If The Daily Caller knows one thing for sure, it’s that any serious rap artist doesn’t just show up and collect $65,000 for a 13-minute concert during a Southeastern Conference powerhouse’s spring football game.
Take Ludacris, for example. In addition to very briefly busting rhymes at the University of Georgia’s April 16 G-Day spring game — at a cost of $5,000 per minute — the Grammy-winning rapper also contracted with officials at the taxpayer-funded school for a vast multitude of items including several bottles of top-shelf liquor and a full box of Trojan condoms.
Last week, University of Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity apologized to the athletic department’s board of directors for fulfilling — apparently in its entirety — the demands in Ludacris’s lengthy contract rider, according to the Athens Banner-Herald.
“I do want to take this opportunity to apologize to our board for mistakes we made with certain aspects of the details of an entertainment agreement,” McGarity told the board members. “Few things in my professional life have bothered me more than this situation. There are no reruns in life so we need to turn the page, learn from our mistakes and do everything we can to make sure errors of this nature do not reoccur.”
The Banner-Herald and other local media outlets obtained the details of the contract between the University of Georgia and Ludacris via an open records request.
Ludacris’s rider demanded a box of Trojan Magnum Ecstasy condoms, which feature an “ultra-smooth lubricant” and “a revolutionary design that lets you feel the pleasure, not the condom!”
The rapper additionally demanded two bottles of vodka, two bottles of tequila, two bottles of cognac, two bottles of wine and an array of fruit juices.
There was also organic peanut butter — only the creamy kind, Fruit Roll-Ups, mint-flavored Listerine, batteries, lighters, ample body lotion and, of course, an iron and an ironing board.
Deadspin printed the full rider.
Georgia’s 2016 spring game did end up setting a record for attendance. McGarity, the athletic director, had said he would pull out all the stops to fill the school’s 93,000-seat football stadium.
University of Georgia officials landed Ludacris — born Christopher Brian Bridges — after initially announcing that no huge music act would play at the spring intra-squad exhibition game on campus.
McGarity announced his deep apology at the Ritz-Carlton Lodge at Reynolds Plantation, “a beautiful retreat” where rooms start at $399 per night.
“Obviously in retrospect they should have done a more thorough job of reviewing all of the riders and removing those that were objectionable,” University of Georgia president Jere Morehead later told the Banner-Herald in the process of praising McGarity.
The Georgia Bulldogs football team finished the regular season 9-3 last year — and then promptly fired 15-year veteran head coach Mark Richt. At the time, the school owed Richt $4.1 million.
Ludacris would have to perform for just over 13 hours to earn the $4.1 million the taxpayer-funded school owed Richt when officials fired him.
Big-time musical acts are known for exquisite contract riders. Back in the 1980s, for example, the David Lee Roth incarnation of Van Halen had one the size of a “Chinese phonebook.” (RELATED: Video From The Archives: David Lee Roth Explains Why Van Halen Banned Brown M&M’s)
Tucked into the middle of the Van Halen contract rider was a clause — a very savvy one, it turned out — demanding a bowl of M&M’s backstage and declaring “there will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area or the promoter will forfeit the show at full price.”
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