The Wild Party
On Dec. 26, Thayer Evans, a Houston-based freelancer who writes frequently for The Times, reported that one of the nation’s most intense college football recruiting battles had ended: Jamarkus McFarland of Lufkin, Tex., was going to Oklahoma, not Texas.
Evans had stayed close to McFarland and his mother, Kashemeyia Adams, for months, and he recounted an intense courtship of them by coaches and boosters. He quoted from a paper that McFarland had written for his high school English class that described the recruiting process, including comparisons of the football programs. McFarland’s paper described a party at an upscale Dallas hotel, hosted by Texas fans after the Texas-Oklahoma game, where he said drugs and alcohol were plentiful and young women took off their clothes and were “romancing each other.”
But McFarland later told rivals.com, a football fan Web site, that he had “spiced up” the description of the party and intimated that, if he had known Evans was going to quote from his paper, he could have told the reporter what was accurate and what was not. Evans told me he went over the paper in detail with McFarland, and Adams told me that she knew the reporter reviewed what he was writing with her son, although she didn’t know the details of their conversation.
The Times asked McFarland to clarify his conflicting remarks, and after two days, he sent a text message that cleared up nothing. It said he had respect for Evans, that his school paper was written “to capture and inform my audiences,” and “I stand by this story and I have moved on.”
Adams said that since The Times article was published, her son has been the target of racial slurs from angry Texas supporters, and she said she would not let him talk to reporters in the future. But she defended Evans’s story. “An article was written, and I was very well pleased with it, and that’s that,” she said.
What really happened? I asked Evans how much he pressed for independent verification of the party. He said he asked for the name of the hotel, and McFarland could not remember it. The reporter did not ask who invited the young man to the party, who accompanied him or who else might have witnessed the lurid events.
Evans said that in retrospect, he could have done more to get independent corroboration of the party. But he said that McFarland and his mother had never misled him during their long association.
Tom Jolly, the sports editor, and Mike Abrams, who was editing the 2,800-word article on deadline on Christmas Day, said they did not press Evans about the party. Abrams said the allegations were in a school paper, and “there’s a trust between this kid and a teacher.” McFarland is a good student, and “submitting this document for a grade added credibility,” Abrams said — “maybe too much credibility.”
The article also contained allegations by Adams that she had received various offers to induce her son to go to Texas, although it made clear that she did not believe that anyone associated with the university was responsible for any misconduct. Nick Voinis, a spokesman for the University of Texas athletics department, complained to me that Evans did not call the university for comment before the article was published.
Evans did alert the university just before his article was published on the newspaper’s Web site. Why didn’t he seek reaction beforehand? He said that if anyone at Texas had spoken to him, it would have violated N.C.A.A. recruiting rules. And, he said, he did not want to give either Texas or Oklahoma information they could use to try to influence McFarland’s decision.
“I felt like we made the best efforts we could under the circumstances,” Evans said.
Regardless of whether Texas officials would have commented, Evans should have given them the chance. As in each of the other cases, a phone call could have headed off much embarrassment.
Ronald Reagan may not have loved the press, but he had good advice for every reporter: Trust but verify.
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