Adams may be 75 years old, but his home looks like something dreamed up by teenage fraternity brothers: he has 36 big-screen televisions, five TV viewing rooms, three game rooms, a wet bar and, on a recent afternoon, two tapped kegs.
Adams, a retired restaurant and real estate developer, has been called the Great Gatsby of college sports for his legendary game-day parties, which often include athletes, coaches and politicians mixing with a crowd that can top 100. But he is more than a septuagenarian party animal.
A 1963 graduate of Tennessee, Adams represents the twilight of a college sports booster. For more than 40 years, he cherished his role as a benefactor for players, even if it meant breaking a few rules. If college athletes generally receive gifts in the shadows, Roy Adams is the rare booster who crows about his largess.
He is not remorseful, and now, largely out of the booster game, he says he is proud of his life’s work and the friendships he has made.
“I knew the N.C.A.A. rules,” he said. “I just didn’t care for them.” (...)
Today’s boosters, Adams said, have lost the intimate relationships with players he always sought. From his perspective, the N.C.A.A. rules have tightened drastically. And the players have changed too. “Today you give a kid a Chevrolet, and he wants a Cadillac,” Adams said. “You give them $1,000, they want two or three. It’s not the same as it used to be.”
Adams has been a Tennessee football fan for decades, but now, instead of making trips to Knoxville, he brings the party to his TV rooms — all five of them. On a typical Saturday, guests spill from room to room, passing a shuffleboard table, a stuffed deer head, a signed photograph from the former Tennessee star Peyton Manning.
On one wall a photograph of Adams shaking hands with Nick Saban hangs above a signed picture of Richard Nixon. In the pantry, Adams had a urinal installed. Then there are all the televisions, squeezed together like puzzle pieces around every corner. His friends say there is no better sports bar in Memphis.
by Ben Strauss, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Lance Murphey 
