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.
Student 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 person then revealed his identity.
"I’m Sean Murphy-Bunting," the Michigan native and cornerback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers wrote before sending along a selfie of himself in the team’s locker room.
The high schoolers in the chat didn’t believe him.
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, told the news station. "Sean Murphy-Bunting, Mike Evans, Lavonte David, Gronk (Rob Gronkowski), 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?"
The teens “lost their minds,” P. Jason Whalen, a father of one of them and a counselor at the school, shared in a Twitter thread.
“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.
"What an awesome experience for our boys and what an amazing group of guys on the Buccaneers," Whalen tweeted on the serendipitous call. "I’m sure they had a good time laughing at the fact that the Super Bowl champs got randomly added to a freshman basketball team group chat."
