annoying rainy days-a retractable sunroof. The facility sleeps 112, has a full-time staff of cooks, trainers, maids, and tutors on the premises, and like Sam’s Harley, is paid for out of the PCAA athletic budget.
The Professional Collegiate Athletic Association took roots back in 2008 when the former governing body of ‘amateur’ intercollegiate athletics, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, lost a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of five thousand student-athletes who charged the NCAA had no right to prevent them from receiving nonathletic-related monies while enrolled in school. Faced with the reality of finally having to pay their breadwinners, the NCAA voted to reorganize into a separate and independent governing body dedicated solely to ‘professional’ collegiate athletics. Encompassing Men’s Division I-A football and men and women’s Division I basketball, the Professional Collegiate Athletic Association (PCAA) established standardized pay scales and benefit programs for its revenue-generating participants. This included full tuition, room and board, school supplies, a monthly stipend (based on undergraduate status) and a bonus program, which rewarded grade point average as well as postseason tournament participation. To remain eligible, a PCAA student-athlete was required to attend class (in person) and demonstrate satisfactory progress toward a five-year degree. Any athlete could try out for the professional leagues at any time and still return to school-provided they had not yet accepted a pro signing bonus (usually held in escrow until after final cuts) or played a minute of regular-season ball. Any PCAA athlete who did turn pro prior to graduation was required to immediately refund from their signing bonuses all stipend monies earned while at school. Athletes choosing to remain in school until graduation earned a ‘diploma bonus’ a figure based on the team’s won-lost record during their years of participation.
By 2017, the PCAA football playoffs were generating revenues surpassing those of the National Football League and National Basketball Asociation.
Lauren follows Sam through the Art Deco security arch leading to the front entrance. He places his hand upon the SID pad.
A holograph appears-a well-endowed topless blonde wearing a G-string. The model’s computerized face has been replaced with Coach DeMaio’s, the voice with that of teen pop singer Lacy Wong. ‘Good evening, Samuel Agler, you hunka-hunka burning Hurricane love. Please enter me so I may please you.’
‘Uh, thanks… Coach.’
They pass through the weapon detector’s violet indicator beam. The double doors slide open, allowing them entry into a high-ceilinged hall engorged with loud technomusic, neon holographic creatures, flashing lights, and mobs of mostly naked bodies.
Lauren leans over, yells, ‘It’s like the last days of Rome meets disco.’
K. C. Renner, who is wearing an aluminocloth shirt and boxer shorts, is the first to greet them. ‘My bonus baby, gimme some bone.’ Renner’s and Sam’s knuckles collide.
‘Good evening, Lauren.’ Renner’s voice turns sarcastically stuffy. ‘So glad you could join us.’ The quarterback shakes her hand, then licks it.
‘You’re disgusting.’
‘Thank you. Food’s everywhere, plenty of strange… oops, sorry. M’casa es su casa.’
The staccato pulse of the bass, originating from surround-sound speakers strategically placed beneath the porous floorboards, is literally sending music vibrating up through their bodies.
‘Isn’t it a bit loud?’ Lauren yells.
‘Yeah, great crowd. Hey, everyone’s out by the pool. Come on.’ Renner leads them through the packed hall. Groping blue-and-yellow-tinted hands reach out to touch them as they pass.
A set of soundproof Plexiglas doors part, allowing them to escape the noise into a home entertainment holograph suite. The doors hiss close behind them, shutting out the hallway acoustics.
The room is black, backlit by matching columns of ceiling-to-floor lava lamps and a 3-D holographic movie projecting in front of the far wall.
As Lauren’s eyes adjust to the dark, she notices movement along the floor-couples, making out in sensory body bags.
K. C. directs them through a second set of soundproof doors. They pass the food prep room and exit into the courtyard.
Humidity and the heavy scent of the pool’s ozone filtration system hits them square in the face. The soothing calypso sounds of Cuban heartthrob, Elian, comes from palm tree speakers planted along the periphery.
Cheerleaders, groupies, and prostitutes, most of them naked, lounge in and around the football-shaped pool in clusters, a dozen of Sam’s teammates drifting from one group to the next. Lauren spots Jerry Tucker in the hot tub, the enormous lineman sandwiched between two bare-breasted Jamaican-dyed Asian girls. Another teammate is lying on the deck behind him, passed out in a puddle of vomit.
She shakes her head. ‘Miami’s gridiron warriors. Pillaging the village before their next conquest.’
Ken Hudak, the team’s heavily muscled, pine-green-dyed middle linebacker, struts toward them, dragging his date, a Haitian girl wearing only a bandanna around her waist. Lauren stares at the couple’s his-and-her hip tattoo, which creates the illusion of two bulldogs doing it doggy style when the pair are making love with the girl on top.
‘Mule-we gotta talk, man.’ Before Lauren can object, Hudak drapes his arm around her fiance and leads him away.
K. C. shrugs. ‘Sam’s a popular guy.’
‘Too popular.’
The Haitian girl slides over to K. C., grinding her bare groin into his hip. ‘I’m tired of playing defensive ball. How ’bout teaching me a little offense?’
K. C. winks at Lauren. ‘Back in a minute.’
‘Yeah, go grind your brains out.’ She watches him lead the girl away.
Lauren’s eyes search for Sam. She spots him by the hot tub, surrounded by most of the team’s defensive starters, all of whom are dyed the same shade of Miami green.
The hell with this… She heads back inside.
‘You’re accusing me of tanking it?’ Sam shakes his head in disbelief.
Hudak leans in, spewing his garlic breath. ‘We lost. No way we lose to the fubishitting Seminole-holes if you’re running the way you usually do.’
‘I had 104 yards on the ground, 54 more receiving. I scored a touchdown.’
‘Don’t diss us, Mule,’ says Keith Plourde, the Hurricanes’ cocaptain. ‘You haven’t run for less than two hundred yards since you were in grade school.’
‘I need that playoff bonus, Mule,’ Brian Mundt whines. ‘I’m fuupdass without it.’
‘Maybe you wouldn’t be so fucked-up-the-ass if you learned how to tackle,’ Sam says, pushing the defensive end out of his face.
‘I heard a ton of gamblers lost money on the point spread today,’ Keith Plourde states, accusingly. ‘Maybe you were in on the action, huh?’
Sam lunges for Plourde, pile-driving him backward against a palm tree.
Hudak and Mundt intercede before the first punch is thrown.
‘Knock it off!’ The veins in Hudak’s thick neck bulge like garter snakes. ‘We know Mule wouldn’t do that, K. P. What we don’t know is if our soul brother is turnin’ pro?’
‘Not this season.’
‘Yeah, but what about next year?’ asks Jeff ‘Bubba’ Larsen, Miami’s six-foot-three-inch, three-hundred-pound all-American strong-side linebacker.
‘I don’t know.’ Sam stares down Larsen, his heart pounding with adrenaline. ‘I haven’t decided.’
‘Fuck!’ Now it’s Larsen who is ready to strike. ‘You leave after this year, and we’re all fuupdass. Between stipes and bonuses, we’re talkin’ a buck forty large a piece.’
‘One forty-five,’ corrects Mundt.
‘Most of us don’t got two-hundred-million-dollar GFL contracts waiting out there,’ growls Matt Eterginio, the starting free safety.
‘None of us have,’ Sam corrects. ‘You’re supposed to be an English major, Matt. Of course, you’re also supposed to be a free safety, but that didn’t stop FSU from takin’ it to the house on you all afternoon.’
‘Okay, everybody just calm down,’ commands Hudak. ‘Look, Mule, we’re your teammates. Your brothers. Brothers stick together.’
