A veteran American football star, television pundit and Christian minister has apologised after he was caught advising a new generation of players to identify “a fall guy” to go to prison on their behalf.
Cris Carter, a member of the sport’s Hall of Fame, told a room full of young millionaires that he knew they were “not all going to do the right stuff”, so they needed to understand how to “get around all this stuff”.
The way to do that, he said, was to have a hanger-on who would take the fall for their misdemeanours, because your name can’t be in lights”.
Carter did not specify what sort of “stuff” he expected would get his audience into trouble but in recent years the NFL has been dogged by crime scandals. In April the former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez was sentenced to life in prison for murder. In March Darren Sharper, a recently retired Super Bowl winner was jailed for nine years for multiple rapes. In 2012 Josh Brent, of the Dallas Cowboys, was drunk at the wheel when he crashed his car, killing a team-mate travelling with him.
Carter, a former player regarded as one of the sport’s greatest, was speaking at a symposium for first-year professionals or “rookies” organised by the NFL, the sport’s governing body, in July last year.
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His remarks came to wider attention when one prominent audience member referred to them last week. In an interview with the sports channel ESPN, Chris Borland — who retired in the spring after a single season with the San Francisco 49ers because he feared getting brain damage — described the seminar where Carter and another former player spoke, which was videoed.
Carter asks the new players: “You got a crew? You gotta have a fall guy in the crew... If you going to have a crew, one of them fools got to know, he’s going to jail. We’ll get him out. ”