“I wondered why David invited Ron and Gabe. They’re major USC boosters,” Caryn said.

From there, they got into the weeds to understand how this would work. After the meeting, she felt confident enough to begin talking to the other members of the David A. Dawson Inc. board and see what they thought.

Caryn also wanted to talk to David and figure out why he’d invited Tom Dole, an entertainment attorney, to the kickoff meeting. Unfortunately, she doubted she’d have a chance to do so before the meeting.

Finally, she wanted to hire some staff. It was obvious that David and his group were all students and didn’t have the time to start a company, and it required workers to get it off the ground. She needed people who knew how a business functioned to lay the foundation, from banking to HR to everything else. David had talked about getting his agent involved, but she didn’t see that he had the skill set she needed.

After the meeting, she called Megan, who handled stuff like background checks, accounting, and so on for David back in Illinois.

“Book yourself a flight. I need you in LA.”

Rain could see that David’s business idea was really going to happen. She had been on the fence about her options. Should she accept a one-time payout and walk away once the class project was over, or should she take a risk and get a piece of the company? Rain had heard everything Professor Dugan had said about David’s successful track record, but...

The problem she had was that she needed money now. Attending USC was expensive. While her parents paid her tuition and books, she’d tried to cover the cost of her apartment and all that entailed to help take some of the load off them. Rent in LA was insane, and her bank account was quickly dwindling. That was why she’d asked Greg if David might be willing to give her some cash upfront and maybe take a smaller ownership interest.

She saw that David wasn’t looking to get rich doing this. She understood his real motivation was the potential he could earn from his involvement with HWM. But the projected numbers were nothing to sneeze at, either. She could be set for life on her small percentage if this were to hit the upper end of the projected potential.