We’ve all accidentally misdialed a phone number. Usually, you apologize to the person on the other end of the call and you both go your separate ways.
But for a group of teenagers in Pontiac, Michigan, one wrong digit granted them locker room access to none other than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers! Notre Dame Prep varsity football coach P. Jason Whalen shared the story of what happened to his son’s basketball team on Twitter, and it’s a doozy.
Jason’s tweet explained that his son Colin’s friend, Vinny Tartaglia, started a group text to keep in touch with their fellow players on the freshmen boy’s basketball team. As he was typing in the phone numbers, Vinny entered one wrong digit, so after the first text went out they got a confused reply from a stranger. “Did you mean to add me to this group?” the person asked.
After some back-and-forth, the stranger identified himself as Sean Murphy-Bunting, a cornerback for the Bucs! Sean has a Michigan cell phone number because that’s where he’s from. Naturally, the kids didn’t believe it was really a professional football player and thought it was a teammate playing a joke on them. So Sean sent a selfie.
There was Sean in the Bucs locker room, and that’s when this wrong number saga really went off the rails. As the excited boys watched, Sean proceeded to pass his phone around the locker room so that members of the NFL team could say hi. Tight end Rob Gronkowski, cornerback Richard Sherman, and running back Leonard Fournette all greeted the teens like they were old friends.
Of course, there was one notable absence in the room, and the boys weren’t shy about asking where NFL MVP quarterback Tom Brady was.
“Naturally the boys are getting greedy now, and besides asking the guys to have big weeks for their fantasy football team, they want to see the GOAT!” Jason tweeted.
The team was happy to accommodate! Leonard Fournette, the last player to have the phone, kept chatting with the kids for 10 more minutes while Tom finished up a meeting. As soon as he came out they handed him the phone – and Tom didn’t hesitate to shout out.
“What’s up fellas?” Tom asked enthusiastically.
“The boys lose their minds,” Jason tweeted.
The G.O.A.T. has entered the chat! Leonard later told ESPN that he knew he had to hold out to get Tom on the phone for these teens.
“To guys in high school, Tom is the figure for them,” he said. “You know what I mean? Who wouldn’t want to look up to a guy like that?”
When it was time to sign off, Sean reclaimed his phone and told the boys to “Ball out this season!” The kids must have been on Cloud 9, and Jason was so grateful that these famous professional athletes took some time out for their fans.
“What an awesome experience for our boys and what an amazing group of guys on the Buccaneers,” he tweeted. “I can’t believe they took the time to entertain Colin and his teammates. I’m sure they had a good time laughing at the fact that the SuperBowl champs got randomly added to a freshman basketball team group chat.”
“That was fun,” Tom said later. “That was really fun. It was really good to see all those young kids hyped up.”
No matter what else happens in the basketball season, nothing could top this moment! Who knew our favorite sports figures were just one wrong number away?
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