MISSISSIPPI BLUE 42

Now that college athletes are finally getting paid, Cranor takes a deep dive into the days when they weren’t.

The University of Central Mississippi Chiefs quarterback Moses McCloud is a Black freshman who’s backing up Matt Talley, a white star thrust to nationwide prominence by his success last season. So it’s not very likely that Moses will see much playing time—at least until Matt, fresh from his team’s latest victory, takes a header from a rooftop that ends his career, his life, and, thanks to the bag of money scattered around him, maybe his reputation. Mississippi state congressman Harry Christmas, whose years-long scheme to revitalize the region and incidentally enrich himself by paying to recruit and control top talent on the field, is furious that a distracted Matt didn’t throw the game, as Harry’s bagman, Eddie Pride Junior, had ordered him. But not so furious that he can’t turn on a dime and tender a similar deal to Moses. When the kid turns down the money, Harry threatens to call in Eddie’s crippling debts unless he persuades his daughter Ella May, who was with Matt on that roof moments before his hard landing, to offer herself to Moses, who’d resigned himself to losing that competition to Matt, too. Meanwhile, computer expert Rae Johnson, a rookie FBI agent whose father was a legendary football coach, is determined to look more closely into the star quarterback’s death, even though her much older partner, Frank Ranchino, keeps reminding her that their job description includes financial crimes, not murder. Cranor expertly keeps the pot simmering until a pervasive stench settles over virtually all parties.

A powerful case for the proposition that “college football wasn’t a game at all; it was a business.”