The real reason David hadn’t been linked with anyone on set was that Lexi had hooked up with him. She’d made it clear that they were both young, good-looking, and had needs. They were to both understand that was all it was, just a hookup.
It wasn’t as if others hadn’t offered David similar opportunities. Both his publicist and agent had told David that if he wanted to maintain his ‘All-American Boy’ image, he shouldn’t be seen acting like a typical Hollywood douche. It was bad enough that he’d had five children before graduating high school.
Granted, one was adopted, but the optics were still far from ideal.
On a football recruiting trip, he’d met a young lady at the campus check-in. He’d asked her to show him around campus and go to dinner with him. David and a few of his fellow recruits went out as a group. They were accompanied by some of the sorority sisters of the girl in question.
It was all pretty innocent until the second night when David had been invited to fulfill a fantasy one of the sorority girls had. That night, he’d spent quality time with both the girl he’d asked out the day before and her sorority sister. One of them ended up having twin boys and the other a baby girl. They’d held off telling David about the children until after they’d been born.
In the meantime, he’d gotten a classmate pregnant, and she’d had a little boy.
David, being who he was, hadn’t shirked his responsibilities. He had a healthy family support system, and his parents had stepped in to help raise the children.
The last child was that of a friend who’d found herself in a tough predicament. She and David had actually dated for a while. She’d broken up with him and taken up with another guy who’d gotten her pregnant with a boy right as they were ready to go off to college. The father had signed away his parental rights, not wanting anything to do with having a baby at such a young age.
David and his family had opened their doors and let the girl and her son move in with them. They’d given her a job as a childcare helper, which allowed her to take college classes. David had always treated her son as one of his own and made it official last spring.
Now he had all his children under one roof in his new home in Malibu.
“The poor guy’s schedule has been bananas. He’s been working nonstop since the beginning of May when filming started on the James Bond movie. Immediately after that, in August, he was off to New Zealand and Australia to film the next two Star Academy films. Because of the compressed schedules for filming, he’s often been on set upwards of eighteen hours a day or more. I challenge anyone to find time for a love life when that’s happening,” Lexi said to deflect the question.
“Why is his schedule so compressed?”
When David had agreed to film the movies, he’d bypassed his first semester of college. A deal-breaker would have been to miss the second semester.
“He’ll enroll at the University of Oklahoma for the spring semester in just a few weeks.”
“Does he still plan to play football?” Cassie asked.
“That, and baseball.”
David had been one of the top recruits for both sports coming out of high school.
“Will he continue to act while in school?” Cassie dug.
Lexi had to admit that Cassie had finally asked a good question.
“He did get a waiver from the NCAA, but he has no plans to act while he’s in college. He’ll focus on getting his degree and playing ball. David wants to be a normal student-athlete,” Lexi answered.
Getting the NCAA waiver had been touch-and-go. The NCAA and its member institutions wanted to control the image rights of their student-athletes. With the help of his legal team, David had come to an agreement with the NCAA powers-that-be. His being a model and actor had been a sticking point for his eligibility.
The NCAA had specific rules that precluded such activities. Their contention was that student-athletes gain the fame that makes them marketable from their athletic abilities. The schools provided training and opportunity, so they should reap the benefit. But David had garnered his marketability before entering college, which the NCAA recognized, and they had finally provided him with a waiver.
Then came the fly in the ointment. A shoe company and university had each approached David and two of his teammates with money if they would go to that school. David reported the whole scheme, which turned into a mess.
The NCAA investigator, Stewart Chadwick, had wanted David to conduct further meetings with the bad actors, to the point of committing to the school. Chadwick was hoping that would help the NCAA get the goods on them. Unlike the FBI, the NCAA could not compel people to talk. The investigator was trying to do an end-around, to the point of seriously jeopardizing David’s sports career.
’Fat chance of that,’ Lexi thought with smug satisfaction. David had refused.
The investigator tried to coerce David’s cooperation with the threat that he would pull David’s eligibility and waiver if David didn’t help him. David called his bluff and found himself ineligible for a while.
The NCAA and Chadwick didn’t know that in addition to reporting the incident to them, David had talked to the FBI. The feds were in the process of building cases against various shoe companies for offering money to high school athletes to attend schools they sponsored. However, no one but the FBI was privy to that information. It turned out that the FBI was more interested in basketball recruiting, so they’d shelved David’s case.
David and his legal team had arranged a meeting with the NCAA to work out his issues. The meeting was hijacked by the FBI, and the NCAA was forced to back off. The FBI didn’t want it getting out that they were investigating shoe companies. They’d suggested that the NCAA might want to reinstate David’s eligibility. The NCAA acquiesced but had slow-walked the waiver to allow him his name, image, and likeness rights, also known as NIL rights.
While he was filming in New Zealand, the story broke that the FBI had moved on the shoe companies. The NCAA, fearing that David might tell the press that they’d known about the investigation and done nothing, had finally come to their senses. They’d given him the waivers he needed to promote his films. There was a lot of language in the agreements indicating that the waivers were an exception due to his unique history.
The NCAA had dragged their feet because they faced legislation in several states that would negate one of their long-standing rules. The laws would allow student-athletes to control their NIL rights and enable student-athletes to make money through advertising, appearances, and the like. It might also mean that they would get paid for jersey sales and other items that universities currently controlled. If the market truly opened, the NCAA’s member institutions could take massive financial hits.
“But I’d understood that he was approached about doing the new Star Wars movie. What’s going on with that?” Cassie asked.
Lexi bit her tongue because Cassie had been on the cusp of uncovering what had happened behind the scenes at big-time football schools. Instead, she was back to more familiar topics.
David’s agent, Ari Gould, had pushed for David to skip college and act full-time. David had, in fact, won the role of young Han Solo but turned it down because it would have meant leaving high school to film it.
Ari hadn’t been happy when that decision was made. But then the Star Wars movie had tanked relatively badly compared to the other films in the franchise. And David then won his Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Royal Palm. That was followed shortly by his filming the James Bond and Star Academy movies.
Ari had gone behind David’s back to see if Disney/Lucasfilm were interested in his client doing another project. David had been furious and fired Ari. Frank, his publicist, suspected that Ari leaked the information as a parting FU.