It has almost become a certainty that when someone is put on a pedestal in American sports, they’ll fall. Alex Rodriguez was supposed to erase Barry Bonds from and consequently clean up the record books before he admitted to PED use. Tiger Woods world came crashing down after a car accident and extra-marital affairs were discovered.
Now Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III is the latest to fall, or about to fall. He is considered smart, humble, a beacon of what an athlete should be. But now he is being caught up in a sexting scandal.
Busted Coverage broke the story with pictures of the “texts” which come on the eve of his wedding. The texts are date early July 6th, 1 AM roughly. He would marry his fiancée on July 6th.
Busted Coverage’s source is a guy named “Brandon K.” This is how BC chronicled his discovery of the tweets:
"So I was looking through RGIII’s twitter feed the night of his wedding. I followed his RTs to a groomsman of his, William Mallow. Going through his twitter feed I found a girl he RT that said she missed him. She looked hot so I looked at her feed. (@Mere__) THat night one of her friends tweeted “RGIII getting married today. Will @Mere__ crash the wedding?” She responds immediately with “I could show Becky this though” and its a picture of her text messages with a guy name RgIII in her phone. The text show a black guy lifting up his shirt showing a six pack and trying to get her to respond. This is 1am July 6th (day of wedding) and then finally gives up after no response from her."
@Mere__ is Meredith Barber, a VCU student, Hooters waitress and Redskins fan. She has since taken down her Twitter account and the incriminating evidence, but not before Brandon K. screenshot the conversation.
It’s not just texts, a source sent along pics of Barber and RG3 using FaceTime that Barber uploaded to her Instagram account, which is private.
Busted Coverage then posts the e-mail correspondence between Barber and Busted Coverage in it’s entirety.
It starts off with Barber asking them to take down the story in exchange for everything she has, with one condition: her anonymity. We saw with Tiger Woods that is just not likely to happen once the media is on the hunt.
At first he questions Barber about the “false parts” of the story but she doesn’t elaborate. He states that must mean the texts are authentic. She says “I didn’t say that” and then quickly offers to sell inappropriate pictures.
The negotiations regarding the pictures begins and Busted Coverage is trying to find out what they’re working with or what the is in the pictures. She says: “texts showing his umber not just contact “RG3″, screenshots of snapchats, inappropriate pictures, etc…” and asks for him to give her a dollar amount. A total of 10 “newsworthy” pieces.
She sends him a sample picture so he knows what he is working with.
She then says she has more like the sample, one with his dick out and a couple “other ones with clear picture of his face. The same screenshot in the article but with his real number up there.”
Busted Coverage continues to question it’s authenticity and Barber gets impatient and says “Just give me an offer before I shop it around.”
He offered $500 for everything besides “dick pics” but that number was too low apparently. That’s where the e-mail thread ends.
Deadspin got an e-mail from some one offering to sell pictures as well:
"Around the same time, we received an email from someone claiming to be Meredith’s ex-boyfriend, offering to sell us “information, text messages, FaceTime screenshots, pictures, you name it, proving that it was indeed him and he’s been up to it for some time.” He claimed he has text conversations of Griffin trying to get her to meet him in Vegas, and at least one photo of Griffin’s penis. In a subsequent email, he wrote, “This is the next Brett Favre story, if not even bigger,” and demanded $25,000—or $13,000 more than we paid for the Favre voicemails and photos. (As a handy index to relative sports stardom, the price demands of dick-pic-mongers has replaced the old Beckett price guide.)The emails from the ex-boyfriend and the ones from Meredith on BC share similarities in the items on offer, even in phrasing, and each sent an identical “sample” photo of a shirtless man with his face blacked out.We also heard from another reader, who had originally contacted us back in January. He was offering a story about how Griffin had been “catfished” by an older woman posing as a college-age girl. She had supposedly received scores of texts and Facebook messages from Griffin, as well as “dick pics.”We never purchased any of the photos, and neither did Busted Coverage. But all of it is out there in internetland, somewhere, waiting for the highest bidder, and if history is any indication, it’ll be popping up before long."
An e-mail to Busted Coverage, from RG3’s buddy William Mallow (he was in RG3’s wedding), claims Meredith Barber is looking to get paid and he provides screen shots of a text conversation to prove it:
"Look I’m going to cut through the BS and just get down to it. We both know that Meredith is looking for attention/money. I know this is what you do for a living and you thought that this would be a golden opportunity but the fact of the matter is that this is completely false. I was with Robert the night in question, and there was zero texting of other girls, much less selfie stomach shots. That isn’t even close to what the bathroom of the suite we were in looked like.It’s completely unfair to crucify a guy who is a role model to hundreds of thousands of people because all he’s done from day 1 is the right thing. The guy didn’t take a SIP of alcohol during the entire time of the bachelor party in Vegas the weekend before. He’s completely committed and in love with his wife, and would never jeopardize that.If you want any further information or proof, please let me know. I also have screenshots of Meredith yesterday admitting to me via texts that this was all a joke and that someone grabbed her phone."