When Owen Hanson jumps on the Zoom call to talk about COCAINE QUARTERBACK, a new Prime documentary about his global life of crime that ran from the USC football field to federal prison, he’s sporting a neon “California Ice” t-shirt. It’s the logo of his new protein ice cream company, the one he started out of a mop bucket while incarcerated, and it’s now the defining mission of his life.

“I can’t sit still. I’ve got the worst ADHD of anybody you’ve ever met,” Hanson says. “I tell people I was selling a product that was similar to ice cream, but now it’s healthier ice cream.”

The distance between cocaine and cookies n’ cream isn’t quite as far as it seems, Hanson says. “It’s just the same hustle mentality. The logistics are actually a lot harder in the ice cream business, because you have to keep your product frozen,” he says. “And definitely, I sleep good at night.”

It wasn’t always this way for Hanson. A walk-on at USC in the Pete Carroll era, he was a part of two on-field national championship teams. A small part. In the waning moments of USC’s 55-19 demolition of Oklahoma in the 2005 Orange Bowl, Hanson had already begun celebrating when he got the call to go in the game. There was just one problem.

“There was no way I could get in,” he says. “I had my pads off, I had my (national champions) shirt on, I had a hat on. I was like, I f—ed that up.”

What-ifs like that would become a defining characteristic of Hanson’s life, delineated (with some dramatic re-enactment) in COCAINE QUARTERBACK: SIGNAL CALLER FOR THE CARTEL, a three-episode documentary now streaming on Prime. The word “quarterback” in the title does a whole lot of heavy lifting here; Hanson was never more than a backup QB, and the closest he ever got to the NFL was orchestrating massive bets on its games … which was what led to his stratospheric rise and hard fall back to earth.

After a stint smuggling steroids across the border while in college, Hanson discovered a more lucrative hustle: bookmaking. He navigated the gray areas of sports betting’s legality, successfully enough that he unknowingly drew the interest of an unconventional client: the Sinaloa cartel.

“I’m a casino host on steroids,” Hanson says, describing his mindset in his bookmaking days. “I entertain, I do a good job, and whoever my customer is, I don’t care if it’s Paris Hilton, Mike Tyson or the Sinaloa cartel, I will entertain them like they’re number one.”

That focus on quality customer service, plus a facility with handling large sums of money and a willingness to skirt along the edge of legality, primed him for a more lucrative role with the cartel. “That snowballed, no pun intended,” Hanson says, “into cocaine.”

To say more would be to spoil the documentary, but Hanson’s story would go on to involve Australia, career gamblers, the worst stretch of casino luck you can imagine, stacks of dollar bills stuffed in cabinets and appliances, and finally, a long stint behind bars. It’s a bracing look at how intoxicating fame and illegality can be … and how rough the hangover is.

“I made a million dollars a day at one point,” Hanson says. “But guess what? That landed me in federal prison. If I would have been slow and steady, I would have had those millions and more.”

COCAINE QUARTERBACK, produced by Mark Wahlberg’s Unrealistic Ideas, is now streaming on Prime.