How ex-football player got video of Cam Newton's $1,500 offer to swap seats on Paris flight

NFL quarterback Cam Newton offered a fellow passenger $1,500 cash to swap seats on a flight from Paris to the Dallas Fort Worth airport, only to be turned down.

The only reason so many people know about it, though, is that former Colorado State football player Elisara Edwards caught it all on a video that has now been viewed by more than 4 million people.

“It’s just gone viral,” Edwards said Monday. “… Social media’s crazy.”

Edwards and his fiancee, Jennifer Johnson, were already seated in the coach section of the American Airlines flight on Friday when Edwards noticed the exchange. The former defensive lineman for the Colorado State University football team and recent contestant on NBC’s “The Titan Games” had his phone out recording a short video for friends and family and quickly turned it on Newton.

The 2010 Heisman Trophy winner and 2015 NFL Most Valuable Player for the Carolina Panthers was negotiating with a passenger two rows in front of Edwards to switch seats in an effort to gain more leg room.

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“He asked the guy in front of us about his seat and if he can trade seats, and (the other passenger) asked him how tall he was,” Edwards said Monday. “He said he was 6-6, and the guy goes, ‘Well, I’m 6-4, and I’m with my buddies here, so I won’t be able to give up my seat.’

“And he asked him if he would trade for $1,000, and he said, ‘No.’ And he’s like, ‘$1,500?’ And he said, ‘No.’

“‘Cash?’ And he said, ‘No.’ And then he just walked back to his seat.

“I just had my camera out at the right moment.”

Edwards, who played for the Rams in 2012 and 2013, said he quickly posted the video to Instagram, then later shared it on Twitter. He lost some of it in the process while editing it down to the 15-second maximum for an Instagram upload.

Edwards thought the exchange was interesting enough to share but had no idea it would take off the way it did.

“I woke up the next day, and it was about 15,000 views and like 1,000 shares or something like that, and later on that afternoon, I looked at my phone again, and it was at about a million. The next day, it was at 3 million.

“It just snowballed.”

By Monday, it was all over the Internet, with stories and links on the websites of CNN, ESPN, CBS Sports, Deadspin, USA TODAY, the Washington Post and hundreds of other media outlets.

“Everybody started hitting me up,” Edwards said. “I just asked for credit.”

It was the second time in two weeks that Edwards had been involved in a video that went viral. His marriage proposal to Jennifer Johnson, minutes after the two watched Jennifer’s younger sister, Estelle, play soccer for Cameroon on June 10 in the Women’s World Cup, was picked up by the organizing committee and shared with television networks and on social media.

Estelle Johnson, who grew up in Fort Collins, was watching the proposal in the front row of the stands from the playing field in Montpellier, France, while her older sister, Esther Johnson, shot the video with her phone.

Edwards had traveled to France with Johnson’s father and sisters to watch Cameroon’s pool-play matches in the Women’s World Cup. They weren’t able to stick around for Cameroon’s final game Sunday in the round of 16, a 3-0 loss to England.

“It wasn’t going to work out for us, because we had to get back to real life,” he said.

Edwards spent the weekend in Fort Collins with Johnson’s family and was headed back to work Monday in Alaska, where he installs insulation on oil pipelines.

As for the events on the flight, “it was kind of an awkward situation,” Edwards said. “I know (Newton) was trying to be incognito, trying to keep to himself. I wasn’t bothering him or trying to talk to him or anything, and then that video.

“I didn’t think anything of it. I posted it, and it just went out of control.”