There was nothing Marty Blazer wouldn’t do for his clients, as Guy Lawson explains in “Hot Dog Money: Inside the biggest scandal in the history of college sports” (Little A).
As the financial manager of a group of highly skilled college athletes, he considered himself an older brother to his young charges. “Blazer did whatever he needed and stood by them when they made a mistake,” Lawson writes.
From getting Valtrex for players with sexually transmitted diseases to organizing what he called “CSI cleanups” of apartments when players were hooking up with women they shouldn’t have, nothing was too much trouble.
Once, he even received emergency medical care for a player’s appointment whose breast implants had burst.
“Blazer had to find a doctor for the girl, so that her life would not be in danger,” says the journalist.
Louis Martin “Marty” Blazer III was a Pittsburgh-based financial advisor who cared for talented college football and basketball players on their path to the professional game.
But he was also a scammer, a thief and a liar.
Every time he gave his speech to a potential signing, he always said the same thing. “He said he came from the future and that he knew how the story would unfold: the money, the girlfriends, the family demands, the hangers-on, the real estate and the investment opportunities,” Lawson writes.
So what if the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) had rules against paying players and their friends and family? It was nothing he couldn’t avoid. “I’ve never had to try very hard to disguise what I was doing,” he told Lawson in a series of interviews.
“Use cash, don’t leave a paper trail, don’t talk about breaking the rules on the phone – it was easy to get around the NCAA rules. “
But Blazer had other ideas for his clients’ money. There were movies he wanted to make and a music management company he wanted to start, and they required investment.
Initially, it was an easy choice for Blazer, not only because the NCAA lacked the teeth to investigate wrongdoing, but also because too many people in college sports were doing too well with the fixes.
In short, everyone was on it.
As he told Lawson: “The NCAA was a joke. Everyone involved in college sports knew that the NCAA regulators were incompetent fools.
“Every trainer, agent, financial advisor and broker knew they were on to something good and that scandals didn’t help anyone in the long run when the status quo was so lucrative.”
In 2013, Securities and Exchange Commission officials began investigating Blazer over allegations that he defrauded five of his clients, taking about $2.5 million of their money and investing it in his vanity projects.
As the investigation continued, Blazer admitted to paying college athletes with the understanding that they became his clients when they turned professional, a practice prohibited by NCAA rules.
Among the charges Blazer faced were wire fraud, identity theft, securities fraud and making false statements and documents.
Facing a lengthy prison sentence, Blazer took the only option available: becoming a “cooperating informant” and assisting the FBI in its investigations into corruption in college sports and the NCAA.
“I was an expert who spoke the language,” he told Lawson.
As part of Operation “Ballerz,” Blazer posed as a business manager and helped the FBI make hundreds of recordings detailing the extent of corruption at play at the NCAA, with large sums of “Hot Dog Money” changing hands. to direct athletes. towards certain schools or brands, often without the students’ knowledge.
The player trade was nothing short of immoral. “It didn’t seem like they (the FBI) understood how big what was going on was: the trafficking of children at the hands of their trusted trainers,” Blazer told Lawson.
With Blazer’s help, the FBI penetrated the dark underbelly of college sports, where fraudsters operated with impunity, resulting in 11 indictments and 10 convictions for crimes related to bribes paid to athletes, their families and coaches, including coaches from the state of Oklahoma, Arizona. Southern California and Auburn, and prison sentences for an Adidas executive, Merl Code and two associates.
Code’s pursuit of basketball player Brian Bowen Jr. was typical of the type of operation he carried out.
As one of the most sought-after players in college basketball, Bowen had turned down offers from schools including Michigan State, UCLA and Arizona to take a spot at the Adidas-affiliated University of Louisville.
However, during the FBI investigation, it emerged that a six-figure sum had been given to Bowen’s father as a sweetener and Code, who worked as a consultant for Adidas, was the man who made it possible.
Inevitably, it was the athlete who paid the price.
Brian Bowen Jr. was suspended from the Louisville basketball team, transferred to the University of South Carolina, and then was forced to sit out two seasons by the NCAA.
Although he attempted to enter the draft in 2018 and 2019, the case dogged him and he instead opted to leave the United States and play in Australia, his dream of playing in the NBA all but shattered.
But the investigation also revealed how even FBI agents were seduced into the seamier side of college sports, compromising their investigations.
During an operation in July 2017, the FBI seized the Chelsea Suite penthouse at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas and filled the safe with $135,000 in federal cash intended to bribe visiting coaches and capture the deals with hidden cameras.
Instead, the case’s lead agent, Scott Carpenter, took full advantage of state-funded hospitality, downing a six-pack of beer and nearly an entire bottle of vodka before taking $13,500 from the safe and losing it all in $700. by hand. Blackjack games at the Bellagio.
“Later that year, Scott Carpenter appeared in court in Las Vegas to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of embezzling $13,500 in federal funds, an offense that ironically (or perhaps unsurprisingly) was caught on camera. casino security,” Lawson writes.
Marty Blazer was not surprised.
“I saw trouble coming when I saw Scott get caught up in the money and the glamour,” he told Lawson.
“It’s intoxicating, in Scott’s case, literally.”
While Scott Carpenter was sentenced to 90 days in jail, Marty Blazer avoided a prison sentence and, in 2020, was given only one year of probation and ordered to return $1.56 million in restitution to those he disappointed.
Once the investigation was over, Blazer stepped out of the spotlight, accepted a job in the tech industry and, along with his wife Trish, tried to put their three children through college.
He was a changed man. “After everything I put my family through, I long for a quiet life,” he told Lawson.
But Marty Blazer never got his wish.
On January 8, shortly after Lawson finished “Hot Dog Money,” Blazer died suddenly of natural causes at his home near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
He was only 53 years old (although his story will live on long beyond Lawson’s book; George Clooney bought the rights to make it into a movie).
“Marty Blazer seemed to me to personify the ancient contradiction central to so many stories about crime and punishment,” Lawson writes.
“Yes, I lied then, but now I tell the truth.”