Cam Newton Offered Another Passenger on His Flight $1,500 to Switch to a Seat With Less Leg Room and Got Reminded of What It's Like to be Regular

So this happened... @CameronNewton offered a man $1500 cash for extra leg room on a 10hr flight and the man said “No??” #GiveFranceTheNFL pic.twitter.com/xQohV9Ngef

— Eli Edwards (@ElisaraEdwards) June 22, 2019

Just given the...shall we call it...tumultuous history of the player in question, there will likely be no shortage of people scoffing at Cam Newton trying to throw money at a rich person problem in trying to pay his way into a more comfortable spot in coach. I'd venture to guess the one thing that all those people have in common is a somewhat normal-sized human body that can be crammed uncomfortably into a uniformly-sized seat without a single concern regarding the profitability of their professional career. Point being, even though I am the furthest thing from a Cam Newton apologist, I can sympathize with his plight of being a 6'5 professional athlete who was willing to give a more than gracious gift to not have to jam his long legs, that are made even more precious by an arm of questionable accuracy, into the back of stranger's seat for ten hours on end. Even if it was a product of his own careless booking. 

​That being said, I am even more empathetic to a much more relatable plight, which is that of the passenger that told a high-end NFL quarterback straight to his face that his pride plus his traveling convenience couldn't be bought. I won't take umbrage with Cam Newton for his offer, but I will say that he re-learned a valuable lesson that he may have forgotten over the course of his career. That lesson, of course, being that going about the painstaking process of commercial travel, never mind a flight spanning multiple countries, without being unnecessarily bothered is priceless.

​As far as I am concerned, negotiations on both sides were more than fair. I'd say going into said negotiations wearing sunglasses and a particularly pretentious hat made for an asshole-ish look that was easy to say "no" to out of principle, especially considering the shortness of one's patience when preparing to spend damn near a full day trapped in a steel tube thousands of feet in the air. Still, in my opinion it was an entirely understandable question and, to anyone that understands the inherent irritability of travel, an even more appreciable answer.