DAVID MAIALETTI / Staff photographer
Eagles fifth-round tackle Fenuki Tupou missed one game at Oregon for self-reported violation.
Rich Hofmann: For Eagles' Tupou, it was the $100 handshake that ate his lunch
FENUKI TUPOU had lunch last summer with a guy who worked for an agent. He said the guy picked up the check for his part of the meal, which was only $10 - not a big deal but not exactly permitted under NCAA rules, either. He was an offensive tackle at Oregon, flattered at the interest being shown to him and, well, it was only $10.
At the end of the lunch, Tupou said, the guy shook his hand - and buried in his palm were five $20 bills. It was like something out of a bad movie, a hundred-dollar handshake. Tupou was getting ready for his senior year - he had no idea the Eagles would end up drafting him in the fifth round in 2009, no idea about a lot of things - and, suddenly, this.
He said he knew it was wrong, that he tried to give the money back but that the guy wouldn't take it. He also said he didn't know what to do. Five $20 bills.
"I just threw it away in my underwear drawer, under a bunch of stuff," Tupou said. "I felt too guilty to do anything with it. It just didn't feel right."
July became August and the football season beckoned. Tupou was looking to excel, to get drafted into the NFL. But he said there was this ache that he could not shake.
"Throughout the summer, I was very distraught," he said. "I didn't ever think that was something that would happen to me. I never really thought of myself as one of those guys. You hear about high-profile guys and you think this is something that could only happen to them. I never thought of myself in that way. Then, all of a sudden, it happened."
Tupou was standing on the practice field at the NovaCare Complex as he told the story. Under a bright sun, he was beginning a months- and years-long apprenticeship as an NFL offensive lineman. It can take that long and they all know it. Such is the position and the pace of development if you weren't drafted in the first round (and, sometimes, even if you were).
He is 6-5 and 314 pounds, athletic enough to have played some quarterback in high school; really. He has all of the hopes and aspirations that they all have at the start. But back last summer, he said he just felt guilty. You wonder if he felt as if he was putting it all in jeopardy.
"About a week-and-a-half before our first game, I called my coach and told him I had to get something off of my chest," Tupou said. "Then, a few days before our [first] game, we have a team meeting. Usually, all of the seniors get up and speak. It's about life lessons and whatnot. I asked the coach if I could get up and apologize to the team for what I had done.
"I think you gain a lot more respect when you do something like that with your teammates," he said.
The suspension was for one game, and the NCAA assessed no additional penalties. Financially, Topou was required to donate the $100, plus $10 for the lunch, to charity. He chose the Boys' and Girls' Clubs in Oregon. When he looks back on it, he says he thinks about the meeting with his teammates most of all.
"It was an apology, but more than that," he said. "My topic was about making mistakes, things like that, and owning up to them. It was easy for me to introduce my situation after that. There was the apology and there was the lesson.
"They praised me for it. They told me that a lot of players wouldn't have done that, knowing they would be suspended for a game, especially in my senior year, a really important year. But everybody was praising me and thanking me for coming forward like that."
When he paid the money back, Fenuki Topou said, he just fished into his underwear drawer to retrieve it. "It was the five $20s, the same five $20s," he said. And now, after football, the political science major says he wants to be a lawyer. *
Send e-mail to hofmanr@phillynews.com,
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