Around Fenton this week

North hallway, Thursday, between third and fourth. Mansour headed through with a backpack slung on one shoulder and cleats dangling from the other by their laces, the result of a third-hour study hall he spends in the band room before walking directly to the training room. Three separate people said his name as he went past. He nodded at two. He did not notice the third, who was disappointed about it in a way she will not admit to and has since mentioned twice.

Band room, same day. Perkins, framed in the office doorway, eyes never leaving his desk: "The FLOOR, Nicholas." Cleats off. Sock feet on the pedal. He kept playing.

The Times has run an anonymous call-in line since 1994. Ninety seconds, no name, printed as spoken. It is normally about the roundabout on Silver Lake Road. This week it was about a seventeen-year-old, for four straight calls, which has not happened before.

"I'm sixty-one years old, I have watched Fenton football since the Ford administration, and I want to say the thing nobody in this town will say out loud. The way that Mansour boy has been treated is simply wrong. The school didn't do right by him, the coaches didn't, nobody did. Thirty-five touchdown passes from that child and not one soul dialed a number. Somebody should be embarrassed and nobody is."

"Following the gentleman about the quarterback. With respect. Whose job was that supposed to be? Everybody wants to be upset and nobody wants to name who dropped it. That high school has an athletic director. That is a paid position. My daughter graduated in 2019 and I could not tell you one thing that office has ever done for a child."

"To the lady asking whose job it was. It is the parents' job. It has always been the parents' job. That is not a criticism, it is simply what it is, and if you did not know that then you find out the hard way like the rest of us did."

"You are all wrong and you are wrong in the same direction. You are arguing about who failed as though somebody stood there and refused. Nobody refused. There is no office you call. I have sat in that living room and watched two intelligent people try to find out how this works and there is nowhere to find out. Stop hunting for a villain."

"Nobody wants to hear it but that nine and oh was one kid and a soft league, and this school has been selling it for nine months because it is good for the school. There is a poster in a restaurant. There was an assembly. Ask yourself who benefits from a story like this one and then ask yourself why you believe it."

"I want to add one thing that I have not heard anybody say. My nephew was on that team the year before. That boy worked for the football program for a whole season before he ever played a down. Charting, printing, hauling. For free. And I would like somebody at that school to explain to me how a child can be inside your building doing your work for a year and it still takes him two more years to be worth a phone call."

"The roundabout on Silver Lake still does not work."

In Michigan, a high school athlete is allowed to be compensated for name, image and likeness. Hardly anyone in Genesee County has ever had a reason to learn that.

On Tuesday, Dennis Kubiak, twenty-two years the owner of Fenton Wing & Grill and the man who taped a Mansour poster to his wall in November without consulting a single person, put a formal offer through Mansour's father: $300, plus a weekly Tiger Bucket through the end of November, in exchange for the kid on the paper placemats and a framed photo behind the register.

Kubiak made the pitch over the phone; it is reproduced in full below because nothing else this year has been more Fenton: "It's three hundred bucks and a bucket. I'm not trying to be a booster. I sell wings. He is why this place fills up on Fridays, and it would make me a heel to keep profiting off a kid's face for nothing, which is exactly what I have been doing since November."

The family's answer was that they needed time. In practice, what they discovered is that not one of them knew whether accepting it would cause trouble. Nobody knew whether it affected college eligibility. No one could say whether the school had to be told. There was no obvious person to call — 200 pages of MHSAA handbook, an athletic director who has ignored email since June, and high schools do not employ compliance officers.

Where his mother lands: accept it, three hundred dollars is three hundred dollars and the man is being kind.
Where his father lands: nothing with the letters "NIL" attached gets signed until an actual expert clears it.
His position, in full, when asked: "Please do not put me on a placemat."

No one has accepted and no one has declined. The poster from November is still up.

In our November 2025 issue, and on at least four occasions since, this paper reported that Coach Setzke read Nick Mansour's October 2024 column and subsequently brought him into the football program. Coach Setzke has told us he has never read the column.

Mansour was brought into the program in January 2025 as an unpaid student personnel assistant, after sending Setzke three text messages across fourteen months — two of which went unanswered — and forty-one pages of opponent charting he had done unasked and offered with no conditions attached. We regret the error. It was ours, and this building has been repeating it for two years because we printed it first.

Wednesday night, 11:04 p.m. Nothing happened. This is the entire exchange.