I'm trying to add content to Pages from separate data table…

I’m trying to add content from a separate datatable on the same database as my WP installation. (back story: I have four other instances of doing this via includes, and it all works fine.)

Starting with getting the single_tag_title of the Page, it prints correctly. I move on to the query, which works, and when I don’t have the $nameFull commented out, it prints every name in the datatable – {first name} space {last name}. That also means at some point it prints the name out in a way that matches $slug.

However, what I have in the IF isn’t executing, which tells me it’s not recognizing when $nameFull equals $slug.

$slug = single_tag_title();
 echo $slug;

$query = "SELECT * FROM a_playerRank";

$results = mysql_query($query);
echo mysql_error();
while($line = mysql_fetch_assoc($results)) {

	$nFirst = $line['nameFirst'];
	$nLast = $line['nameLast'];
	$nameFull = "{$nFirst} {$nLast}";

// echo $nameFull

if ($nameFull == $slug)  {

	$nameFullpic = "{$nLast}{$nFirst}";
	$phoneMobile = $line['phoneMobile'];

echo '<div class="profileWrap">';

echo '<div class="playerImage">';
echo '<img src="/wp-content/gallery/'. $line['year'] .'_head_shots/' . strtolower($nameFullpic) . '.jpg"></div>';

	echo '<div class="playerProfile">';
	echo '<table>';
	echo '<tr class="pHead"><th>' . $line['nameFirst'] . ' ' . $line['nameLast'] . '</th>
			<th><span class="year">' . $line['year'] . '</span></th></tr>';

	echo '<tr><td class="playerData">' . $line['height'] . ' ';
		if ($line['position'] == 'PG')  {echo 'Point Guard';}
		elseif ($line['position'] == 'SG')  {echo 'Shooting Guard';}
		elseif ($line['position'] == 'SF')  {echo 'Small Forward';}
		elseif ($line['position'] == 'PF')  {echo 'Power Forward';}
		elseif ($line['position'] == 'C')  {echo 'Center';}
		echo '</td></tr>';	

	echo '<tr><td class="playerData">School:</td>';	

	if ($line['city'] !='') {
		echo '<td>' . $line['city'] . ' (' . $line['school'] . ')</td>';
		}
	else {
	echo '<td>'. $line['school'] . ' HS</td>';
	}		

	echo '</tr>';
}
}

I had a different query trying to narrow the results before collecting them:

$query = "SELECT * FROM a_playerRank WHERE CONCAT(nameFirst, ' ' , nameLast) = '$slug'";

That was giving me this error:

ILLEGAL MIX OF COLLATIONS (UTF8_BIN,NONE) AND (UTF8_GENERAL_CI,COERCIBLE) FOR OPERATION ‘=’

Any thoughts?
Thank you for your time.