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Bucs WR Antonio Brown Rips Off Uniform and Walks Off Field Mid Game

Vic Mackey

By Vic Mackey
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  • 3 months later...
Hermanator

Hermanator 6562

Posted
Posted (edited)

The full story to this Arena football disaster is crazy. Brown is a flaming cunt of the highest order

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DARIUS PRINCE AND his two dozen Albany Empire teammates wanted their money.

They'd been owed payment by direct deposit after their previous National Arena League game -- a 55-53 home loss to the San Antonio Gunslingers -- the first since Antonio Brown, the mercurial former NFL star receiver, became the team's majority owner. The week came and went with no payment.

For guys on one of the lowest rungs of professional football, where salaries start at $250 per game before taxes, no pay means no money for food, gas or rent. Some of the higher-earning players -- Prince, the league MVP at the time, who had the top salary at about $3,000 per game -- would help support teammates so broke that they were hungry.

Now, on a late-April evening, an empty bus waited to take them 10 hours south for a Sunday afternoon game against the Carolina Cobras, and the Empire faced a decision: Get on the bus or hold out for their pay.

They sat in their rooms, in a 2½-star hotel between the Greyhound bus terminal and the interstate, refreshing their banking apps and texting in a group chat. Should they go to Greensboro and then refuse to play? What if the league blackballed them? Would it be the end of their NFL dreams?


Prince helped compile a list of how much each player was owed and sent it to newly appointed team president Alberony Denis, who tried, and failed, to pay them via a Zelle cash transfer.

Several hours later, Prince received a screenshot that seemed to show a pending payment would arrive by the following Monday, and Empire players filed onto the bus. Prince scored three touchdowns in a 56-49 loss before another 10-hour ride back to Albany.

Four months later, Empire players are still owed compensation from Brown's tenure, according to a local attorney who is preparing potential lawsuits. Brown, who raised fans' hopes by buying into the team in March, is nowhere to be seen, and the Empire are no more. The National Arena League board voted unanimously to kick the team out in June for failure to pay three months of membership fees, according to Alex Gunaris, Brown's accountant, and two league sources.

Brown's brief, doomed tenure as the Empire's owner was defined by unpaid bills, unfulfilled promises and erratic behavior, according to players, coaches, team employees and fans interviewed by ESPN.

"You talked to my guy Alex already, right?" Brown said when reached by phone by ESPN, referring to his accountant. "I don't really got nothing to say. Just talk to my authorized representative."

Prince and his Empire teammates are left to ponder their futures and the deflated expectations of Brown's tenure.

"He came in promising the world," Prince said, "and didn't show for s---."

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During training camp, players asked the team to post a birthday tribute to Mo Ruffins, a former Empire offensive lineman who died last year at age 38. Nelson posted it, but it was quickly deleted. The players wanted to know why.

"People were a little frustrated because these guys were close to [Mo]," wide receiver Dwayne Hollis said.

When they couldn't get an answer, Prince, Hollis and another player approached Brown at a local cigar lounge. Brown was there with Ryan Larkin, a local sneaker entrepreneur he'd brought in to the front office.

"We were there to just talk, to give our views about how that's wrong," Hollis said.

Hollis and Prince said the conversation quickly got heated, and Brown threatened to pull a gun.

"AB looked at Ryan [Larkin] and was like, 'Hey, man, you still got the AR in the car? Go get it,'" Prince said. "Then I was like, I'm not going to allow this dude to walk out of here after you just threatened us. ... After he said that, things did calm down and we had a conversation. But the fact is that he threatened us by telling his assistant to grab his AR."

Larkin did not respond to ESPN's requests for comment.

Quote

ON THE BUS back from North Carolina, the players still hadn't received the first missing paycheck, and were now owed money for a second game, a 56-49 loss to the Cobras. Coach Damon Ware called Brown, who said the team was complaining too much.

"'Last week it was food. This week, it's your money. Y'all need to worry about winning,'" Brown told Ware and the players on speakerphone.

"[Brown] was trying to tell us, 'Don't worry about getting paid.' If the Pittsburgh Steelers didn't pay you, what would you do?" Prince said. "This is our livelihood. You can't tell us not to worry about it."

Several players pressed Brown about the missing money.

"[Brown] got loud," Ware said.

"He was telling us he don't respect us," said Melvin Hollins, an offensive and defensive lineman from Jackson State. "And we just, in his words, a bunch of broke arena boys."

Ware said Brown threatened to lock the players out of their rooms at the hotel in Albany and throw away their belongings.

"'And all them old-ass players,'" Prince said, remembering Brown's words, "'I'll tell the bus driver to pull over and kick y'all off my f---ing bus right now.'"

Ware said he resigned during the phone call, and Brown released at least six players on the spot, including Prince and starting quarterback Sam Castronova. They rode the rest of the way to upstate New York with their careers hanging in the balance.

Some of those released had confronted Brown about their money on the phone call, multiple players said, but others hadn't. Two players said that one of Brown's associates was recording conversations between athletes.

Gunaris later told ESPN that the payments were delayed when the team switched banks.

When the bus arrived in Albany, the people who had been released couldn't get into their rooms, several players said. Their key cards didn't work.

"Dude just has no respect for nobody," Prince said.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/38115632/antonio-brown-albany-empire-champions-defunct

Edited by Hermanator
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Texzilla58

Texzilla58 4683

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He's clearly mentally broken, whatever the root cause. I would have to guess his ending is going to be "tragic", one way or another, and "too early".

Unfortunately assholes like this usually live long lives. I hope it’s in prison. He is a piece of shit of the highest order.

Stevie Ray Vaughan, James Dean, Karen Carpenter, Payne Stewart, JFK died too early tragically. This cocksucker will live to 110.
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  • 8 months later...
Beau Vine

Beau Vine 53625

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In 2017, he hired an artist to paint a mural in the Pittsburgh-area home. She accused him of sexual harassment, alleging that Brown had sex with another woman in the same room while she was trying to work.

George Costanza Seinfeld GIF

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