Avid sports fans are nothing out of the ordinary. The importance of sports in certain people’s lives is immeasurable. People often pay their hard earned wealth, which they work tirelessly for, just to go and see their favorite teams play. Entire cities rally around their hometown teams. Athletes make generational wealth, which is almost entirely provided by the fans spending their money just to see them play. People even attain worldwide fame just from being a fan of their team, like the Marlin Man I talked about in my previous article. Sports are a staple of our country, and at times are the only thing we can agree upon. Sports are what brings us together, but as you will read in this article, they could also be what splits us apart. 

There are some sports fans who go too far. They push the boundaries of right and wrong. They are willing to take risks that are inconceivable to us regular humans. They do things that are considered immoral in our culture. They do it all in the name of sports. That appears to be a pretty accurate description of whom our story is about. The man’s name is Kevin Cayton, and he is a sports fan who went too far. 

Kevin is a finance manager at a car dealership in Elmhurst, Illinois. Despite being some 12 hundred miles away, he happens to be a big fan of the University of Arizona Wildcats. To be specific, a fan of the Arizona men’s basketball team. Despite the lack of geographical correlation, Kevin is no ordinary fan of the team, he is a ‘superfan’ if you will. Kevin never misses a game, no matter the time or place. Through the power of his subscription to the Pac-12 (Pacific Athletic Conference) network, he gets any game in any sport he wants. Of course, he is only interested in watching his favorite team play, which is his Arizona Wildcats. This subscription will be important down the line. He might just sound like the ordinary college basketball fan, but after reading the rest of this article, I promise you, he’s not.

So the story starts in December of 2017, when Kevin had a business trip for his car dealership just a little north in Lake Delton, Wisconsin. He first settled into his hotel room, and the next thing he did was search for a sports bar that had the Pac-12 network on it, for his Wildcats were playing that night. He went from bar to bar, searching for his match. He must have searched for every sports bar in the county.  Being turned down at every attempt, Which would make sense, considering that he is in Wisconsin, where nobody cares about the Pac-12. His final stop was a local restaurant called Buffalo Phil’s, who ended up being the last ones to turn him away. After his long and unsuccessful journey, no restaurant had his channel. He would end up having to tragically follow the game on his phone.

Or so we thought. Any other sports fan would’ve just been disappointed but eventually gotten over it within 2 minutes. But Kevin isn’t just any sports fan, he’s a superfan, and wouldn’t be willing to go down that easily. After being told no from Buffalo Phil’s, Kevin hadn’t given up. So he stuck around for a while. He had this idea in his head that he needed to watch that game at all costs, as if his life depended on it. So after hanging around for a while, Kevin ended up going into the restaurant manager’s office. He picked up the phone and made some calls. 

The calls he made were to Charter Spectrum TV provider. He impersonated an employee to the rasked them specifically to add the Pac-12 network to the restaurants channel subscription list, and nothing else. Keep in mind that he is using the restaurant’s money to purchase the subscription, which is illegal. After making 11 different calls to the TV provider. His wish went through and he got his channel. And his time and energy was well spent, the Wildcats ended up winning the game. You can’t say the same for Kevin though.

Not too soon after, the real manager of Buffalo Phil’s noticed something interesting about the TV bill for the past 2 months. There was a noticeable spike in charges than there were in previous months. They looked deeper into it and found out that the spike was caused by a mysterious purchase of the Pac-12 network. So they smartly decided to get the phone providers in to show them the phone calls that would explain why they paid for the Pac-12 network even though they didn’t. So they dived into the investigation. The manager found out what had happened, someone was pretending to be an employee to get the channel, but he still didn’t know who it was. So they decided to call the police. 

The police listened in and found clues. So with detective skills second to only Sherlock Holmes, they found out that the man’s name was Kevin, that he worked in Elmhurst, Illinois, that he worked at a GMC/Buick car dealership, and that he loves the Arizona Wildcats. The whole investigation process took months, but in the end, they got him. They tracked him down in his office and confronted him, which ended up him getting arrested. In court Kevin Cayton ended up getting charged with two criminal offenses: Identity theft for financial gain and unauthorized use of an entity’s identifying information. Both of those were felonies, and 6 years in jail each. So that would be a 12 year sentence in total. Which seems like a bit more than a little too much. 

So in conclusion, there are some hardcore sports fans in the world. But none seem to match the level of intensity as Kevin Cayton. He seems to treat sports as some sort of religion, which is a pretty good mix between comical and sad. Either way, it is a fascinating tale.