EIGHT MONTHS IN THE PEN FOR A BLAZER AND AN EXPENSE ACCOUNT
John, just tell people you got into some trouble in Arizona. Everyone in prison will understand that, because everyone in prison knows there are certain places that just suck people into jail: Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and college athletics.
Don't tell them you ran a bowl game, though. Tell them something more respectable, even if it is a lie. You were stealing from church coffers, or dealing ketamine to kindergartners. You staged elder-boxing in nursing homes for the delight of Phoenix's most demented and monied burghers, or committed arson not for the joy of it, but strictly for the insurance money. There's nothing prison hates more than an emotionally uncommitted arsonist.
Tell them you were doing anything besides running a bowl game, a position so scurrilous it might genuinely cause problems for you in the pen. Oh, and that's what this is: the pen, as in FEDERAL PRISON, where the former head of the Fiesta Bowl is headed for campaign finance fraud violations made in the name of defending the territory and sovereignty of not a foreign republic, gigantic corporation, or even something as simple as the interests of one gigantic evil rich guy.
Nope, John Junker is going to jail for riding too hard for a bowl game, and for what amounts to a shockingly small amount of money. You can make fun of America's Dumbest Criminals for leading police on long chases that started with a pullover for expired tags, but save something for John Junker, please. Those people at least had the legitimate fear of being incarcerated. John Junker went to jail for a blazer and the right to have a $33,000 birthday party for himself on the company tab. That's a motivation powerful enough to risk prison for, evidently, thus proving our theory that there is not a scrap of chicken skin on this earth that someone will not fight you to the death for.
(Also, Junker got to plead guilty two years ago, and is only beginning his sentence in June. Being rich must be incredible.)