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Rules have changed In era of talk radio and Web, Price is in big troublePosted: Friday May 02, 2003 4:50 PM
Don’t you wonder what the Bear would say about this Mike Price business? In the years Coach Paul Bryant ran the show at Alabama, nobody gave a flip if a football coach ever slid into a dark, smoky strip joint, if he maybe drank in excess or if a woman other than his wife ended up in his hotel room. If it happened, no one probably knew. Coaches were coaches then. They weren’t put on the pedestals they are today. They weren’t compensated better than the governor. And they didn’t have to dodge Internet gossip and talk radio shock jocks. "I do think if there had been a lot of talk shows, Coach Bryant would have been given much more respect than they have given Coach Price," said Logan Young, a longtime close friend of Bryant’s. "I don’t think people would have run out saying this happened and that happened. Back when he was coaching, it was more about football than it was about trying to find something dirty on somebody. Now the media seems to just want to find something dirty on a player or a team or a coach. It just wasn’t that way in the old days." That’s the point -- these aren’t the old days. The rules have changed. And because Price, 57, apparently still doesn’t get it, his neck will be on the line Saturday when Alabama president Robert Witt -- on the job two months -- huddles with the university’s board of trustees. Something needs to be said for private acts having public consequences. If you’ve signed on as the moral compass for 85 recruits, a major public university and a legion of fans, you can’t be acting the part of a refugee from Luther Campbell’s ultimate freak party. Your players can slide by, Coach. You can’t. While in Pensacola, Fla., two weeks ago for a pro-am golf tourney -- presumably in his role as a university representative -- Price made two visits to check out talent at a local topless club. He reportedly had some drinks and dropped a couple hundred bucks on the young ladies. He enjoyed some private dances. The owner of the club, Arety Kapetanis, has described the coach as a "perfect gentleman." The story might have ended there, but the next morning, a young woman in Price’s hotel room ordered more than $1,000 in food and drinks and charged it to his bill, according to the Mobile Register. Price returned from the golf tournament later in the day and reportedly paid the bill after the woman left. A few things jump to mind here. First, we hate to shock you, but not all coaches go blind watching game film. Some even frequent strip clubs. You just assume they keep a lower profile than Coach Price. These are, of course, flawed folks just like the rest of us. This latest string of coaching scandals goes to show the overemphasis we place on fun and games. It speaks volumes that characters like Price, Iowa State basketball coach Larry Eustachy and ex-Georgia hoops coach Jim Harrick would be the highest-paid employees -- or close to it -- in their respective states. As for the college administrators floored by a head coach hangin' with strippers, you wonder where the indignation is when their football programs parade around female hostesses on recruiting weekends. Isn’t this eye candy being exploited, too? And what’s the message to teenage recruits? What you have down in Tuscaloosa now is a mess. Price probably has some explaining to do to his wife of 35 years, Joyce. They’ve got three grown children, two of them on his Alabama staff -- offensive coordinatorEric and quarterbacks coach Aaron. Dad, who left Washington State in December, has yet to sign a contract with Alabama. The school offered him a seven-year, $10 million deal, but that’s on the back burner for now. His predecessor, Dennis Franchione left the Tide in a lurch last season, bolting for Texas A&M. The coach before him, Mike DuBose, had a relationship with his secretary that led to the university paying her $350,000 to settle accusations of sexual harassment. And if you didn’t already know, Alabama is riding out another NCAA probation. So you wonder how high a moral ground Alabama really wants to pursue here. If the school is more into compromise, then maybe Price agrees to crawl from one side of the state to the other apologizing. The old seven-year, $10 million proposal is perhaps replaced by a less generous three-year deal that has a year added on every January for good behavior. The coach is effectively on probation. "That seems like a fair solution for everyone," said Young. But is it? Marcia Sage, founder and president of The Sports Ethics Institute, thinks not, suggesting Mike Price be canned and one or both of his sons promoted to the head job. "That’d certainly teach some family values," she said. Sounds good. Mike Fish is a senior writer for SI.com.
Comments? To e-mail Fish, click here.
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