TAMPA (NBC) – A text to a wrong number landed a high school basketball team a fortuitous FaceTime call with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the defending Super Bowl champions.
Vinny Tartaglia added the number to the group chat for the freshman basketball team at Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy in Pontiac, thinking it was his teammate’s, according to NBC affiliate WDIV of Detroit.
“Y’all meant to add me to this?” the person Tartaglia inadvertently messaged asked. “You know who I am?”
The stranger turned out to be nonother than Buccaneers cornerback Sean Murphy-Bunting, the Michigan native and Bucs star sent a selfie of himself to the group chat.
The high schoolers in the chat didn’t believe him until Murphy-Bunting then FaceTimed them, offering a one-of-a-kind meet and greet with the Bucs players.
“Leonard Fournette walked us through the locker room and showed us all the players,” Nate Seaman one of the teens in the group chat said, “Sean Murphy-Bunting, Mike Evans, Lavonte Davis, Gronk, Richard Sherman. That’s when we all said, where’s the GOAT?”
A few minutes later, none other than star quarterback Tom Brady appeared on the screen and asked, “What’s up, fellas?”
“I thought, ‘I should grab my Michigan Brady jersey because I have one and I’m a Michigan fan too,’” AJ Valentine said. “I told him Go Blue! We’re going to beat OSU!”
The Super Bowl champions made these boys’ year in just about 30 minutes’ time.
“They didn’t have to do that for us,” Seaman said. “They could have easily said, ‘I’m going to leave the group chat and just left, but Murphy-Bunting and Fournette made our day.”
The call ended with Murphy-Bunting saying “ball out this season” to the boys.
