Willie Parker, Chris Hawkins, Or The Furniture: Whose Cocaine Is It???

This is just phenomenal. You may remember AJ Green’s jersey fiasco from a weeks ago—also known as the latest incident in a long line of galling NCAA hypocrisy—but you probably didn’t remember the name of the supposed agent who bought the jersey from Green.

His name’s Chris Hawkins, and apparently, he was arrested in April of ‘09 on charges of cocaine distribution. While moving furniture for former Steelers’ RB Willie Parker. I love this story:

After Hawkins refused to allow officers to search the contents of the moving truck, a drug-detecting dog indicated drugs were in the back of the box truck. According to the police report, officers discovered a paper sack containing a baseball-sized amount of base cocaine, which weighed about three ounces and was covered in peanut butter and pepper.

Page Pate, Hawkins’ Atlanta-based attorney, told ESPN.com on Wednesday that the U-haul truck was rented by former North Carolina and Pittsburgh Steelers running back Willie Parker. Pate said Hawkins, who is Parker’s roommate, was delivering furniture from Miami to North Carolina for Parker.

But here’s where it gets good: Hawkins claims the coke wasn’t his, and Parker rented the truck, meaning... Well, what does that mean? Our favorite radio personality, Bomani Jones, explains what’s to come: “A hair-brainnned scheme from the defense team.”

Yes, there will be a lot of he-said she-said going back and forth with this one, and if we get really lucky, it might even lead to he-said she-said “the 3 ounces of cocaine must have fallen out of the furniture.”

It’s mentioned here not for the legal intrigue, though, but because this is really a perfect example of the type of seedy characters that populate the underworld of college athletics. That, and Willie Parker LIVES with this dude, so it’s not like all NFL players are that much better. The more you know...

And also because Bomani Jones is awesome, and we don’t link to him enough. Here’s his show’s take on the whole situation (2nd half of the audio). Take 10 minutes and check it out.

Here’s a sample of what to expect. On his initial suspicions regarding Chris Hawkins:

“So we got this dude who got kicked out of school at Carolina, for a violent incident, and now six years later he’s working with agents, and somewhere in between he wound up on the up-and-up? Right? Hitting up dudes on Facebook to buy their clothes, and somehow he’s on the up-and-up? Nah, this isn’t possible.”

An important question that sounds even more hilarious when he says it really fast:

“What did this peanut butter pepper ball look like?”

On why he thinks Willie Parker is broke:

“Because they’re ROOMATES! They’re ROOMATES. I have not had a roommate since I was 20 years old. You know why? Because when I was 21, I got my own apartment, and there was no way in hell I was going back to living with somebody else. If the only place I can afford to sleep by myself is under a bridge, then call me a Red Hot Chili Pepper.”

And on and on. Thanks to Chris Hawkins and Bomani Jones for making the morning a little more hilarious, and let’s hope that the trial is every bit as absurd as the buildup suggests it’ll be.