[revrew]

When Davis first approached me about managing an NFL franchise, I nearly cried. My fantasy from childhood was to do exactly that. In fact, in our office fantasy football league, I was the reigning champion, four years straight. That (and season tickets to the Texans) was as close as I ever figured I would come to the NFL.

Jeffrey Davis, however, had a plan in mind. For 6 years, our firm had handled investments and financial management for New Orleans Saints owner, Tom Benson. Benson had been trying to improve the financial situation with the Saints even before we knew him. He had even threatened to move the team to San Antonio if he couldn't get a better stadium deal. After hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans, Benson made good on his threat for a while. As New Orleans rebuilt, however, Benson grew more and more restless, especially as his financial position grew worse and worse.

That's when Davis stepped in. Davis suggested that Benson sell a share in the team and then use that money to either make a concerted effort to improve his New Orleans position or make good on his threat to move the team. Davis even offered to help grease the wheels in San Antonio if Benson chose to make the move. And who should Benson sell a 49% share of the team to? Jeffrey Davis, of course.

Davis had made hundreds of millions in the stock market and in international investing. His investments with Chinese pharmaceuticals and wind energy in India were especially profitable. When Katrina shook up New Orleans, Davis was flirting with the title of billionaire.

Many of those investments were my discoveries or my ideas, but because of our "arrangement," I remained an employee of the firm, rather than full partner. I was well-paid, but Davis made the millions.

Tom Benson was reluctant at the time to sell to Davis, but Jeffrey had an influencial friend on his side: NFL commishioner Paul Tagliabue. The media and several other organizations were breathing down Tagliabue's neck to get more African-American owners into the NFL, and Davis manipulated that pressure to leverage Tagliabue into exerting some influence on Benson.

That's also when I first met Keaton Graves. Mr. Graves was a first-class spin doctor, a master of media manipulation who had quietly garnered significant respect through his work with the Clinton presidency, though his name was largely unknown to the general public. I don't know how Graves came to be in Jeffrey Davis' employ, but nonetheless, Graves quickly became an intricate part of the Davis team. He was to Jeffrey Davis what Goebbels was to Hitler, a propagandist that masked Davis' intent in a thick cloak of benevolence. Graves' work with Davis was a magnum opus, profoundly to be admired--were it not so dispicable.

Graves, I learned, had been on the payroll for months, working hard to stir up activist groups and key media sources to put pressure on Tagliabue. Graves liked playing the race card, but never directly. He made sure Jeffrey Davis' image was always one of racial reconciliation, touting a raceless Amercian melting pot, as evidenced by his own mixed racial ancestry. "If Jefforson Davis' grandson can marry the granddaughter of a slave and their son live the American dream to become a millionaire," Davis was quoted as saying (thanks to Keaton Graves), "then let us let our painful past give birth to a new generation, living not their grandparents' struggle, but living instead our common American destiny. Let us no longer be a Divided States of 1865, but let us be a United States of the 21st century."

It's amazing that Davis could even stomach saying that, for in truth, Davis lived more in 1865 than any man, woman, or child since 1865. Davis had no intention of uniting the United States, only raising up a new and utopian South. The other states in the Union, as far as Davis was concerned, could just go to hell.