“Kid, Kate must have told you I’m a retired NFL player, right?”
Hank spoke in a casual tone.
With a bit of an adult’s appraisal toward a half-grown boy.
But just now, Lin Wansheng’s reaction had caught him somewhat off guard.
Lin Wansheng had not shown the slightest hint of being flattered.
He simply continued eating his sundae calmly, then nodded.
That reaction isn’t right, Hank thought. Normally, a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old kid, hearing a former pro player strike up a conversation with him, shouldn’t he be so excited he could barely speak?
He narrowed his eyes and decided to raise the stakes. “I can train you. Turn you completely into a wide receiver. East River High, right?”
“I’m very familiar with your coach, Bob. Once school starts, I’ll have him transfer you straight to the second team.”
Lin Wansheng finally stopped his spoon, looked up, and smiled.
“What would I do on the second team? I wouldn’t get to play in games anyway.”
Hank choked a little on those words, his brows furrowing. “Then you want to keep messing around on the third team?”
“You’re in twelfth grade, still hanging around with those freshmen?”
“Looks like you’re quite familiar with my background.”
Lin Wansheng’s tone remained calm, with no hint of joy or anger.
He looked straight into Hank’s eyes and said slowly, “Then you should also know that in New York, among Chinese Americans playing high school football, I’m the only one, right?”
Lin Wansheng had long known that Hank had been coming here every day these past few days because he absolutely wanted something from him.
Aside from the label of being a Chinese American who played football.
He couldn’t think of any other quality he possessed that would catch the eye of this former NFL player.
Thinking of this, he stopped beating around the bush.
He finished the last bite of his sundae, tossed the empty cup into the trash can, then turned around and said bluntly:
“Mr. Hank, let’s put our cards on the table. What do you need to get from me?”
Hank looked at the boy in front of him, and for the first time, put away that amused smile. He was silent for a moment, then let out a low laugh.
“Interesting…” he thought. “Unexpectedly clear-headed.”
He did not directly answer Lin Wansheng’s question. Instead, he stared into Lin Wansheng’s eyes.
“Kid, what do you think is the best way for a retired NFL player like me to make money?”
Without waiting for Lin Wansheng to answer, he continued on his own.
“Go back and become a college coach? Or work for some big-name agency as a low-level agent?” He shook his head, a trace of disdain in his tone. “The ceiling’s too low. Even if I made it to the top, the annual salary might not even be half of my rookie contract. That’s not a career. That’s retirement.”
Hank raised his head, his gaze burning as he stared at Lin Wansheng. “After I retired, I kept thinking about one thing. American football, the most profitable sport in the entire United States, has a massive market that everyone has overlooked. A huge blue ocean.”
He leaned forward slightly and lowered his voice. “The Chinese American market, or rather, the entire Asian American market. This blue ocean is unimaginably vast, yet no one has ever truly developed it.”
Lin Wansheng’s heart stirred slightly. He did not speak.
But his eyes already showed that he had followed Hank’s train of thought.
“I’ve been observing you for a long time, Jimmy.”
“You’re smart. You know what you want,” Hank continued.
“You think I just want you to go play football, get a scholarship, and then become your agent?”
“No, no, no. That’s thinking too small.”
“You see those filthy rich Chinese American families around us?”
“To make their children’s college applications look better, they’re willing to pour huge amounts of money into tutoring, music, and art.”
“But they don’t know that the identity of an outstanding athlete carries more weight when applying to elite schools than ten piano championships.”
“You are my best test case.” A shrewd light flickered in Hank’s eyes.
“There are still six months until the final college signing deadline in February. Let’s bet on these six months and see how far we can go. If you can win the first full D1 college football scholarship in history belonging to a Chinese American…”
“Think about it. How much will we make?”
“At that point, what we’ll be doing won’t be the business of a single athlete anymore. We can run training camps, start our own youth league.”
“Even… open our own private school. That is what you call business.”
Hank leaned back in his chair, pushed the sundae in front of Lin Wansheng, and gave his final condition in a tone that brooked no argument.
“Don’t you want to impress college admissions officers? I’ll give you better leverage. I’ll package you, train you, and make you into a real star.”
“And what you need to do is become the first key I use to open this blue ocean market. So, kid, are you interested in doing this business with me?”
Lin Wansheng listened to the grand blueprint Hank had drawn, his expression not changing in the slightest.
He quietly waited for Hank to finish, then slowly raised his head and looked straight into Hank’s eyes.
“Mr. Hank, your plan sounds very appealing.” There was no emotion in his voice.
“But all I heard was how much you can make.”
He leaned forward slightly and asked, word by word, “What about me?”
Regarding America, the thing Lin Wansheng liked most was that ambition could, and had to, be displayed plainly.
Here, hiding it would only make people think you were a fool.
The air seemed to freeze.
Kate, standing off to the side, felt her heart pound as she listened. She had not expected Lin Wansheng to dare speak to Hank in such a tone.
However, there was not the slightest trace of anger on Hank’s face. He was first stunned, then burst into a hearty laugh from the bottom of his heart.
“Hahahaha! Good kid! That’s what I like about you!” He slapped Lin Wansheng hard, the admiration in his eyes almost overflowing.
“That’s right! Business means talking about how much we can make!”
“Kid, let’s be a little realistic. What you want is nothing more than money, right? But with your current qualifications, what do you think you can get?”
He paused, and his tone became sharp.
“Your physical gap right now is still far from D1 college requirements. I’m not wrong, am I? In eleventh grade, you didn’t play a single minute of an official game. No game footage, no stats. What are you going to use to negotiate with those college coaches?”
“Forget D1. In your current state, even fighting for a D2 scholarship is almost impossible.”
Lin Wansheng listened to this deliberate attempt to drive down his value and smiled.
“So what?” he asked in return. “What does that change?”
He spread his hands and said in an indifferent tone,
“The fact that I can’t go pro only affects you making money. It doesn’t affect me making money, does it?”