CAM NEWTON SPEAKS: ‘The joke was when they looked in our bank accounts’

Marco Garcia/AP

Hey everyone.

Cam Newton was part of an ESPN special tonight that included candid interviews with some of the NFL’s most intriguing personalities. Newton, the Carolina Panthers’ rookie quarterback, certainly fits that bill.

He answered some questions about the controversy that surrounded him during the end of the 2010-11 season.

• On the worst things people said about him before the draft: “Things being said about character, even about my father. He doesn’t play football. He’s not attached to me. People are saying things (who) have not even met me.”

• On his father’s conversations with MSU representatives: “I couldn’t care less. I don’t even want to talk about it. Everything happens for a reason and I’m so happy that happened because our relationship now is so close — father and son can never be as close as me and my father are right now.”

• On if this experience has brought the two men closer: “Like glue.”

• On why his father got into those discussions with MSU representatives: “I don’t know. Auburn was innocent. My father was innocent. When you have so much investigation, when you flip every rock over two times … this is an investigation solely on speculation. Nobody ever seen no money being transferred. We laugh about it as a family. I don’t think the joke wasn’t the investigation. The joke was when they looked into our bank accounts and seen: Where is this $200,000 at? My family is in a place right now where God has touched me and he’s touched everybody that has that Newton name. We did it, baby.”

TALK ABOUT IT IN THE FORUMS