Alleged adviser says he didn't provide improper benefits to North Carolina players

To the NCAA, Todd Stewart is a financial adviser who provided more than $7,000 in improper benefits to North Carolina football players.

From Stewart's own perspective, he's a DJ from Washington, whose connection to the Tar Heels' football program extends no further than a longtime friendship with former UNC defensive tackle Marvin Austin.

In a 40-minute interview with The (Raleigh) News & Observer and Charlotte Observer, Stewart said he is being used as a scapegoat by the NCAA and the University of North Carolina. He said he did "good things" through the years for his friend Austin, but he denied the NCAA's assertions that he paid for trips made by Austin and UNC teammate Greg Little or that he offered other improper benefits.

He also denied ever working with Pro Sports Financial, the Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based group of financial advisers named in the June 21 Notice of Allegations delivered by the NCAA to UNC.

"My name is out there for what went on, but it's untrue. It's all lies," Stewart said in a phone interview Friday. "At the end of the day, the NCAA needed to pin it on somebody, and I was the only one who would talk to them."

The NCAA's Notice of Allegations connects Stewart to 22 alleged improper benefits, valued at $7,216.20, provided to Austin, Little and UNC defensive back Charles Brown. Austin is alleged to have received $5,509.70 of the total, according to the notice, with $1,652 attributed to Little and $54.50 to Brown.

The bulk of the expenses cited by the NCAA, Stewart said, were for paying for Austin and Little to travel to Miami.

Stewart denies that he covered those travel costs.

Stewart was interviewed by the NCAA's Chance Miller (noted in the NOA as occurring Aug. 19), and told him that he has lent his car to Austin and has let him stay at his house in Landover, Md., but that he didn't pay for any of the players' trips cited by the NCAA as improper benefits.

"I didn't pay no seven thousand dollars for nobody to do nothing," Stewart said last week. "That's ridiculous."

Austin, an All-ACC defensive tackle in 2009, was suspended by UNC before the 2010 season and kicked off the team in October for his role in the NCAA investigation, which included accepting more than $13,000 in improper benefits.

Little, the team's leading receiver in 2009, was ruled permanently ineligible by the NCAA in October for accepting more than $5,000 in benefits and for lying to NCAA investigators. Both Austin and Little were second-round picks in the NFL draft in April. Neither played a down in the 2010 college season.

Brown, a cornerback, redshirted the 2010 season because of his role in the academic fraud portion of the investigation and has been suspended the first game of the 2011 season for receiving improper benefits from Stewart.

Stewart, 32, said his friendship with Austin goes back almost 10 years, before Austin was a high school football star in Washington.

"He's had Thanksgiving dinner at my house," Stewart said. "He's the godfather of my oldest son."

Stewart comes from a football family. His father, Willie Stewart, is an icon in Washington high school football, producing major college and NFL players at Anacostia High School for almost 30 years.

Todd Stewart played football for his father at Anacostia and then played safety, and mainly on special teams, at the University of Maryland. According to Maryland's records, he lettered in 1997. Stewart's younger brother, Tyrone, also played football at Maryland, from 1998 to 2002.

Todd Stewart counts Vernon Davis, a former Maryland tight end who played high school football at Dunbar in Washington, as one of his friends. Davis was the San Francisco 49ers' first-round pick in 2006 and is entering his sixth NFL season.

Davis' younger brother Vontae Davis, also a first-round NFL pick, also went to Dunbar and starred at Illinois before going to the Miami Dolphins in 2009. Vontae Davis and Austin, who grew up in Washington, are friends.

Austin, who was a Parade All-America player at Washington's Ballou High School, could not be reached for comment.

The birthday party for Vontae Davis was a focal point of his interview with the NCAA, Stewart said.

The Miami trip spawned the post on Austin's Twitter account — "I live in Club Liv" — which Austin has subsequently explained was a nod to a song lyric referencing a Miami Beach nightclub, not to where he was at the time.

UNC's failure to monitor "social networking activity" was cited among the nine major violations outlined by the NCAA in the Notice of Allegations.

In a March interview, Austin said he made three trips to Miami in 2010 to see Vontae Davis. One trip, made during Memorial Day weekend, was for Davis' birthday party, which was hosted by NFL running back Frank Gore.

Stewart said he went to the party with Austin, Little and former Alabama defensive tackle Marcell Dareus (who subsequently received a two-game suspension from the NCAA for accepting improper benefits). Stewart said he did not pay for their travel expenses.

Stewart said the NCAA asked him about NFL agents Todd France (Davis' agent) and Drew Rosenhaus (Gore's agent) during the interview.

"They thought I was working for Todd France or Drew Rosenhaus," Stewart said. "If anything went wrong at that party, one of those agents would have pointed the finger at the other."

Stewart said: "It was never about agents; it was about going to see a friend."

Efforts to reach France and Rosenhaus for comment were unsuccessful. Neither has been disciplined by the NFL Players Association for any role in the UNC investigation (Michael Katz, a Rosenhaus employee, is identified by the NCAA as having provided $398 in improper benefits to Little and former UNC defensive end Robert Quinn ).

The NFLPA suspended NFL agent Gary Wichard in December for his financial connections to Austin and former UNC assistant coach John Blake. Wichard died in March.

Stewart said he had no connection to Wichard or with Blake.

NCAA spokeswoman Stacey Osburn said the NCAA cannot comment on a current investigation. UNC has 90 days to respond to the NCAA's NOA and is scheduled to meet with the NCAA in Indianapolis on Oct. 28.

The most puzzling part of the NCAA notice, Stewart said, is how he was connected to Pro Sports Financial.

Vernon Davis once invested money with Jeff Rubin of Pro Sports Financial, Stewart said, and that's the extent of his relationship to the group. Stewart makes his living as a Washington-based disc jockey, he said.

"I never worked for them — ever," Stewart said.

Neither Pro Sports Financial nor Rubin, the company's president, returned messages left over a six-day period.

Stewart who has done only one other media interview, in October, said he has been reluctant to clear his name because of the possible effect on Austin's future. He said he was more concerned about what happened to Austin and Little, missing out on their senior season, than about his own reputation.

"I'm not going to say I didn't do good things for Marvin, but to put a dollar amount on it is untrue," Stewart said. "Whatever I do for Marvin, I've known him since he was 13, it has never been about what I can get from Marvin."

(c) 2011, The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.).

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