Dez Bryant and John Junker would seem to have little in common.The first is a 22-year-old wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys; the second is a middle-age-plus bowl game executive — or was until Tuesday, when the Fiesta Bowl sent the CEO and his $600,000 salary packing.
Bryant’s difficult childhood is well-known; personal information about Junker was hard to come by after his bio was scrubbed from the Fiesta Bowl website, but I don’t believe Junker’s mother birthed her son when she was 15, as did Bryant’s, or spent time behind bars for selling crack.
But the two men apparently do share something — a fondness for playing fast and loose with money not their own.
While still at Oklahoma State, the talented Bryant clearly was headed for a pro payday, but he didn’t want to wait.
A year and a half before inking an $8.5 million deal with the Cowboys, he set up a line of credit through an adviser and begin to make purchases here and there.
Necessities, really.
Like diamond dog tags set in white gold. Like a $60,000 custom charm. Like a $65,000 diamond cross made of white gold. Like nine expensive watches and other assorted goodies.
What’s wrong with that, you ask? Well, nothing, I suppose — if you pay back what you borrow. Bryant didn’t, and now two entities are suing him for $861,350, plus interest and attorney fees.
Junker, as far as we know, isn’t into bling. Instead, his style runs to treating the Fiesta Bowl’s nonprofit funds like his own personal piggy bank. A scathing 276-page investigative report found that Junker benefited from “excessive compensation, nonbusiness and inappropriate expenditures and inappropriate gifts.”
How much are we talking about? At least $360,000 that Junker received was cited, delicately, as being “potentially personal” or “potentially inappropriate;” another $2.26 million was called “undetermined,” meaning more information was needed to determine whether those expenditures were hinky.
Among the more egregious expenses were a $33,000 birthday bash for Junker, a $110,000 Celebrity Fight Night spree, and a $1,200 strip club tab that Junker defended this way: “We are in the business where big, strong athletes are known to attend these types of establishments. It was important for us to visit, and we certainly conducted business.”
I bet they did.
To be fair, Junker did try to spread the wealth around, specifically to local politicians — reportedly hatching a scheme to buy influence by having Fiesta Bowl employees contribute to campaign coffers, then secretly (and illegally) get reimbursed through bogus bonuses.
Bryant and Junker — citizens from different sides of the track, yet both experiencing the ultimate American dream: living large on other people’s cash.
Greed — America’s great social glue.
Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com
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